Irreducible complexity and directed panspermy
Peter Nyikos
CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
a request of his.
This is a post featuring excerpts from a draft for a FAQ proposal,
which I hope to complete before the end of this year.
Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
A1.1 As defined by Michael Behe in _Darwin's Black Box_,
it is a system with several distinct parts, producing
a certain effect, such that if ANY ONE of the parts
is eliminated, the system effectively ceases to function.
To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
to the function.
Q1.2 What is meant by "a part"?
A1.2 This depends on the system. Some of the simpler systems
looked at by Behe, such as the flagellum, have some individual
molecules whose removal causes the system to cease functioning
effectively. But in most cases, it is all molecules with a
given molecular structure: for instance, in the blood clotting
system, the set of all thrombin molecules is treated as a
single part of the system.
Q1.3 Isn't "X is irreducibly complex" just a fancy way
of saying "I cannot imagine how X could have evolved"?
A1.3 No, Behe does not consider irreducible complexity either
necessary or sufficient for the system not being evolvable.
As to necessity, he even devotes a chapter to AMP synthesis
while seeming to deny that it is irreducibly complex, yet
at the same time claiming that it poses much the same
problems as the irreducibly complex ones. In either case,
the main problem is explaining how the systems could
have evolved in Darwinian fashion in a reasonable amount of time.
As to sufficiency, consider the following two quotes from
Behe's book _Darwin's Black Box_.
Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and
thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one cannot
definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though,
the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. [p. 40]
There is no magic point of irreducible complexity at
which Darwinism is logically impossible. But the
hurdles for gradualism become higher and higher as
structures are more complex, more interdependent. [p. 203]
Q1.4 Doesn't all this mean that irreducible complexity is
irrelevant to the question of whether something could have evolved?
A1.4 Not necessarily. It throws certain issues into sharper relief.
It throws out the challenge of how the system could have evolved
in Darwinian fashion from one with *fewer* parts. This problem
does not arise for systems with some dispensible parts.
Q1.5 Why meet the challenge at all? How about the system coming
from one that is not irreducibly complex and has more parts?
A1.5 This is an indirect method, sanctioned by the first quote
given in A1.3, but it still requires a plausible scenario for
evolving gradually in Darwinian fashion from simpler systems.
Where the systems proposed by Julie Thomas so far are concerned,
no one has attempted to provide such a scenario. In fact,
to paraphrase Q3.1 below, all that has been done in t.o. so
far in this direction has been to move the problem one or
more steps further back. Whatever prcursor of the bacterial
flagellum or F-ATPase rotors one tries to imagine (and nobody
seems to have even tried so far), there still remains
the heretofore unsolved problem of imagining
how it *might* have evolved in gradual fashion to acquire rotary torque
and control over it.
Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
say "It must have been designed," right?
A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
(flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
been designed. Only Michael Behe has come close to saying
it, and he was speaking to the general audience of people
everywhere, rather than primarily to scientifically and/or polemically
sophisticated people, just as Nobel Laureate biochemist
Christian de Duve was in the Quote of the Week [see below].
It is the opponents of Behe who are using an Argument from
Personal Credulity, saying in effect:
You can't prove it didn't evolve, so Ockham's Razor
makes it the default assumption that it did evolve.
And, Voila! here is one of the steps by which it
might have evolved!
Thomas and Nyikos have contented themselves with the hypothesis
that design is a BETTER (more likely) explanation for these select
systems; in the case of Nyikos, design by an advanced technological
civilization that "seeded" earth over 3 billion years ago with
prokaryotes and perhaps primitive eukaryotes. This process,
known as "directed panspermy", was elaborated into a scientific
hypothesis by Nobel Laureate Francis Crick and by Leslie Orgel
about two decades ago.
Q3.1 Doesn't directed panspermy merely move the problem of
life's origins further back?
A3.1 Taken by itself, yes. But if we further hypothesize that
this earlier civilization had a biochemistry simpler than ours,
with all organisms of their world lacking such remarkably
artifact-like structures as the ones mentioned in A2.1,
then this hypothesis goes part of the way
towards solving the basic problem. The construction of these
structures can be hypothesized to be due to the skill, intelligence,
ingenuity, and persistence of that technological civilization
rather than to the blind workings of chance and natural selection.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
twice by convergent evolution.
--Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
Publishers], 1995, p.139.
Doug Quarnstrom
Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
: Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
: isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
: say "It must have been designed," right?
Answer: Yes.
: Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
: Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
: been designed.
Coy polloi as they all are...
doug
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
> a request of his.
>
> This is a post featuring excerpts from a draft for a FAQ proposal,
> which I hope to complete before the end of this year.
>
> Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
>
> A1.1 As defined by Michael Behe in _Darwin's Black Box_,
> it is a system with several distinct parts, producing
> a certain effect, such that if ANY ONE of the parts
> is eliminated, the system effectively ceases to function.
> To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
> to the function.
>
> Q1.2 What is meant by "a part"?
>
> A1.2 This depends on the system. Some of the simpler systems
> looked at by Behe, such as the flagellum, have some individual
> molecules whose removal causes the system to cease functioning
> effectively. But in most cases, it is all molecules with a
> given molecular structure: for instance, in the blood clotting
> system, the set of all thrombin molecules is treated as a
> single part of the system.
Am I the only one that is confused about what distinction Peter is
trying to make here?
>
> Q1.3 Isn't "X is irreducibly complex" just a fancy way
> of saying "I cannot imagine how X could have evolved"?
>
> A1.3 No, Behe does not consider irreducible complexity either
> necessary or sufficient for the system not being evolvable.
> As to necessity, he even devotes a chapter to AMP synthesis
> while seeming to deny that it is irreducibly complex, yet
> at the same time claiming that it poses much the same
> problems as the irreducibly complex ones. In either case,
> the main problem is explaining how the systems could
> have evolved in Darwinian fashion in a reasonable amount of time.
>
> As to sufficiency, consider the following two quotes from
> Behe's book _Darwin's Black Box_.
>
> Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and
> thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one cannot
> definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
> route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though,
> the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. [p. 40]
>
> There is no magic point of irreducible complexity at
> which Darwinism is logically impossible. But the
> hurdles for gradualism become higher and higher as
> structures are more complex, more interdependent. [p. 203]
>
> Q1.4 Doesn't all this mean that irreducible complexity is
> irrelevant to the question of whether something could have evolved?
>
> A1.4 Not necessarily.
Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
kinds of problems as complex IC systems. And he seems to think that
simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
quotes).
> It throws certain issues into sharper relief.
> It throws out the challenge of how the system could have evolved
> in Darwinian fashion from one with *fewer* parts. This problem
> does not arise for systems with some dispensible parts.
When one excludes accessory and helper functions and obvious
duplications and divergences to produce cascades or chains of related
activities, you often are dealing with systems that are simpler than the
one described by Behe. And there are often reasonable *alternative*
functions for subunits. A non-designed evolution does not require that
a protein's history be a linear pathway toward a single teleologically
determined function (the one it now plays). Just as humans can switch
careers (if they have the right educational tools), so can proteins (if
they have the right minor activities). Proteins can (unlike humans)
also do it by duplication and assigning one of the duplicates to the
original career and the other to the new one. [Above not to be taken as
if proteins actually chose to do this. Nature, in the guise of
selection, does the choosing among the random events presented to it.]
>
> Q1.5 Why meet the challenge at all? How about the system coming
> from one that is not irreducibly complex and has more parts?
>
> A1.5 This is an indirect method, sanctioned by the first quote
> given in A1.3, but it still requires a plausible scenario for
> evolving gradually in Darwinian fashion from simpler systems.
> Where the systems proposed by Julie Thomas so far are concerned,
> no one has attempted to provide such a scenario.
Including Julie. Julie only reluctantly discusses *any* evidence
relevant to the evolution of her detailed description of a modern
system. I find that equivalent to describing the current economic
dependence of Wall Street on computers and saying that it must be done
by instantaneous intelligent design because there is no way one can get
to the current stage by incremental steps with some groups trying new
technology and failing and others trying different technologies and
succeeding followed by adoption of the successful features by a broader
group. Economies are too complex and interdependent to evolve. They
must be intelligently designed. Look at how complex they are. Those
would be reasonable conclusions if you only looked at current systems
and ignored the actual history of events. Similarly, before Darwin,
William Paley's (and Michael Behe's identical, but a century and a half
too late) ideas were quite reasonable. Current organisms are complex
and often look quite different from one another and if one were to focus
on any particular current feature (and particularly if one were to
*choose* to look at features where there is a poor fossil record), one
can still argue-from-the-lack-of-evidence for the Paley position. Alas,
modern science does not argue that way. It develops explanatory theory
from cases where there is the most evidence and applies and tests the
aplicability of that theory to whatever evidence exists in the
marginalia. If that evidence is *congruent with* current theory, it
does not pose a problem for it. If there is no actual conflict with
current theory, but merely a 'its possible that it might pose problems',
it might be worth getting more relevant data and re-examining the
question. But you have to be able to do more than say, "It looks
designed to me."
Most of the real problems Behe poses have been worked out long ago
(duplication and divergence explains the legs, wings, antennae, and
mouthparts of insects; co-option of an organ for another function can be
observed in the formation of teleostean swimbladders from primitive
fish's 'lungs'; and natural selection at the molecular level has been
observed for at least 50 years). His view of evolution is as much a
strawman as his definition of evolution. He seems to think that any
molecular system must occur by proteins evolving step-by-step from
utterly useless DNA sequences with no function at all until the entire
modern system is acquired.
> In fact,
> to paraphrase Q3.1 below, all that has been done in t.o. so
> far in this direction has been to move the problem one or
> more steps further back. Whatever prcursor of the bacterial
> flagellum or F-ATPase rotors one tries to imagine (and nobody
> seems to have even tried so far),
You keep saying that when you *know* I have presented a title of a
synopsis of such a precursor.
> there still remains
> the heretofore unsolved problem of imagining
> how it *might* have evolved in gradual fashion to acquire rotary torque
> and control over it.
What are *you* imagining as 'acquiring rotary torque' in a gradual
fasion? Why must acquiring rotary torque be acquired in a gradual
fashion?
>
> Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
> isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
> say "It must have been designed," right?
>
> A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
> imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
> (flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
> IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
> ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
> hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
Every step for which there is relevant historical evidence is congruent
with known possible evolutionary mechanisms. No step clearly
contradicts the possibility that one of the known 'theoretical
mechanisms' of evolution. One can *speculatively* propose evolutionary
mechanisms that are known to produce similar results in other cases for
other features.
> Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
> is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
> hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
In contrast, the 'detailed and fully outlined pathway' by which Julie
and Peter produce these features goes like this: Posit a hypothetical
designer. The designer makes (somehow) the feature. It has the power
to do so because they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
(Aren't IPUs great? Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
every time. Don't even need to make the IPU omnipotent. They can even
be *idiot savants* as long as they are posited to have the power to do
the task you posited them for.)
>
> Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
> Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
> been designed. Only Michael Behe has come close to saying
> it, and he was speaking to the general audience of people
> everywhere, rather than primarily to scientifically and/or polemically
> sophisticated people, just as Nobel Laureate biochemist
> Christian de Duve was in the Quote of the Week [see below].
>
> It is the opponents of Behe who are using an Argument from
> Personal Credulity, saying in effect:
>
> You can't prove it didn't evolve, so Ockham's Razor
> makes it the default assumption that it did evolve.
> And, Voila! here is one of the steps by which it
> might have evolved!
Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities. Just
ask Phillip Gosse of bellybutton fame. His hypothetical evidenceless
entity was also invented to solve problems...and, like yours, it *did*
solve them. His theory was perfectly logical and coherent. Wonder why
it never caught on among scientists? Perhaps he should have posited
that the fossils were deposited by Loki-like non-supernatural but
tehnologically-advanced, aliens rather than positing the God of the
Bible? Then, maybe, the idea might have been recognized as the
brilliant concept he (like you, Julie, and Behe) obviously thought it
was?
>
> Thomas and Nyikos have contented themselves with the hypothesis
> that design is a BETTER (more likely) explanation for these select
> systems; in the case of Nyikos, design by an advanced technological
> civilization that "seeded" earth over 3 billion years ago with
> prokaryotes and perhaps primitive eukaryotes. This process,
> known as "directed panspermy", was elaborated into a scientific
> hypothesis by Nobel Laureate Francis Crick and by Leslie Orgel
> about two decades ago.
In one sense, positing putative entities is BETTER. Posited,
hypothetical IPUs *always* can solve whatever problem you need solving.
Scientific explanation must often await actual supporting evidence.
>
> Q3.1 Doesn't directed panspermy merely move the problem of
> life's origins further back?
>
> A3.1 Taken by itself, yes. But if we further hypothesize that
> this earlier civilization had a biochemistry simpler than ours,
Do you mean that our intelligent designers had no flagella (neither
eubacterial nor eucaryotic), no DNA replication, no transcription, no
protein translational mechanism, no F-ATPase or aerobic metabolism, no
genetic code, no DNA repair mechanism (to list a few of the systems you
and Julie have proposed to be IC), and also maybe even lack all those
non-IC systems that pose many of the same problems as IC systems (like
AMP *de novo* synthesis)!? One strange mother of an organism, eh what?
Perhaps you should posit that these alien designers are made of silicon,
which would make them (and this whole idea) quite literally as dumb as a
rock.
> with all organisms of their world lacking such remarkably
> artifact-like structures as the ones mentioned in A2.1,
> then this hypothesis goes part of the way
> towards solving the basic problem. The construction of these
> structures can be hypothesized to be due to the skill, intelligence,
> ingenuity, and persistence of that technological civilization
> rather than to the blind workings of chance and natural selection.
Actually, the last line should read "rather than to the blind workings
of chance and natural selection that created these suprahumanly
intelligent designers." shouldn't it? Damn. Maybe the reason it took us
so long to evolve (nearly half the time the earth is likely to exist as
planet capable of supporting life) is that they made the damn
procaryotes too complicated?
Peter Nyikos
d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>: Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>: isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>: say "It must have been designed," right?
>Answer: Yes.
>: Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
>: Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
>: been designed.
>Coy polloi as they all are...
What an impressive display of intelligence! Doug, how can we
hope to compete with your deep, insightful logic?
;-)
Doug Quarnstrom
howard hershey ("hersheyh"@indiana.edu) wrote:
: Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
: complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
: evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
: novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
: kinds of problems as complex IC systems. And he seems to think that
: simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
: quotes).
This certainly bears the same stamp of confusion that Behe's writing
on science and philosophy bears. One continues to be remarkably
unimpressed by this man's ability to think to the core of an issue.
: Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
: observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
: theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
doug
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
>> a request of his.
>>
>> This is a post featuring excerpts from a draft for a FAQ proposal,
>> which I hope to complete before the end of this year.
>>
>> Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
>>
>> A1.1 As defined by Michael Behe in _Darwin's Black Box_,
>> it is a system with several distinct parts, producing
>> a certain effect, such that if ANY ONE of the parts
>> is eliminated, the system effectively ceases to function.
>> To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
>> to the function.
>>
>> Q1.2 What is meant by "a part"?
>>
>> A1.2 This depends on the system. Some of the simpler systems
>> looked at by Behe, such as the flagellum, have some individual
>> molecules whose removal causes the system to cease functioning
>> effectively. But in most cases, it is all molecules with a
>> given molecular structure: for instance, in the blood clotting
>> system, the set of all thrombin molecules is treated as a
>> single part of the system.
>Am I the only one that is confused about what distinction Peter is
>trying to make here?
Are you equally confused by Julie's "thematic" etc. IC, or more so?
>Real answer: Yes.
A Broken.Usenet.Promise. The sequel reads as though the term
"irrelevant to" in Q1.4 actually read, "unable to decide all
by itself":
> It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
>complexity
Wrong. We are highly complex creatures, but we evolved
from much lower life forms. That's because we are made up
of billions of little cells, with a huge genome that allows
for making millions of small changes add up to something big.
It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
>kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
Of course, the salvage pathway was NOT ignored, but Hershey probably
figures he has a Mother Nature-given right to make up as
many tall tales about Behe as he chooses. A search of Deja News
for the key words "Koltanowski sanction" should convince all
but the most diehard skeptics of this being Hershey's attitude.
And he seems to think that
>simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
>quotes).
You smuggled in the word "easily".
[deletia of things to be dealt with later]
>> Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>> isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>> say "It must have been designed," right?
>>
>> A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
>> imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
>> (flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
>> IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
>> ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
>> hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
>Every step for which there is relevant historical evidence
Can be listed on the fingers of one hand. In fact, IIRC,
one finger will do. And dozens are needed for an intelligible
evolutionary path to emerge.
>> Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
>> is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
>> hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
>In contrast, the 'detailed and fully outlined pathway' by which Julie
>and Peter produce these features goes like this: Posit a hypothetical
>designer. The designer makes (somehow) the feature. It has the power
>to do so because
the feature was chosen not to be too daunting (DNA rep may be
an exception, which is why I have chosen not to get into
it).
they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
>power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
>the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
>(Aren't IPUs great?
Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
organisms].
Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
sapiens* is doomed to failure?
> Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
>every time.
as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
imagine, hence the "U".
Remainder deleted and saved for later.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
howard hershey
So what was the distinction you were trying to make? How does the 'set
of all thrombin molecules' differ from 'some individual molecules' in
flagella, aside from the fact that one is more of a metabolic enzyme and
the other is a more of a structural protein?
Does that mean that *only* when there is a concordance of both IC and a
large degree of complexity that either term poses any problem for
evolution? Neither IC by itself nor complexity by itself causes any
serious problems for evolution, but only when the two are combined (and
*also*, just coincidentally, when there is little historically relevant
information) that we have the right juncture of forces to pose a problem
for evolution. You would have thought that Behe would have made this
clearer. And why did he choose several examples that at their core have
two or three sub-systems and conflate them by adding all kinds of
accessory activities?
>
> > It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
> >complexity
>
> Wrong. We are highly complex creatures, but we evolved
> from much lower life forms. That's because we are made up
> of billions of little cells, with a huge genome that allows
> for making millions of small changes add up to something big.
>
> It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
> topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
Complexity really is an important component in the use of IC as an
argument against evolution. I have no objection to an argument that
explicitly and honestly discusses the necessity for *both* IC-ness *and*
complexity (and, apparently, a dearth of relevant historical evidence)
in the argument against evolution. But that was not the book that Behe
wrote. He implied that it was ICness by itself that was the problem for
Darwinism.
>
> that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
> >evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
> >novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
> >kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>
> Of course, the salvage pathway was NOT ignored, but Hershey probably
> figures he has a Mother Nature-given right to make up as
> many tall tales about Behe as he chooses. A search of Deja News
> for the key words "Koltanowski sanction" should convince all
> but the most diehard skeptics of this being Hershey's attitude.
Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway. The only
mention of a salvage enzyme (but it was not specified or considered as
such, it was considered for its regulatory role in AMP *de novo*
synthesis) was his discussion of the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, which is a
genetic defect in HGPRT (hypoxanthine-guanine phophoribosyl
transferase). No mention of APRT (adenine PRT) was to be seen in my
re-reading. But I have problems focusing for long on Behe's book
because of my aversion to poorly written twaddle, so perhaps you can
find where he discusses the salvage pathway before you apply the
"Koltanowski sanction" to whichever of us misremembered this?
>
> And he seems to think that
> >simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
> >quotes).
>
> You smuggled in the word "easily".
>
> [deletia of things to be dealt with later]
>
> >> Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
> >> isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
> >> say "It must have been designed," right?
> >>
> >> A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
> >> imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
> >> (flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
> >> IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
> >> ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
> >> hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
>
> >Every step for which there is relevant historical evidence
>
> Can be listed on the fingers of one hand. In fact, IIRC,
> one finger will do. And dozens are needed for an intelligible
> evolutionary path to emerge.
I can't manufacture supporting evidence out of thin air the way that
posited panspermists can be manufactured. Science can only provide
explanations for and congruent with the existing evidence and try to
integrate that information into a coherent structure (even if all the
data supports is a title of a synopsis). I can't posit an IPU to solve
my problems or fill in legitimate places where there is little evidence.
> >> Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
> >> is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
> >> hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
>
> >In contrast, the 'detailed and fully outlined pathway' by which Julie
> >and Peter produce these features goes like this: Posit a hypothetical
> >designer. The designer makes (somehow) the feature. It has the power
> >to do so because
>
> the feature was chosen not to be too daunting (DNA rep may be
> an exception, which is why I have chosen not to get into
> it).
>
> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
> >power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
> >the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
> >(Aren't IPUs great?
>
> Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
> and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
> to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
> code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
> organisms].
Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
irrelevant. I have no evidence that they (or any entities of similar
intelligence) did so (or even existed) 4.3 billion years ago. That
would make the designer of 4.3 billion years ago (the only one of
interest here) nothing but a putative entity invented out of thin air
with the hypothetical minimum skills to do whatever things you want them
to be able to do.
>
> Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
> of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
> figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
> sapiens* is doomed to failure?
My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
relevant actors at that time and place.
If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder even if
I were to pick up and slam down a rock at the place the skull was found
tomorrow (showing that I was certainly capable of performing acts that
could produce such a damaged skull). Can you tell me the reasons why I
should get off scott free? There are at least two, only one of which
involves my rather obvious alibi.
>
> > Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
> >every time.
>
> as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
> imagine, hence the "U".
Unlike IPU 'theories', science does not get to invent evidence and
problem-solving entities out of thin air. It can only describe how
whatever evidence exists can either be congruent with or in disagreement
with known natural law mechanisms. That is why, if IC is to pose any
real difficulty for evolution, you must show that the *mechanism* by
which a particular feature arose is both consistent with IC-specific
mechanisms (it arose essentially instantaneously or arose by
intermediate stages that were utterly useless) and different from
evolutionary mechanisms (it arose via intermediate stages with some kind
of utility at a rate consistent with known rates of evolution of useful
molecules). Inventing a hypothetical panspermy event (note that I did
not say panspermist) actually *decreases* the likelyhood that some
particular very ancient (on the earth) IC system must be *designed* by
some alien entity, since it allows significantly more time for such a
system to evolve. I.e., the possibility of panspermy subverts one's
ability to say that system X appeared far too quickly to have *evolved*
on the earth by known evolutionary mechanisms (and therefore must be
designed), by providing the obvious out that the system did not evolve
by known evolutionoary mechanisms *on the earth* but did so elsewhere.
Panspermy is not, by itself, evidence that a system was designed.
Peter Nyikos
d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>howard hershey ("hersheyh"@indiana.edu) wrote:
>: Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
>: complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>: evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>: novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored)
No, it was not.
>: to present the same
>: kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
Behe never said outright that it was non-IC.
And he seems to think that
>: simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
>: quotes).
>This certainly bears the same stamp of confusion that Behe's writing
>on science and philosophy bears. One continues to be remarkably
>unimpressed by this man's ability to think to the core of an issue.
Yes, I too am remarkably unimpressed by Hershey's inability
to think to the core of an issue. However, I doubt that
any statement of Behe's bears such a striking stamp of confusion
as the last sentence of Hershey's.
>: Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
>: observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
>: theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
them on this thread so far.
>Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
_Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
Howard, unremarkably, does not answer this question, leaving me
to wonder how well he understands Julie's concept.
>So what was the distinction you were trying to make? How does the 'set
>of all thrombin molecules' differ from 'some individual molecules' in
>flagella, aside from the fact that one is more of a metabolic enzyme and
>the other is a more of a structural protein?
The parts of a single flagellum are individual protein molecules,
as opposed to a set of billions of identical molecules. Duh.
[...]
The degree of complexity need not be overwhelming. F-ATPase is
a complicated molecule, but still just one molecule, isn't it?
[about Behe:]
>clearer. And why did he choose several examples that at their core have
>two or three sub-systems and conflate them by adding all kinds of
>accessory activities?
I'm not sure, but I think he figured the cascades provided several
big problems in addition to having IC cores.
That reminds me. Time to add a few more items to my FAQ draft:
Q4.1 Isn't the blood clotting cascade IC?
[This one deserves the "Frequently" almost just on the
strength of how often Jonathan has claimed a "Yes" answer.]
A4.1 No, Behe only claims the following to form an "IC core"
to the system: fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, and
accelerin, claiming the four are sufficient for clotting and
all four are necessary.
Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
removed from the whole system without the system breaking
down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
can still function.
Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
I said "Nyikos answer" here because I haven't consulted with
Behe and Thomas on it; they may have different definitions.
>> > It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
>> >complexity
>>
>> Wrong. We are highly complex creatures, but we evolved
>> from much lower life forms. That's because we are made up
>> of billions of little cells, with a huge genome that allows
>> for making millions of small changes add up to something big.
>>
>> It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
>> topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
>Complexity really is an important component in the use of IC as an
>argument against evolution. I have no objection to an argument that
>explicitly and honestly discusses the necessity for *both* IC-ness *and*
>complexity (and, apparently, a dearth of relevant historical evidence)
>in the argument against evolution. But that was not the book that Behe
>wrote. He implied that it was ICness by itself that was the problem for
>Darwinism.
Get real. You even kept A3.1 up there, intact. Not to mention
something YOU wrote immediately below:
>> that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>> >evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>> >novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
>> >kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
Yes, and it seems that the system *as it now stands* is IC, but
since it is more properly a *process* rather than a *system* of
enzymes as described, it doesn't pose *exactly* the same problems
that a system of enzymes acting on *each other* en route to the
final product poses.
>> Of course, the salvage pathway was NOT ignored, but Hershey probably
>> figures he has a Mother Nature-given right to make up as
>> many tall tales about Behe as he chooses. A search of Deja News
>> for the key words "Koltanowski sanction" should convince all
>> but the most diehard skeptics of this being Hershey's attitude.
See also the comment which elicited "Get real" from me just now.
>Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
>Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
to the biological route of synthesis that shoes are
precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
[...]
>> >> Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>> >> isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>> >> say "It must have been designed," right?
>> >>
>> >> A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
>> >> imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
>> >> (flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
>> >> IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
>> >> ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
>> >> hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
>>
>> >Every step for which there is relevant historical evidence
>>
>> Can be listed on the fingers of one hand. In fact, IIRC,
>> one finger will do. And dozens are needed for an intelligible
>> evolutionary path to emerge.
>I can't manufacture supporting evidence out of thin air the way that
>posited panspermists can be manufactured.
Too bad. So your IPEPs are doomed to remain IPUEPs, and
your IPNSPs to remain IPUNSPs, it seems.
>data supports is a title of a synopsis). I can't posit an IPU to solve
>my problems or fill in legitimate places where there is little evidence.
Nor can you posit a IPEP or IPNSP to show us that evolution
of flagellae, etc. is not "impossible" by the criteria of
de Duve to evolve even ONCE?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
twice by convergent evolution.
--Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
Publishers], 1995, p.139.
[Peter:]
>> >> Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
>> >> is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
>> >> hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
[Howard:]
>> >In contrast, the 'detailed and fully outlined pathway' by which Julie
>> >and Peter produce these features goes like this: Posit a hypothetical
>> >designer. The designer makes (somehow) the feature. It has the power
>> >to do so because
[Peter:]
>> the feature was chosen not to be too daunting (DNA rep may be
>> an exception, which is why I have chosen not to get into
>> it).
[Howard:]
>> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
>> >power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
>> >the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
>> >(Aren't IPUs great?
>>
>> Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
>> and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
>> to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
>> code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
>> organisms].
>Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
>irrelevant.
On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
>> Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
>> of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
>> figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
>> sapiens* is doomed to failure?
>My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
>Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
>(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
>time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
>relevant actors at that time and place.
>If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
>bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
>born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
^^^^^
You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard. Only
a crazy person would claim human beings designed bacterial
flagellae 3.5+ billion years ago.
[...]
>> > Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
>> >every time.
>>
>> as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
>> imagine, hence the "U".
>Unlike IPU 'theories', science does not get to invent evidence and
>problem-solving entities out of thin air.
Nor to hypothesize evolutionary paths or natural selection
pressures? Get real. The very word "Proavis" shows that
you are just confusing the issue.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
George Acton
In article <666vso$e...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>,> : Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
> : complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
> : evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
> : novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
> : simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
> : quotes).
>
> This certainly bears the same stamp of confusion that Behe's writing
> on science and philosophy bears. One continues to be remarkably
> unimpressed by this man's ability to think to the core of an issue.
>
> : observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
> : theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
>
>
>
I suspect he understands his book isn't science, or even junk science.
But that doesn't bother him. He's produced the much more profitable
commodity -- let's-pretend science. The book is apologetics, and in
places merely "devotional" -- thinly disguised appeals to religious
sentiment. As science, it's obviously inferior to flat earthism,
phlogiston or orgone theory. Any chain bookstore has a section with
books about the contemporary variants -- healing via natural energy
flows, applications of Taoism to nutrition, etc. The only reason Behe
is treated respectfully is that his book is a rationalization of the
more primitive interpretations of our two official religions. That
seems to be the only explanation for the hurt tone of his defenders.
They react as if their religion is under attack when Behe's book is
subjected to normal scientific scrutiny. But if people want to promote
religion masquerading as science, it seems perfectly fair to ignore
the false labeling and ask the standard questions. In general, Behe's
critics have raised mild but dispositive objections. His defenders
have stuck to the rhetorical devices of apolagetics, or in modern
parlance, marketing.
--George Acton
Don Cates
On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>
>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
[big snip]
>>data supports is a title of a synopsis). I can't posit an IPU to solve
>>my problems or fill in legitimate places where there is little evidence.
>Nor can you posit a IPEP or IPNSP to show us that evolution
>of flagellae, etc. is not "impossible" by the criteria of
>de Duve to evolve even ONCE?
> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>
> It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
> as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
> twice by convergent evolution.
> --Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
> Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
> Publishers], 1995, p.139.
I fail to see how this quote supports your position.
[big snip]
>>My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
>>Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
>>(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
>>time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
>>relevant actors at that time and place.
>>If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
>>bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
>>born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
^^^^^
>You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard.
Yep, that's a bad one. Though not quite as bad as you seem to think.
After all, we have independent evidence that an 'actor' capable of
duplicating your 'crush with rock ' ability. So a demonstration of
that ability *is* evidence in support of a murder hypothesis. However,
it would not support a hypothesis of murder by 'crush with rock'
capable aliens.
A better analogy would be, for example, animal remains in a cave dated
to 30 million years ago that was killed by stabbing. There are fallen
stalactites in evidence, but no direct evidence that the animal was
killed by a falling stalagtite. This circumstance supports a
hypothesis that the animal was killed by a falling stalactite. A
demonstration that a human could kill an animal by stabbing it is not
support for the hypothesis that some unknown human-like entity killed
that animal 30 million years ago.
Only
>a crazy person would claim human beings designed bacterial
>flagellae 3.5+ billion years ago.
A time travel paradox. Not crazy, just very imaginative. (I seriously
doubt that this is the conclusion that Howard was proposing)
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
>a request of his.
>
>This is a post featuring excerpts from a draft for a FAQ proposal,
>which I hope to complete before the end of this year.
>
>
>Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
>
>A1.1 As defined by Michael Behe in _Darwin's Black Box_,
>it is a system with several distinct parts, producing
>a certain effect, such that if ANY ONE of the parts
>is eliminated, the system effectively ceases to function.
>To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
>to the function.
>
OK, but I wonder if you want to discuss with Julie her alternative
definitions.
>
>Q1.2 What is meant by "a part"?
Shouldn't you also give an operative definition of system and
function?
>
>A1.2 This depends on the system. Some of the simpler systems
>looked at by Behe, such as the flagellum, have some individual
>molecules whose removal causes the system to cease functioning
>effectively. But in most cases, it is all molecules with a
>given molecular structure: for instance, in the blood clotting
>system, the set of all thrombin molecules is treated as a
>single part of the system.
>
"All molecules with a given molecular structure" does not satisfy.
Chains are joining and breaking up all the time. It each instantiation
of a possible chain a part? This just seems ambiguous to me, but
others with direct experience can judge better.
>
>Q1.3 Isn't "X is irreducibly complex" just a fancy way
>of saying "I cannot imagine how X could have evolved"?
>
>A1.3 No, Behe does not consider irreducible complexity either
>necessary or sufficient for the system not being evolvable.
>As to necessity, he even devotes a chapter to AMP synthesis
>while seeming to deny that it is irreducibly complex, yet
>at the same time claiming that it poses much the same
>problems as the irreducibly complex ones. In either case,
>the main problem is explaining how the systems could
>have evolved in Darwinian fashion in a reasonable amount of time.
>
>As to sufficiency, consider the following two quotes from
>Behe's book _Darwin's Black Box_.
>
> Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and
> thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one cannot
> definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
> route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though,
> the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. [p. 40]
>
> There is no magic point of irreducible complexity at
> which Darwinism is logically impossible. But the
> hurdles for gradualism become higher and higher as
> structures are more complex, more interdependent. [p. 203]
>
Ok, but I am still confused about the relevance of IC to evolution. It
is suggested that some non-IC systems did not evolved and some IC
systems did. Shouldn't we be looking at some other aspect of the
system?
>
>Q1.4 Doesn't all this mean that irreducible complexity is
>irrelevant to the question of whether something could have evolved?
>
>A1.4 Not necessarily. It throws certain issues into sharper relief.
What does this mean?
>It throws out the challenge of how the system could have evolved
>in Darwinian fashion from one with *fewer* parts. This problem
>does not arise for systems with some dispensible parts.
>
Right, but it does not deal with a whole host of other questions.
>
>Q1.5 Why meet the challenge at all? How about the system coming
>from one that is not irreducibly complex and has more parts?
>
>A1.5 This is an indirect method, sanctioned by the first quote
>given in A1.3, but it still requires a plausible scenario for
>evolving gradually in Darwinian fashion from simpler systems.
True, but so what? It just shows that IC is irrelevant.
>Where the systems proposed by Julie Thomas so far are concerned,
>no one has attempted to provide such a scenario. In fact,
>to paraphrase Q3.1 below, all that has been done in t.o. so
>far in this direction has been to move the problem one or
>more steps further back.
And what else would you expect. You move it back step by step until
you reach the end.
>Whatever prcursor of the bacterial
>flagellum or F-ATPase rotors one tries to imagine (and nobody
>seems to have even tried so far),
Weren't pillins suggested?
>there still remains
>the heretofore unsolved problem of imagining
>how it *might* have evolved in gradual fashion to acquire rotary torque
>and control over it.
>
>
>Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>say "It must have been designed," right?
>
>A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
>imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
>(flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
>IC systems might have evolved. Nobody in talk.origins has
>ever attempted to even imagine more than one or two of many
>hypothetical steps along even an alleged evolutionary path.
>Moreover, the alleged path is not even outlined; its existence
>is simply *postulated* and a few little highlights are then
>hypothesized to be part of this non-imagined path.
>
>Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
>Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
>been designed.
OK, so answer the other question. You can't imagine how it might have
evolved, so you say "it probably was designed," right?
>Only Michael Behe has come close to saying
>it, and he was speaking to the general audience of people
>everywhere, rather than primarily to scientifically and/or polemically
>sophisticated people, just as Nobel Laureate biochemist
>Christian de Duve was in the Quote of the Week [see below].
>
>It is the opponents of Behe who are using an Argument from
>Personal Credulity, saying in effect:
>
> You can't prove it didn't evolve, so Ockham's Razor
> makes it the default assumption that it did evolve.
> And, Voila! here is one of the steps by which it
> might have evolved!
>
Peter, I have not seen anyone use this argument. The argument goes: we
know some systems have evolved. We know the mechanism for evolution
operate. So we suspect other systems also evolved.
>Thomas and Nyikos have contented themselves with the hypothesis
>that design is a BETTER (more likely) explanation for these select
>systems;
How is that so? How is it BETTER? Where are the probability
calculations?
>in the case of Nyikos, design by an advanced technological
>civilization that "seeded" earth over 3 billion years ago with
>prokaryotes and perhaps primitive eukaryotes. This process,
>known as "directed panspermy", was elaborated into a scientific
>hypothesis by Nobel Laureate Francis Crick and by Leslie Orgel
>about two decades ago.
>
>
>Q3.1 Doesn't directed panspermy merely move the problem of
>life's origins further back?
>
>A3.1 Taken by itself, yes. But if we further hypothesize that
>this earlier civilization had a biochemistry simpler than ours,
>with all organisms of their world lacking such remarkably
>artifact-like structures as the ones mentioned in A2.1,
Does this also include an non-IC reproductive system? IOW, do they
have a non-IC analog to DNA?
>then this hypothesis goes part of the way
>towards solving the basic problem. The construction of these
>structures can be hypothesized to be due to the skill, intelligence,
>ingenuity, and persistence of that technological civilization
>rather than to the blind workings of chance and natural selection.
>
Matt Silberstein
-----------------------------
The opinions expressed in this post reflect those of the Walt
Disney Corp. Which might come as a surprise to them.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>
>>howard hershey ("hersheyh"@indiana.edu) wrote:
>
>>: Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
>>: complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>>: evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>>: novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored)
>
>No, it was not.
>
>>: to present the same
>>: kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>
>Behe never said outright that it was non-IC.
Which kind of amazes me. I had thought that IC was the core, so to
speak, of his proposal. Yet he does not make it clear whether some of
the systems he discusses are IC and he does make it clear whether the
IC nature of the system is what is important.
>
> And he seems to think that
>>: simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
>>: quotes).
>
>>This certainly bears the same stamp of confusion that Behe's writing
>>on science and philosophy bears. One continues to be remarkably
>>unimpressed by this man's ability to think to the core of an issue.
>
>Yes, I too am remarkably unimpressed by Hershey's inability
>to think to the core of an issue. However, I doubt that
>any statement of Behe's bears such a striking stamp of confusion
>as the last sentence of Hershey's.
>
>>: Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
>>: observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
>>: theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
>
>But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>them on this thread so far.
>
Peter, do you think that multiple repetitions of this claim will make
it correct? Mutation in its various forms is not an IPU.
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>
>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
[snip]
>
>It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
>topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
>
And that was supposed to be a secret.
BTW, exactly what "game" did I "give away"?
[snip]
> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
>>power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
>>the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
>>(Aren't IPUs great?
>
>Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
>and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
>to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
>code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
>organisms].
>
First, that we might someday have this ability does not make your IAD
a non-IPU. IPUs can do everything, they can do what people can do,
they can do what natural forces can do, they can do what people can't
do, and they can do what natural forces can't do.
Second, it is not our ability to create flagellum that is at issue. It
is our ability to create new IC systems without starting with IC
systems. For instance, we would need to be able to develop a new
reproductive system for our pansperimic probes. BTW, I have to wonder
why they did not just send the life forms they had. If you say it was
to send us a message, then they have the God-Like power of predicting
3B years of evolution.
>Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
>of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
>figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
>sapiens* is doomed to failure?
>
>> Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
>>every time.
>
>as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
>imagine, hence the "U".
>
Come on Peter. All you have done is give us a name "Designer". That is
not even a title of a story. How did they do it? Give us some steps in
the process, tell us a mechanism they used.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>
>Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
>
>A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
>and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
>removed from the whole system without the system breaking
>down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
>can still function.
>
>Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
>consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
>has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
>
When you remove those parts, aren't those that are left an IC core?
[snip]
>>Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
>>Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
>
>Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
>
> The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
> by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
> to the biological route of synthesis that shoes are
> precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
>
Have you watched or read "Connections"?
[snip]
>>Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
>>irrelevant.
>
>On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
>design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
>is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
>
So what? The issue is not whether design is capable, the issue is
first whether there was a designer and second what the designer did. I
have no problem in accepting that any system that is possible to build
could have been designed.
[snip]
Jonathan Stone
In article <3499bc19...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
> >Thomas and Nyikos have contented themselves with the hypothesis
> >that design is a BETTER (more likely) explanation for these select
> >systems;
>
> How is that so? How is it BETTER? Where are the probability
> calculations?
It's one in a trillion odds for evoluition. THerefore it must have
been design. Oh, you want to know where the one in a trillion comes
from? Peter says so. And given Peter's own very special definitions,
that makes the ``one in a trillion'' *objective*. See?
No? You suspect this is just an argument from personal incredulity?
Well, as we've seen, that's ``stupid'', and if you ask why, you get
Peter quoting his own FAQ in defense of his own insults.
And let's not even *talk* about the lack of error bars and the
suspiciously round numbers 1^-9, 1^-100, and 1^{-{1^100}}.
Jonathan Stone
In article <6640j7$d...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
> Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>
> : isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
> : say "It must have been designed," right?
>
Yes, but vociferously denied.
> : Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
> : Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
> : been designed.
>
But there were claims that, in fact they *were* designed and that you
have *evidence* of that. Pulling probabilities out of thin air and
quoting your own mere opinions in support of your claim does not count
as evidence.
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
> ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>
> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
> >> >> a request of his.
> >>
> >> Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
> >> and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
> >> to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
> >> code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
> >> organisms].
>
> >Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
> >irrelevant.
>
> On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
> design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
> is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
>
> >> Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
> >> of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
> >> figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
> >> sapiens* is doomed to failure?
>
> >My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
> >Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
> >(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
> >time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
> >relevant actors at that time and place.
>
> >If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
> >bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
> >born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
> ^^
> If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
> bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
> born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder even if
> I were to pick up and slam down a rock at the place the skull was found
> tomorrow (showing that I was certainly capable of performing acts that
> could produce such a damaged skull). Can you tell me the reasons why I
> should get off scott free? There are at least two, only one of which
> involves my rather obvious alibi.
***********end repost
>
> You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard. Only
> a crazy person would claim human beings designed bacterial
> flagellae 3.5+ billion years ago.
*I* am not the person who is claiming that the possible *future*
existence of human beings capable of performing an event is *supporting
evidence* that similar beings were responsible for similar events that
happened in the past. *You* are the person making that crazy claim. I
have already mentioned that calling up an IPU to design something is
easy, too easy.
As for how bogus the analogy is, you were apparently unable to guess the
second reason (aside from my not being in existence at the time) why I
would not be convicted. There is no presented evidence that *anyone*
committed a crime. Rockfalls happen in caves. Falling individuals that
smash their little skulls on rocks happen in caves all the time. But,
as Matt pointed out, I should have made the analogy using an animal
skull from 20 million years ago, because there would then be no real
possibility of an intelligent being of our level of intelligence doing
this.
You have the same (or even lower) level of evidence wrt the flagella,
yet you spin yarns involving posited aliens and claim that the
possibility of humans doing it in the future is evidence that it was
done that way in the past before humans existed.
> >> > Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
> >> >every time.
> >>
> >> as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
> >> imagine, hence the "U".
Natural selection is not unimagined.
>
> >Unlike IPU 'theories', science does not get to invent evidence and
> >problem-solving entities out of thin air.
>
> Nor to hypothesize evolutionary paths or natural selection
> pressures? Get real. The very word "Proavis" shows that
> you are just confusing the issue.
Hypothesis does not mean *detailed* pathway. Hypothesis is usually
limited to those steps which have some current potential for being
tested. Speculation is what you are describing. That, most scientists
are reluctant and loathe to do.
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
> ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>
> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> CC: Daneel <ust...@cs.elte.hu> because this is in response to
> >> >> a request of his.
[snip]
>
> >> that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
> >> >evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
> >> >novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
> >> >kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>
> Yes, and it seems that the system *as it now stands* is IC, but
> since it is more properly a *process* rather than a *system* of
> enzymes as described, it doesn't pose *exactly* the same problems
> that a system of enzymes acting on *each other* en route to the
> final product poses.
Then why did he include the immunoglobins as an example of IC elements?
They don't even act on each other or on the same structures. Seems he
could have made it clear somewhere in his book that ICness only refers
to enzymes acting on each other or which are involved in forming a
structure composed of heterologous elements. Seems you are trying to
come up with an *ex post facto* rationalization for why he didn't
include the AMP *de novo* pathway.
>
> >> Of course, the salvage pathway was NOT ignored, but Hershey probably
> >> figures he has a Mother Nature-given right to make up as
> >> many tall tales about Behe as he chooses. A search of Deja News
> >> for the key words "Koltanowski sanction" should convince all
> >> but the most diehard skeptics of this being Hershey's attitude.
>
> See also the comment which elicited "Get real" from me just now.
>
> >Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
> >Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
>
> Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
>
> The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
> by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
> to the biological route of synthesis than shoes are
> precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
If you were capable of even introductory reading comprehension, you
would notice that his use of the words "even if" implies that Behe
*doesn't* know about the salvage pathway, not that he does. Any
biochemist that did *any* reading in the literature about purine
metabolism would have read about the *de novo* and *salvage* pathways
*by name*. Such a biochemist would not be writing paragraphs
questioning "if" such pathways exist. Perhaps Behe was trying to hide
something from the yahoos who he wanted to read his book?
>
> [...]
>
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
> ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>
> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Q4.1 Isn't the blood clotting cascade IC?
>
> [This one deserves the "Frequently" almost just on the
> strength of how often Jonathan has claimed a "Yes" answer.]
>
> A4.1 No, Behe only claims the following to form an "IC core"
> to the system: fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, and
> accelerin, claiming the four are sufficient for clotting and
> all four are necessary.
>
But given your favorite IPU 'one-time only' explanation of the ICness of
features, doesn't that mean that you must perforce disagree with even
this more limited example of clotting system ICness as posing a problem
for evolution? If the clotting system is IC (and the rest of your ideas
are correct) then this is an example of IC that *evolved* rather than
one that was designed in the initial 'one-time only' panspermy event.
Ditto for the immune system. Either that or you must start proposing a
diddler of a designer.
>
> [...]
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>
> >howard hershey ("hersheyh"@indiana.edu) wrote:
>
> >: complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
> >: evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
> >: novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored)
>
>
> >: to present the same
> >: kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>
Didn't I just read a post where you claimed that it wasn't IC because it
was involved in a process rather than including enzymes acting on other
enzymes in the pathway or producing a structure?
>
> And he seems to think that
> >: simple IC systems can easily be explained by evolution (see above
> >: quotes).
>
> >This certainly bears the same stamp of confusion that Behe's writing
> >on science and philosophy bears. One continues to be remarkably
> >unimpressed by this man's ability to think to the core of an issue.
>
> Yes, I too am remarkably unimpressed by Hershey's inability
> to think to the core of an issue. However, I doubt that
> any statement of Behe's bears such a striking stamp of confusion
> as the last sentence of Hershey's.
>
> >: Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
> >: observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
> >: theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
>
> But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
> IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
> them on this thread so far.
Actually, science even favors 'non-explanation' (pointed agnosticism)
over theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
All you need to do to get the idea of designers accepted as a real
possibility is to provide *evidence* that they are something other than
hypothetical entities posited to solve a problem. You haven't done
that.
>
> >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
>
> Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
> _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
I have. He isn't missing much.
>
> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
> University of South Carolina
Doug Quarnstrom
: >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
: Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
: _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
Nyikos is, as usual, full of shit.
I have not read the entire book. I have stated so specifically.
I have, however, read the chapter on science and philosophy,
and I found it remarkably unimpressive.
doug
Peter Nyikos
jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
>In article <6640j7$d...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>> Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>>
>> : Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>> : isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>> : say "It must have been designed," right?
>>
>> Answer: Yes.
>Yes, but vociferously denied.
No, and argued against in depth. Argument deleted by Quarnstorm
already.
>> : Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
>> : Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
>> : been designed.
>>
>But there were claims that, in fact they *were* designed and that you
>have *evidence* of that.
Not by me. I am merely saying I have evidence for the *hypothesis*
being more likely than alternative hypotheses.
> Pulling probabilities out of thin air and
>quoting your own mere opinions in support of your claim does not count
>as evidence.
Since I did neither, your conclusion is moot.
If Jonathan runs true to form, he'll respond to the above
with the one-word insult, "Liar." But the point here is that
a repetition of a conclusion argued for elsewhere does not
constitute "pulling the conclusion out of thin air," especially
not when Jonathan considers it a black mark against me when I
give brief references to other posts of mine. In this way, he inhibits
me from referring people to other posts which I don't quote
verbatim on the spot, thereby opening me up to his
misleading claim that my statements are `pulled out of
thin air'.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Stone) writes:
>
>>In article <6640j7$d...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>>> Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>>>
>>> : Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
>>> : isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
>>> : say "It must have been designed," right?
>>>
>>> Answer: Yes.
>
>>Yes, but vociferously denied.
>
>No, and argued against in depth. Argument deleted by Quarnstorm
>already.
>
>>> : Secondly, there has never been a claim by either Michael Behe,
>>> : Julie Thomas, or Peter Nyikos that these systems *must* have
>>> : been designed.
>>>
>
>>But there were claims that, in fact they *were* designed and that you
>>have *evidence* of that.
>
>Not by me. I am merely saying I have evidence for the *hypothesis*
>being more likely than alternative hypotheses.
>
>> Pulling probabilities out of thin air and
>>quoting your own mere opinions in support of your claim does not count
>>as evidence.
>
>Since I did neither,
Then could you either repost or give us the reference to the post
where you explain how your probabilities for either option were
obtained. I would expect that each assumption in the calculation was
made explicit.
>your conclusion is moot.
>
>If Jonathan runs true to form, he'll respond to the above
>with the one-word insult, "Liar." But the point here is that
>a repetition of a conclusion argued for elsewhere does not
>constitute "pulling the conclusion out of thin air," especially
>not when Jonathan considers it a black mark against me when I
>give brief references to other posts of mine.
Peter, if you gave brief references, as opposed to large scale
copy/paste jobs I would personally prefer it. Especially when you post
something from another newsgroup. Posting a "victory" where the
opponent can't be expected to see it seems a little unfair to me.
>In this way, he inhibits
>me from referring people to other posts which I don't quote
>verbatim on the spot, thereby opening me up to his
>misleading claim that my statements are `pulled out of
>thin air'.
>
In this case the issue is not that you did not give a good reference,
it is that we have seen what we think is the "support" for your
probability figures and they don't make sense. Perhaps you could
supply a post (new thread?) with a clear description of the process
used to develop this probability.
Doug Quarnstrom
: >In article <6640j7$d...@fcnews.fc.hp.com>, d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
: >But there were claims that, in fact they *were* designed and that you
: >have *evidence* of that.
: Not by me. I am merely saying I have evidence for the *hypothesis*
: being more likely than alternative hypotheses.
No you don't, since the likelihood of neither is currently quantifiable.
doug
Peter Nyikos
ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
>>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>>
>>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>[big snip]
>>>data supports is a title of a synopsis). I can't posit an IPU to solve
>>>my problems or fill in legitimate places where there is little evidence.
>>Nor can you posit a IPEP or IPNSP to show us that evolution
>>of flagellae, etc. is not "impossible" by the criteria of
>>de Duve to evolve even ONCE?
>> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>>
>> It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
>> as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
>> twice by convergent evolution.
>> --Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
>> Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
>> Publishers], 1995, p.139.
>I fail to see how this quote supports your position.
Without any clue as to any evolutionary path that could possibly
lead to the eukaryotic flagellum, let alone as to the natural
selection pressures that could have fueled that path, the odds
of evolving such a complicated structure AT ALL seem hardly
better than it evolving independently twice.
>>>My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
>>>Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
>>>(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
>>>time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
>>>relevant actors at that time and place.
>>>If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
>>>bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
>>>born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
> ^^^^^
>
>>You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard.
>Yep, that's a bad one. Though not quite as bad as you seem to think.
>After all, we have independent evidence that an 'actor' capable of
>duplicating your 'crush with rock ' ability.
Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
to count as evidence to him, eh?
>A better analogy would be, for example, animal remains in a cave dated
>to 30 million years ago that was killed by stabbing. There are fallen
>stalactites in evidence, but no direct evidence that the animal was
>killed by a falling stalagtite.
And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
THAT is a proper analogy to the bogus logic that "the flagellum
evolved because lots of other things have evolved."
> Only
>>a crazy person would claim human beings designed bacterial
>>flagellae 3.5+ billion years ago.
>A time travel paradox. Not crazy, just very imaginative.
Crazy because relativity forbids acceleration to above-light
speeds by any mass that is traveling at below-light speeds.
Crazy because of the impossible situations that have
become staples of science fiction: a person killing his
own grandfather when his gradfather was a toddler, and murdering
his own murderer long before the murderer killed him.
[The latter happened in "Time out of Mind", a wacky
science fiction story by Pierre Boulle,
author of _Planet of the Apes_, where Pierre just didn't
know when to let well enough alone and kept heaping paradox
upon paradox.]
> (I seriously
>doubt that this is the conclusion that Howard was proposing)
No, but he seemed quite happy about the idea of people
being fooled by his words into thinking that *I* had proposed it.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>>them on this thread so far.
>>
>Peter, do you think that multiple repetitions of this claim will make
>it correct?
Don't ask silly questions. What would falsify it is Hershey and
co. coming up with actual theories, including hypothesized evolutionary
paths (EPs) and natural selection pressures (NSPs) to fuel them.
> Mutation in its various forms is not an IPU.
There you go again, taking refuge in the generic singular. A
theory is nothing without specifics. Which mutations, in what
order, and how did they benefit the organisms? We don't even
have a *hypotheis* from Hershey and co., let alone evidence
of its plausibility.
Oh, sure, he's hypothesized a detail or two in the long
process of using pilins as one of the 50 or so building
blocks in a bacterial flagellum, but he hasn't even committed
himself on what stage the insertion into a pore could conceivably
have taken place or what selection pressures favored it.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>>
>>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>[snip]
>>
>>It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
>>topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
>>
>And that was supposed to be a secret.
>BTW, exactly what "game" did I "give away"?
>[snip]
>> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
>>>power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
>>>the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
>>>(Aren't IPUs great?
>>
>>Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
>>and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
>>to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
>>code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
>>organisms].
>>
>First, that we might someday have this ability does not make your IAD
>a non-IPU. IPUs can do everything, they can do what people can do,
>they can do what natural forces can do, they can do what people can't
>do, and they can do what natural forces can't do.
IPU's have nothing to do with any of the hypotheses I have
argued for this year. Kindly address your comments about
IPUs to the YEC creationists, for whom they were invented.
>Second, it is not our ability to create flagellum that is at issue. It
>is our ability to create new IC systems without starting with IC
>systems.
That never was an issue with me or Julie. Kindly address your
comments to Michael Behe, the only person who even hinted at
this being an issue. The following is NOT part of that issue.
>For instance, we would need to be able to develop a new
>reproductive system for our pansperimic probes.
Address that one to Julie. I'm not claiming DNA rep was designed.
> BTW, I have to wonder
>why they did not just send the life forms they had. If you say it was
>to send us a message, then they have the God-Like power of predicting
>3B years of evolution.
This is such a *non sequitur*, I'm amazed you have the stomach for it.
>>Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
>>of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
>>figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
>>sapiens* is doomed to failure?
>>
>>> Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
>>>every time.
>>
>>as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
>>imagine, hence the "U".
>>
>Come on Peter. All you have done is give us a name "Designer".
You obviously have me confused with someone else, who did
not already give you a lot more details on another thread,
after having given them many times before.
Of course, you confused me with him on that other thread too.
So I expect you to go on confusing me with him as long
as we both post, no matter how often I recall the
many details I have given.
Peter Nyikos
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>[snip]
>>
>>Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
>>
>>A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
>>and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
>>removed from the whole system without the system breaking
>>down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
>>can still function.
>>
>>Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
>>consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
>>has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
>>
>When you remove those parts, aren't those that are left an IC core?
No, what you have left is a collapsed system lacking an
essential part. That's what makes it IC. "pseudo-core" is
used because the process of elimination that produces it LOOKS
like the process of elimination that produces the IC core in
systems that actually do have one.
You see, as some nonessential parts are removed from a system
that lacks an IC core, some parts previously
unessential now have to take up some of the slack, and at some
point become essential to what is left.
>>>Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
>>>Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
>>
>>Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
>>
>> The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
>> by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
>> to the biological route of synthesis that shoes are
>> precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
>>
>Have you watched or read "Connections"?
Nope. Who wrote it, and what's the relevance?
>[snip]
>>>Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
>>>irrelevant.
>>
>>On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
>>design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
>>is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
>>
>So what? The issue is not whether design is capable, the issue is
>first whether there was a designer and second what the designer did.
All three of those are issues.
> I
>have no problem in accepting that any system that is possible to build
>could have been designed.
"that is possible to build" makes a big assumption already, one
Howard Hershey and Wade Hines refused to agree to where even
a relatively simple system like the bacterial flagellum is concerned.
AFAIK Wade still refuses to agree to it. And even Howard hedged
his statement with "maybe" up there.
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >>
>> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>> >>
>[snip]
>>
>> >> that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>> >> >evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>> >> >novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored) to present the same
>> >> >kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>>
>> Yes, and it seems that the system *as it now stands* is IC, but
>> since it is more properly a *process* rather than a *system* of
>> enzymes as described, it doesn't pose *exactly* the same problems
>> that a system of enzymes acting on *each other* en route to the
>> final product poses.
>Then why did he include the immunoglobins as an example of IC elements?
>They don't even act on each other or on the same structures. Seems he
>could have made it clear somewhere in his book that ICness only refers
>to enzymes acting on each other or which are involved in forming a
>structure composed of heterologous elements. Seems you are trying to
>come up with an *ex post facto* rationalization for why he didn't
>include the AMP *de novo* pathway.
You mean the salvage pathway. I'll have to consult with him
on whether my rationalization is correct.
>> >> Of course, the salvage pathway was NOT ignored, but Hershey probably
>> >> figures he has a Mother Nature-given right to make up as
>> >> many tall tales about Behe as he chooses. A search of Deja News
>> >> for the key words "Koltanowski sanction" should convince all
>> >> but the most diehard skeptics of this being Hershey's attitude.
Everything after the opening clause remains true, but in this case
I accused Howard of crying "Wolf!" when he had some reason for
thinking there was a wolf around, and I apologize for that.
>> See also the comment which elicited "Get real" from me just now.
>>
>> >Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
>> >Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
>>
>> Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
>>
>> The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
>> by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
>> to the biological route of synthesis than shoes are
>> precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
>If you were capable of even introductory reading comprehension, you
>would notice that his use of the words "even if" implies that Behe
>*doesn't* know about the salvage pathway, not that he does.
The salvage pathway is not going to produce AMP in perpetuity,
is it? The de novo pathway is required to sustain the organism,
isn't it?
The situation is like Behe saying in a note at the end of the book that AMP
can *also* be produced by the organism just from the breakdown
of ATP. It is this, along with the above quote, that made
me conclude that Behe had considered the salvage pathway but
decided it irrelevant for reasons similar to what I've quoted,
and what I've said just now. But I can see why others' mileage
may vary on this.
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
>> ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>>
>> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>>
>> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >>
>> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>> >>
>> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> Q4.1 Isn't the blood clotting cascade IC?
>>
>> [This one deserves the "Frequently" almost just on the
>> strength of how often Jonathan has claimed a "Yes" answer.]
>>
>> A4.1 No, Behe only claims the following to form an "IC core"
>> to the system: fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, and
>> accelerin, claiming the four are sufficient for clotting and
>> all four are necessary.
>>
>But given your favorite IPU 'one-time only' explanation of the ICness of
>features, doesn't that mean that you must perforce disagree with even
>this more limited example of clotting system ICness as posing a problem
>for evolution?
Yup, in the sense of it posing a really major one.
> If the clotting system is IC (and the rest of your ideas
>are correct) then this is an example of IC that *evolved* rather than
>one that was designed in the initial 'one-time only' panspermy event.
>Ditto for the immune system.
I acknowledged all this over half a year ago.
Peter Nyikos
d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>: d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>: >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
>: Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
>: _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
>Nyikos is, as usual, full of shit.
Nyikos, as usual, knows that such childish insults are no
substitute for actually leaving in one's own words as to
what "this concept" was.
If you are so sure I am wrong, why didn't you have the guts
to let readers know what "concept" it is that Behe allegedly
fails to grasp, and explain how he failed to grasp it?
>I have not read the entire book. I have stated so specifically.
>I have, however, read the chapter on science and philosophy,
>and I found it remarkably unimpressive.
Your two cent's worth, give or take a couple of cents, is
duly noted.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>>
>> >howard hershey ("hersheyh"@indiana.edu) wrote:
>>
>> >: Real answer: Yes. It seems that it is not the IC nature, but the
>> >: complexity that is really at the core of Behe's argument against
>> >: evolution. Witness the fact that he considers a non-IC system (AMP *de
>> >: novo* synthesis; the salvage pathway was ignored)
>>
>> No, it was not.
>>
>> >: to present the same
>> >: kinds of problems as complex IC systems.
>>
>> Behe never said outright that it was non-IC.
>Didn't I just read a post where you claimed that it wasn't IC because it
>was involved in a process rather than including enzymes acting on other
>enzymes in the pathway or producing a structure?
No, your memory is flawed.
[...]
>> >: Yep. Science has this funny idea that theories that work via known and
>> >: observed natural law mechanisms will always take precedence over
>> >: theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
>>
>> But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>> IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>> them on this thread so far.
>Actually, science even favors 'non-explanation' (pointed agnosticism)
>over theories that work by positing hypothetical evidenceless entities.
Actually, the very word "Proavis" shows you don't know what you
are talking about. There were several competing hypotheses for
over half a century of
how Archaeopteryx may have evolved, and none of them had any
more evidence (NONE) than any of the others.
Sure, it was agreed that some possibly undiscovered thecodont
was a remote ancestor, but nothing in between that and Archie
was taken seriously for nearly a century.
>> >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
>>
>> Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
>> _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
>I have. He isn't missing much.
Sure he is. He is missing the information that would have
prevented him from saying such a foolish thing.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Don Cates
On 10 Dec 1997 17:56:00 -0500, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
wrote:
>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>
>>On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>>>Nor can you posit a IPEP or IPNSP to show us that evolution
>>>of flagellae, etc. is not "impossible" by the criteria of
>>>de Duve to evolve even ONCE?
>>> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>>> It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
>>> as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
>>> twice by convergent evolution.
>>> --Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
>>> Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
>>> Publishers], 1995, p.139.
>>I fail to see how this quote supports your position.
>Without any clue as to any evolutionary path that could possibly
>lead to the eukaryotic flagellum, let alone as to the natural
>selection pressures that could have fueled that path, the odds
>of evolving such a complicated structure AT ALL seem hardly
>better than it evolving independently twice.
Where does the quote support "Without any clue as to any evolutionary
path that could possibly lead to the eukaryotic flagellum, let alone
as to the natural selection pressures that could have fueled that
path"? With no surrounding context, I read that quote to mean that
the evolutionary path was so complex and contingent that it is very
unlikely to be traversed twice.
>>>>My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
>>>>Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
>>>>(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
>>>>time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
>>>>relevant actors at that time and place.
>
>>>>If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
>>>>bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
>>>>born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
>> ^^^^^
>>>You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard.
>>Yep, that's a bad one. Though not quite as bad as you seem to think.
>>After all, we have independent evidence that an 'actor' capable of
>>duplicating your 'crush with rock ' ability.
>Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>to count as evidence to him, eh?
And this is relevent to the analogy, how....?
>>A better analogy would be, for example, animal remains in a cave dated
>>to 30 million years ago that was killed by stabbing. There are fallen
>>stalactites in evidence, but no direct evidence that the animal was
>>killed by a falling stalagtite.
>And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
>killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
>to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
>stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
>THAT is a proper analogy to the bogus logic that "the flagellum
>evolved because lots of other things have evolved."
Is that a direct quote, or is it a paraphrase? As presented, ot could
well be described as bogus. However, put 'most probably' in front of
"evolved" and add some supporting explanation and it is anything but
bogus. eg.
1. Biological structures have evolved. - experimental evidence.
2. Complex biological structures have almost certainly evolved. -
experiment and well supported reasoning.
3. The descent with modification, selection, drift, ect. mechanisms
for evolution were almost certainly operating at the time the
flagellum appeared. - well supported reasoning.
4. The flagellum is a biological structure with at least some parts
which are similar to other existing structures. Considering 1,2,and 3
above suggests to me ( and, I suspect, many others) that the flagellum
is likely to have evolved.
In contrast:
1. There is a non-zero (but unknown) probability that a solar system
condensed some 8-10 billion years ago that was capable of supporting
life and was reasonably close (galactically speaking). - no evidence
2. There is a non-zero probability that life arose there. - no
evidence.
3. There is a non-zero probability that a technological civilization
evolved there. - no evidence.
4. There is a non-zero probability that (3) was both capable and
desirous of panspermy. - no evidence.
5. The flagellum is a biological structure for which we do not have an
even moderately detailed scenario for its evolution, nothing but a few
speculations and hints. This leads some to speculate that the
flagellum could not evolve on earth by standard mechanisms in the time
available. - some possible evidence by reasoning.
Therefore directed panspermy is the most likely source for the
flagellum.
This may be inaccurate, but it is how your argument comes across to me
and I do not find it at all convincing.
>> Only
>>>a crazy person would claim human beings designed bacterial
>>>flagellae 3.5+ billion years ago.
>>A time travel paradox. Not crazy, just very imaginative.
>Crazy because relativity forbids acceleration to above-light
>speeds by any mass that is traveling at below-light speeds.
Supraluminal speeds are not required for time travel. There are some
*highly* speculative scenarios in theoretical physics to support this.
I recall a SA article a couple of years ago involving a
loop-the-loop by a near relativistic velocity ship around two
superstrings (not the same kind of superstrings in 'superstring
theory') passing each other at near relativiistic speeds. As I said,
*highly* speculative.
>Crazy because of the impossible situations that have
>become staples of science fiction: a person killing his
>own grandfather when his gradfather was a toddler, and murdering
>his own murderer long before the murderer killed him.
Just paradoxical, not crazy. Remember the 'many universe' theory? It
has been proposed as a way around these paradoxes.
Heinline (sp?) has written the two definitive time paradox stories,
"By His Bootstraps" and "All You Zombies". Killing grandathers and
murderers is childs play in comparison.
>[The latter happened in "Time out of Mind", a wacky
>science fiction story by Pierre Boulle,
>author of _Planet of the Apes_, where Pierre just didn't
>know when to let well enough alone and kept heaping paradox
>upon paradox.]
That is a feature of unresolved time paradoxes, there seems to be an
infinite regress. See the above RAH short stories to see how he
handles it.
>> (I seriously
>>doubt that this is the conclusion that Howard was proposing)
>No, but he seemed quite happy about the idea of people
>being fooled by his words into thinking that *I* had proposed it.
How so? It certainly didn't make *me* think that that was what you
were proposing.
howard hershey
Don Cates wrote:
>
> On 10 Dec 1997 17:56:00 -0500, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
> wrote:
>
> >ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
> >
> >>On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
> >killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
> >to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
> >stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
There's the rub. Exactly what evidence do you have that the fallen
stalactites are way too small? Or that the wound is shaped unlike any
stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere?
Flagella are constructed out of the same materials as every other
structure and protein in a cell. No special code is involved in its
DNA. No special codons inform its proteins. There is nothing in the
structure of the message for flagellar proteins that distinguishes them
from the hundreds and thousands of other messages (both more simple
messages and more complex) that a cell sends out, aside from the rather
obvious statement that these natural messages, when combined together,
are part of a larger more complex structure. The same could be said of
the solar system. Planets differ from each other and are complex
entities with complex histories and unique geological structures. Why
don't you take that complexity and those unique features as signs of
intelligent design? Why are the canyons and channels of Mars attributed
to the action of natural law mechanisms using liquids like water (which
is nowhere to be seen in sufficient quantity on the present planet)
acting in some hypothetical wetter past rather than ascribing these
observed features to the action of intelligent designers. IDs certainly
could produce them. Humans from the year 3000 certainly could construct
channels exactly like the ones we see without using water. There is no
evidence for water on the planet. While it is true that certain
features of these channels look like water-formed channels (just as
flagella have some features that imply a relationship with pilins and/or
protein transport pores and are constructed of the same materials as
other proteins), there are also channels that are bigger and more
complex than any that has ever been seen to form on earth. You may be
able to explain the smaller channels with your aqueous theories, but you
can't explain the large ones that way, because there isn't enough water
on the planet. I think that the channels must have been designed and
created by aliens.
It is also how it comes across to me. But I would add <sarcasm on> one
truely convincing bit of evidence that supports the towering edifice of
logic entailed in the panspermy hypothesis described above for the
construction of the flagella 4+ billion years ago <sarcasm off>: Humans
might be able to design something like this in the next few thousand
years. Therefore it is more probable that aliens did it 4+ billion
years ago than that it happened by natural law mechanism.
Logic like that can give you whiplash.
>
[snip]
howard hershey
> >>>irrelevant.
> >>
> >>On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
> >>design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
> >>is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
> >>
> >So what? The issue is not whether design is capable, the issue is
> >first whether there was a designer and second what the designer did.
>
> All three of those are issues.
>
> > I
> >have no problem in accepting that any system that is possible to build
> >could have been designed.
>
> "that is possible to build" makes a big assumption already, one
> Howard Hershey and Wade Hines refused to agree to where even
> a relatively simple system like the bacterial flagellum is concerned.
>
> AFAIK Wade still refuses to agree to it. And even Howard hedged
> his statement with "maybe" up there.
Howard thinks that IPUs (aliens, what have you) can be invented to
design anything and that these purely hypothetical posited entities are
especially good at designing things that already exist. So the issue is
not whether it is possible to posit a hypothetical designer (it is).
The issue is whether 1) a 'real', rather than posited, designer existed
at the right time and place and 2) whether a designer is *required*
(necessary) to explain the system, or, absent that, whether 3) there is
positive evidence that a 'real' designer actually did design the
feature. The last requires somewhat more evidence than the absence of
evidence for a natural law mechanism.
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> >>
> >>It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
> >>topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
> >>
> >And that was supposed to be a secret.
>
> >BTW, exactly what "game" did I "give away"?
>
> >[snip]
> >> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
> >>>power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
> >>>the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
> >>>(Aren't IPUs great?
> >>
> >>Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
> >>and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
> >>to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
> >>code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
> >>organisms].
> >>
> >First, that we might someday have this ability does not make your IAD
> >a non-IPU. IPUs can do everything, they can do what people can do,
> >they can do what natural forces can do, they can do what people can't
> >do, and they can do what natural forces can't do.
>
> IPU's have nothing to do with any of the hypotheses I have
> argued for this year. Kindly address your comments about
> IPUs to the YEC creationists, for whom they were invented.
IPU = slang for hypothetical, posited entity. Your aliens certainly are
IPUs. The YEC's God is also an IPU. If you prefer, I would be happy to
call your aliens (and the YEC's God) HYPEs (HYpothetical Posited
Entity). All of your hypotheses this year have been arguments using
HYPEs to do things you don't want natural law mechanisms to do or that
you personally cannot imagine how natural law mechanisms can accomplish.
[snip]
>
> > BTW, I have to wonder
> >why they did not just send the life forms they had. If you say it was
> >to send us a message, then they have the God-Like power of predicting
> >3B years of evolution.
>
> This is such a *non sequitur*, I'm amazed you have the stomach for it.
It is a question you have avoided and, as above, continue to avoid. You
need to make a logical connection between panspermy and the requirement
for design. You have not done so. You have merely *asserted* that the
organisms sent by the panspermists were 'designed' by them. You have
not shown a bit of reasoning or evidence that even hints at a
requirement that your HYPEs sent "designer" organisms rather than the
"off-the-rack" organisms found in their fecal pellets.
I actually find panspermy a rather good argument against design because
it gives evolutionary mechanisms more time and possibly a more favorable
environment. If you want evidence *for* design because of the IC
complexity of certain biochemical features, you would be better off
working the 'such-and-such feature appeared too rapidly to be accounted
for by natural law abiogenesis alone' angle. That, of course, is one of
the IC-specific mechanisms that differ from the mechanism by which
evolution works. But to convincingly present an 'it happened too fast'
argument, you will need to choose a biochemical feature for which you
can pinpoint a date (+/-) of first appearance and a phylogeny showing
that the feature is ancestral and any variants are subsequent. In my
book, that leaves features that are present in *all* the superkingdoms,
since within each superkingdom, there is a significant difference in the
timing of the last common ancestor of modern members of the group and
the first member of the grouping. But Julie would disagree because she
thinks that all branchings from the first member of the grouping would
have surviving members alive today (unlike the history of organisms with
fossilizable parts).
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> >>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
> >>them on this thread so far.
> >>
> >it correct?
>
> Don't ask silly questions. What would falsify it is Hershey and
> co. coming up with actual theories, including hypothesized evolutionary
> paths (EPs) and natural selection pressures (NSPs) to fuel them.
What Peter wants is that someone know all the answers to all life's
scientific mysteries RIGHT NOW! Well, scientists do not claim the kind
of omniscience that can satisfy every whim of every spoiled two-year old
(or the equivalent in maturity level). Sorry. Science works with
evidence. Until there is evidence *for* or *against* a particular
pathway, all possible pathways have to be considered. In the case of
point mutation changes, for example, there is often no evidence as to
which mutational event became fixed in first or in which order the
changes that actually affect function significantly occurred. In that
sense there are too many possible EPs to pick out THE pathway.
As for NSPs, one can easily (often too easily) speculate on which NSP
that exists today may have played a role in development of a current
feature from a different one in the past. For example, motility (in
particular, the retention of motility) is strongly selected for in
particular environmental conditions and not favored (or less strongly
favored) in others. It hardly takes a deep thinker to say that a change
in an organism's motility might open up new ecological niches that are
not available to a less motile organism and describe the list of
possibile niches. But that is different from saying that THIS
particular mutation opened up THIS particular niche in THIS particular
organism. To produce THAT kind of specificity is *often* impossible
because there are too many *possible* pathways and niches, and there is
no evidence that shows which organism was the first to have the
feature. The evidence is simply not there except in specific rare
cases. But, of course, that type of evidence is unsatisfactory because
it doesn't provide THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE answer to the question HE
asked. So, in the absence of evidence, he invents a IPU (renamed HYPE,
for hypothetical posited entity) to do the job.
>
> > Mutation in its various forms is not an IPU.
>
> There you go again, taking refuge in the generic singular. A
> theory is nothing without specifics. Which mutations, in what
> order, and how did they benefit the organisms? We don't even
> have a *hypotheis* from Hershey and co., let alone evidence
> of its plausibility.
>
> Oh, sure, he's hypothesized a detail or two in the long
> process of using pilins as one of the 50 or so building
> blocks in a bacterial flagellum, but he hasn't even committed
> himself on what stage the insertion into a pore could conceivably
> have taken place or what selection pressures favored it.
Nor does he think that all 50 subunits are equally important.
howard hershey
> >> ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
> >>
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
> >> >>
> >> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
>
> >>
> >> Q4.1 Isn't the blood clotting cascade IC?
> >>
> >> A4.1 No, Behe only claims the following to form an "IC core"
> >> to the system: fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, and
> >> accelerin, claiming the four are sufficient for clotting and
> >> all four are necessary.
> >>
> >But given your favorite IPU 'one-time only' explanation of the ICness of
> >features, doesn't that mean that you must perforce disagree with even
> >this more limited example of clotting system ICness as posing a problem
> >for evolution?
>
> Yup, in the sense of it posing a really major one.
>
> > If the clotting system is IC (and the rest of your ideas
> >are correct) then this is an example of IC that *evolved* rather than
> >one that was designed in the initial 'one-time only' panspermy event.
> >Ditto for the immune system.
>
> I acknowledged all this over half a year ago.
Then how the hell does one distinguish between those IC systems that are
'designed' by some HYPE (hypothetical posited entity) and those that
'evolved' by natural law mechanism after this one-time-only event? If
there is no objective way, no internal message inherent in an IC system,
that allows one to distinguish between equally complex IC systems that
evolved and those that didn't, how can you justify the idea that this
type of 'looks-like-design' system (obviously Behe saw no significant
difference in these IC systems) is what allows one to claim the
existence of a 'designer' because it is the equivalent of a 'message'
sent by an ETI? If you can't distinguish between equally complex IC
messages designed by an ID and messages designed by natural law
mechanisms, you got squat as far as evidence *for* the HYPE ID. You
have just cut the heart out of the Behevian argument for a 'designer'
because of the 'message' of ICness.
Doug Quarnstrom
: >Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
: >: d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
: >: >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
: >: Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
: >: _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
: >Nyikos is, as usual, full of shit.
: Nyikos, as usual, knows that such childish insults are no
: substitute for actually leaving in one's own words as to
: what "this concept" was.
You asserted I have never cracked the book. You are full of shit.
: If you are so sure I am wrong, why didn't you have the guts
: to let readers know what "concept" it is that Behe allegedly
: fails to grasp, and explain how he failed to grasp it?
I did, nitwit. It is in the "Behe's Rancid Little Bucket" posting
I made some time ago. I amn't ALL that interested in what
you, specifically, have to say about it...
"Readers" of your ilk are endlessly tendentious...
: >I have not read the entire book. I have stated so specifically.
: >I have, however, read the chapter on science and philosophy,
: >and I found it remarkably unimpressive.
: Your two cent's worth, give or take a couple of cents, is
: duly noted.
...and is at least as valuable than the fool's gold you spew copiously into
this group on a regular basis.
doug
Mike S
In <1997121022...@milo.math.sc.edu> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
[snip]
>Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>to count as evidence to him, eh?
>>A better analogy would be, for example, animal remains in a cave dated
>>to 30 million years ago that was killed by stabbing. There are fallen
>>stalactites in evidence, but no direct evidence that the animal was
>>killed by a falling stalagtite.
>And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
>killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
>to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
>stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
>THAT is a proper analogy to the bogus logic that "the flagellum
>evolved because lots of other things have evolved."
The logic of the above statement is not "bogus." It's inductive.
Ie,
We find organism 1 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
We find organism 2 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
We find organism 3 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
Mike S
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>[snip]
>>>
>>>Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
>>>
>>>A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
>>>and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
>>>removed from the whole system without the system breaking
>>>down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
>>>can still function.
>>>
>>>Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
>>>consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
>>>has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
>>>
>>When you remove those parts, aren't those that are left an IC core?
>No, what you have left is a collapsed system lacking an
>essential part. That's what makes it IC. "pseudo-core" is
>used because the process of elimination that produces it LOOKS
>like the process of elimination that produces the IC core in
>systems that actually do have one.
>You see, as some nonessential parts are removed from a system
>that lacks an IC core, some parts previously
>unessential now have to take up some of the slack, and at some
>point become essential to what is left.
This confuses me. In the past, I suggested that the human body was
IC because it contained a brain and a heart and removal of either would
cause the system to fail. You responded by saying that various parts of
the body could be removed and the system could still function, and hence
the human body is not IC. I accept that. But the above, especially the
word 'essential' seems to muddy the water. For example, if I were to lop
off unessential parts of the body (fingers, toes, etc...) I would eventually
arrive at some sort of 'core' (pseudo or not, I dunno) at which point removal
of any part would cause the entire system to fail. However, I doubt in this
case the brain or heart have 'taken up slack' as you seem to suggest above.
They were always essential.
Obviously, then, there are essential parts in non-IC systems. My confusion
arises from my impression of the definition of an IC system, which was that
all parts were by definition were essential. You seem to indicate above
in the first sentence that there can be IC systems with no essential parts.
By "essential", then, do you mean something other than "if you remove it
the system will fail?"
--
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
This address will not accept e-mail. Send e-mail to
msluyter AT rsn DOT hp DOT com
Doug Quarnstrom
howard hershey (hers...@indiana.edu) wrote:
: Howard thinks that IPUs (aliens, what have you) can be invented to
: design anything and that these purely hypothetical posited entities are
: especially good at designing things that already exist. So the issue is
: not whether it is possible to posit a hypothetical designer (it is).
: The issue is whether 1) a 'real', rather than posited, designer existed
: at the right time and place and 2) whether a designer is *required*
: (necessary) to explain the system, or, absent that, whether 3) there is
: positive evidence that a 'real' designer actually did design the
: feature. The last requires somewhat more evidence than the absence of
: evidence for a natural law mechanism.
This is absolutely the case. Even given the (claimed) IC systems in
nature, nobody can claim that said designers did not design something
more complex and that it settled to where it is through normal
evolutionary processes. Only a fool can claim evidence for direct
design in a nature that adequately demonstrates the existence of
evolutionary processes. At best one can only suggest that design
was done at SOME level, but given one cannot ever say with confidence
what that level was, evidence from design is an utterly useless concept
in the absense of specific positive evidence for the existence of
designers. What I mean is that it is reasonable to assume a house is
designed because we have direct evidence that designers exist and no
understanding of how such things could be derived by evolutionary
algorithms. Evolution, however, is clearly at work in biological systems,
and since their IS no direct positive evidence of a designer, we are
fully justified in being every bit as skeptical of evidence from design
in this arena as we are in the evidence for design touted by the
numbskull snake-oil peddlers responsible for _the bible code_.
doug
Doug Quarnstrom
howard hershey (hers...@indiana.edu) wrote:
: Then how the hell does one distinguish between those IC systems that are
: 'designed' by some HYPE (hypothetical posited entity) and those that
: 'evolved' by natural law mechanism after this one-time-only event?
One cannot. That is the point.
: If
: there is no objective way, no internal message inherent in an IC system,
: that allows one to distinguish between equally complex IC systems that
: evolved and those that didn't, how can you justify the idea that this
: type of 'looks-like-design' system (obviously Behe saw no significant
: difference in these IC systems) is what allows one to claim the
: existence of a 'designer' because it is the equivalent of a 'message'
: sent by an ETI? If you can't distinguish between equally complex IC
: messages designed by an ID and messages designed by natural law
: mechanisms, you got squat as far as evidence *for* the HYPE ID. You
: have just cut the heart out of the Behevian argument for a 'designer'
: because of the 'message' of ICness.
Behe's thinking is rotten at the core.
doug
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
>>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>>But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>>>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>>>them on this thread so far.
>>>
>>Peter, do you think that multiple repetitions of this claim will make
>>it correct?
>
>Don't ask silly questions. What would falsify it is Hershey and
>co. coming up with actual theories, including hypothesized evolutionary
>paths (EPs) and natural selection pressures (NSPs) to fuel them.
>
>> Mutation in its various forms is not an IPU.
>
>There you go again, taking refuge in the generic singular. A
>theory is nothing without specifics.
ROTFL. And exactly what are the specifics about your designer claim?
That it may have been 3.5By or so ago and the work may have been done
elsewhere and that might have been in this galactic arm. Wow!
>Which mutations, in what
>order, and how did they benefit the organisms? We don't even
>have a *hypotheis* from Hershey and co., let alone evidence
>of its plausibility.
>
The point is that we do observe those mechanisms are work. We do have
evolution based explanations for some "systems". We do not have
observation or evidence of your alien's existence. We do not have
specific evidence that constrains the actions of your aliens. That is
what makes them IPUs.
>Oh, sure, he's hypothesized a detail or two in the long
>process of using pilins as one of the 50 or so building
>blocks in a bacterial flagellum, but he hasn't even committed
>himself on what stage the insertion into a pore could conceivably
>have taken place or what selection pressures favored it.
>
And what detail have you hypothesized that comes close to this?
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>
>>On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>>CC: iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) and
>>>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) because of A4.2 below.
>>>
>>>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>
>>[big snip]
>
>>>>data supports is a title of a synopsis). I can't posit an IPU to solve
>>>>my problems or fill in legitimate places where there is little evidence.
>
>>>Nor can you posit a IPEP or IPNSP to show us that evolution
>>>of flagellae, etc. is not "impossible" by the criteria of
>>>de Duve to evolve even ONCE?
>
>>> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>>>
>>> It is quite impossible that a structure as complex
>>> as a eukaryotic flagellum could have arisen independently
>>> twice by convergent evolution.
>>> --Christian de Duve, _Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic
>>> Imperative_ BasicBooks [A division of HarperCollins
>>> Publishers], 1995, p.139.
>
>>I fail to see how this quote supports your position.
>
>Without any clue as to any evolutionary path that could possibly
>lead to the eukaryotic flagellum, let alone as to the natural
>selection pressures that could have fueled that path, the odds
>of evolving such a complicated structure AT ALL seem hardly
>better than it evolving independently twice.
>
This does not seem like the same concept of probability that I am used
the chance of two specific highly contingent parallel paths would seem
quite a bit less likely than one such path.
>>>>My view of the future capacity of human intelligence is irrelevant.
>>>>Humans did not exist 4.3 billion years ago. If you posit 'actors'
>>>>(rather than natural law mechanisms) to do something at a particular
>>>>time and place, the only evidence that counts is evidence placing the
>>>>relevant actors at that time and place.
>
>>>>If a skull with its side crushed in by a rock is found in a cave and the
>>>>bones are dated to 200 years ago (before even a dinosaur like me was
>>>>born), no reaonable jury will convict me of the crime of murder
>> ^^^^^
>>
>>>You sure know how to come up with bogus analogies, Howard.
>
>>Yep, that's a bad one. Though not quite as bad as you seem to think.
>>After all, we have independent evidence that an 'actor' capable of
>>duplicating your 'crush with rock ' ability.
>
>Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>to count as evidence to him, eh?
>
Why "nothing short"? It seems to me that there are quite a number of
steps between why you have provided and abduction.
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
>>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>>howard hershey <"hersheyh "@indiana.edu> writes:
>>>
>>>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>
>>[snip]
>>>
>>>It took me a while to see why "complexity" was such a favorite
>>>topic of you and your kind, but Silberstein gave the game away.
>>>
>>And that was supposed to be a secret.
>
>>BTW, exactly what "game" did I "give away"?
>
>>[snip]
>>> they posited him/her/it/them to have at least that much
>>>>power. The sole evidence *for* this posited putative designer is that
>>>>the system looks too complex to have evolved to Julie, Peter, and Behe.
>>>>(Aren't IPUs great?
>>>
>>>Cute sarcasm, Howard, but the message that rings through loud
>>>and clear is that you do not think the human race will ever be able
>>>to build a bacterial flagellum into genomes which already
>>>code for pilins and/or bacterial pores [possibly in unrelated
>>>organisms].
>>>
>>First, that we might someday have this ability does not make your IAD
>>a non-IPU. IPUs can do everything, they can do what people can do,
>>they can do what natural forces can do, they can do what people can't
>>do, and they can do what natural forces can't do.
>
>IPU's have nothing to do with any of the hypotheses I have
>argued for this year. Kindly address your comments about
>IPUs to the YEC creationists, for whom they were invented.
>
Sorry, but your unconstrained by evidence IAD is an IPU.
>>Second, it is not our ability to create flagellum that is at issue. It
>>is our ability to create new IC systems without starting with IC
>>systems.
>
>That never was an issue with me or Julie. Kindly address your
>comments to Michael Behe, the only person who even hinted at
>this being an issue. The following is NOT part of that issue.
>
No, this is a problem for you. You have asserted that IC systems are
more probably the result of alien design, not evolution. For this to
be meaningful the aliens themselves can't have IC systems. Otherwise
you get a potential regress. The out from the regress is that at some
point the evolution, not design, was what happened despite the
probability. In that case, why not here?
>>For instance, we would need to be able to develop a new
>>reproductive system for our pansperimic probes.
>
>Address that one to Julie. I'm not claiming DNA rep was designed.
>
OK, so it is an evolved IC system. But one that came from the
designers.
>> BTW, I have to wonder
>>why they did not just send the life forms they had. If you say it was
>>to send us a message, then they have the God-Like power of predicting
>>3B years of evolution.
>
>This is such a *non sequitur*, I'm amazed you have the stomach for it.
>
Let me make the assertion clear. You have claimed that the flagellum
was built by these IAD. That clearly means they did not use the life
they had. (BTW, if they did, then your proposed IAD solves no problems
at all.) In addition you say they may have made such a system as a
signal to us that the systems were built, not evolved. To do this they
need to have known or strongly suspected that the system would remain
for the time it took to evolve intelligence. If so, then the aliens
had the ability to predict 3+By of evolution. It was not at all a
non-sequitor, but I should have made the reasoning explicit.
>>>Have you impressed your pessimistic vision of our future level
>>>of competence on those who think that by 3001 AD we will have
>>>figured out how blind Mother Nature succeeded where *Homo
>>>sapiens* is doomed to failure?
>>>
>>>> Got a problem? Call up an IPU. Solves the problem
>>>>every time.
>>>
>>>as opposed to your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which you can't even
>>>imagine, hence the "U".
>>>
>>Come on Peter. All you have done is give us a name "Designer".
>
>You obviously have me confused with someone else, who did
>not already give you a lot more details on another thread,
>after having given them many times before.
>
Details? Like maybe in this arm or maybe not? Sorry, but those are not
details.
>Of course, you confused me with him on that other thread too.
>So I expect you to go on confusing me with him as long
>as we both post, no matter how often I recall the
>many details I have given.
>
I have seen suppositions of where you thought it might have happened.
They were as vague as "not too close, not too far". That is not what I
would call a detail.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
>>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>[snip]
>>>
>>>Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
>>>
>>>A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
>>>and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
>>>removed from the whole system without the system breaking
>>>down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
>>>can still function.
>>>
>>>Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
>>>consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
>>>has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
>>>
>>When you remove those parts, aren't those that are left an IC core?
>
>No, what you have left is a collapsed system lacking an
>essential part. That's what makes it IC. "pseudo-core" is
>used because the process of elimination that produces it LOOKS
>like the process of elimination that produces the IC core in
>systems that actually do have one.
>
Could you explain this a bit better. You are making a distinction that
I am not seeing. How is an "IC pseudo-core" different from an "IC
core"?
>You see, as some nonessential parts are removed from a system
>that lacks an IC core, some parts previously
>unessential now have to take up some of the slack, and at some
>point become essential to what is left.
>
>>>>Well, I (and I found it painful) have re-read Chapter 7 of Behe's "Black
>>>>Box" and *still* find no mention of the salvage pathway.
>>>
>>>Not by name, but it's there under a general rubric:
>>>
>>> The point is that even if adenine or AMP can be made
>>> by simple pathways, those pathways are no more precursors
>>> to the biological route of synthesis that shoes are
>>> precursors to rocket ships. (p. 150)
>>>
>>Have you watched or read "Connections"?
>
>Nope. Who wrote it, and what's the relevance?
>
(James?) Burke. He is a specialist in the history of technology.
Connections is actually both a TV and a series of books. He shows how
different pieces of technology development lead to other development.
IOW, the connection between shoes and rocket ships is not all that
unlikely.
>
>>[snip]
>
>>>>Maybe humans *will* be able to do this in the future. That is
>>>>irrelevant.
>>>
>>>On the contrary, it is highly relevant to the issue of whether
>>>design is capable of producing flagellae while natural selection
>>>is incapable of it in the sense of de Duve's "quite impossible".
>>>
>>So what? The issue is not whether design is capable, the issue is
>>first whether there was a designer and second what the designer did.
>
>All three of those are issues.
>
Not for me. I am willing to concede that design is capable of
anything. In fact, I am more interested in finding some system that
could not have been designed. I actually have several in mind, but
your opinion would differ.
>> I
>>have no problem in accepting that any system that is possible to build
>>could have been designed.
>
>"that is possible to build" makes a big assumption already, one
>Howard Hershey and Wade Hines refused to agree to where even
>a relatively simple system like the bacterial flagellum is concerned.
>
>AFAIK Wade still refuses to agree to it. And even Howard hedged
>his statement with "maybe" up there.
>
I know. We of the Pack sometimes pretend to hold different positions
in order to confuse you.
More to the point, we seem to be arguing in different places. I am not
saying I agree it is possible, just that I am willing to accept that
for this argument. If we wanted to start a thread on what design means
then I would discuss the relationship between "build" and "design".
Ken Cox
> >abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
> >about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
> >to count as evidence to him, eh?
> >
> Why "nothing short"? It seems to me that there are quite a number of
> steps between why you have provided and abduction.
Perhaps that's what originally convinced Peter of the existence
of alien intelligent designers? If so, pity he didn't retain
more of the knowledge he was force-fed; I'm sure the biochemists
would love to have it.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
George & Martha Ann
Doug Quarnstrom wrote:
[snip]
> Behe's thinking is rotten at the core.
I think, were he alive, George Papanicolaou, might express it this way:
The nucleus of Behe's thinking is diskaryotic.
Ol George (down on the bayou)
Doug Quarnstrom
howard hershey (hers...@indiana.edu) wrote:
: What Peter wants is that someone know all the answers to all life's
: scientific mysteries RIGHT NOW!
What Peter WANTS is admiration.
doug
Daneel
[Dro'tposta-ma'solat Nyikos Pe'ternek]
[Note to Peter: in the last weeks, my newsserver was ready
to accept posts only for short periods, wich you can see
from my lack of long posts, and many 'test' posts. Also, I
can use DejaNews to post on alt.atheism but not on t.o.]
Peter Nyikos wrote:
<snip>
> Q1.1 What is an irreducibly complex system?
[...]
> To put it more succinctly: each and every part is indispensible
> to the function.
This definition doesn't consider two cases: one, that the
system may be capable of another function when leaving
certain parts away; two, that changing one part could make
another part dispensible. I imagine that evolution makes
systems more complex by making use of newly appeared,
dispensable parts.
> Q1.2 What is meant by "a part"?
[...]
I miss the distinction between genetically and *directly*
determined 'parts' (like mRNA or proteins) and phenotypic
characteristics arising due to the combined effect of many
genes and also the environment [including other body parts].
In the latter case (wich can mean a single molecule that is
the product of body chemistry), 'taking away a part of the
system' may not make evolutionary sense.
<snip>
> Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and
> thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one cannot
> definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
> route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though,
> the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. [p. 40]
It seems to me that the contrary is true in biology: the
complexer a system, the more possibilities to change it, AND
the more possible other functions that can be reached with -
or even without - genetic change.
<snip>
> Q2.1 So this is all just an Argument from Personal Incredulity,
> isn't it? You can't imagine how it might have evolved, so you
> say "It must have been designed," right?
>
> A2.1 In the first place, it isn't just a few people who cannot
> imagine how the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic undulipodia
> (flagellae and cilia), the F-ATPase rotor, and various other
> IC systems might have evolved. [...]
You may include a description of these in your FAQ proposal.
And instead of your judgement about their arguments, I would
also like to see a summary of arguments from your opponents.
My own preliminary suggestion is that flagellae etc. arose
from the filaments that move the two DNA(RNA) strands apart
during cell division.
<snip>
> Thomas and Nyikos have contented themselves with the hypothesis
> that design is a BETTER (more likely) explanation for these select
> systems; [...]
1.) Why design an unevolvable system? (See more below)
2.) 'More likely' is open to debate, but the design
explanation is surely not 'BETTER'. With a designer
(and laying Occam's razor by side), you have much
more questions to solve - ABOUT THE ORINGIN OF THE
DESIGNER. In your case, the *biology* and evolution
of the aliens; as well as their intentions.
3.) What about further visits of the aliens; and the
implied abudance of life in the Milkyway Galaxy?
<snip>
> Q3.1 Doesn't directed panspermy merely move the problem of
> life's origins further back?
That isn't the main problem in your case. It's the
non-IC *biology*, not the abiogenesis of the aliens.
> A3.1 Taken by itself, yes. But if we further hypothesize that
> this earlier civilization had a biochemistry simpler than ours,
[...]
Then; why have they not started the same type of life?
Since the oldest Population-I stars are not much older
than the Sun, and since life as we can imagine it
requires more than hydrogen and helium, their biochemistry
must have enabled a much faster evolution - you named no
reason for them designing a less adaptive (thus more
likely to go extinct) form of life.
I hope my questions and answers were constructive :-)
Bye
Daneel [a#323 | U of E student, ID #000666]
***********************************************************************
"Homo sapiens is not the foreordained of a ladder that was reaching
toward our exalted estate from the start. We are merely the surviving
branch of a once luxuriant bush. _Stephen Jay Gould_
howard hershey
Mike S wrote:
>
> In <1997121023...@milo.math.sc.edu> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
>
> >mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>
> >>>
> >>>Q4.2 What is meant by an "IC core"? don't all systems have one?
> >>>
> >>>A4.2 (Nyikos answer:) It's a set of system parts that are both necessary
> >>>and sufficient for the system to do its job. NONE may be
> >>>removed from the whole system without the system breaking
> >>>down. EVERYTHING ELSE can be removed from the system and it
> >>>can still function.
> >>>
> >>>Some systems, on the other hand, may have more than one "IC pseudo-core"
> >>>consisting of different subsets of the whole system, each of which
> >>>has some parts that are NOT essential to the whole system.
> >>>
> >>When you remove those parts, aren't those that are left an IC core?
>
> >No, what you have left is a collapsed system lacking an
> >essential part. That's what makes it IC. "pseudo-core" is
> >used because the process of elimination that produces it LOOKS
> >like the process of elimination that produces the IC core in
> >systems that actually do have one.
>
> >that lacks an IC core, some parts previously
> >unessential now have to take up some of the slack, and at some
> >point become essential to what is left.
>
> IC because it contained a brain and a heart and removal of either would
> cause the system to fail. You responded by saying that various parts of
> the body could be removed and the system could still function, and hence
> the human body is not IC. I accept that. But the above, especially the
> word 'essential' seems to muddy the water. For example, if I were to lop
> off unessential parts of the body (fingers, toes, etc...) I would eventually
> arrive at some sort of 'core' (pseudo or not, I dunno) at which point removal
> of any part would cause the entire system to fail. However, I doubt in this
> case the brain or heart have 'taken up slack' as you seem to suggest above.
> They were always essential.
Have I inadvertantly entered alt.jdahmer.fanclub.com or
alt.hannibal-lector.fanclub.com? What are a few extra fingers or toes
among friends. Or is this post a consequence of the recent Alien
Resurection movie, based loosely on the loverly habits of parasitic wasp
larvae, who indeed "know" (actually "were selected for knowing") which
part of the host catepillar is IC, and who saves these tasty morsels for
the end of its repast?
howard hershey
Saaaay. When a two-year old has a tantrum, the way to end it is to
*withdraw* attention. Maybe that might work in this case?
> doug
Daneel
> >evolved because lots of other things have evolved."
>
> The logic of the above statement is not "bogus." It's inductive.
>
> Ie,
>
> We find organism 1 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
> We find organism 2 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
> We find organism 3 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
This doesn't prove that we will find evolutionary explanations
for organisms 4-9,000,000. What could prove it is finding other
explanations that cover more and explain more. Peter's aliens
give us the problem of
1.) inventing a supposedly non-IC biology
2.) explaining why their intentions for panspermy
3.) explaining the lack of high abudance of civilisations
like ours
4.) explaining why they design IC systems that evolve
slower (and die out more likely) than their own
(since Population-I stars - required for ANY life
based on chemics - can't be much older than the Sun).
jeff wiel
Doug Quarnstrom (d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com) wrote:
: : >Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
: : >: d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
[snip]
: "Readers" of your ilk are endlessly tendentious...
: : >I have not read the entire book. I have stated so specifically.
: : >I have, however, read the chapter on science and philosophy,
: : >and I found it remarkably unimpressive.
: : Your two cent's worth, give or take a couple of cents, is
: : duly noted.
: ...and is at least as valuable than the fool's gold you spew copiously into
: this group on a regular basis. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Is that what that brown smelly stuff is?
: doug
Peter Nyikos
I will probably be doing no posting during the holidays, and am
cutting even this post short. But I'm saving posts that I think
worth longer response and plan to tackle them in the new year.
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Don Cates wrote:
>>
>> On 10 Dec 1997 17:56:00 -0500, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>> >
>> >>On 5 Dec 1997 23:13:04 -0000, Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
>> >killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
>> >to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
>> >stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
>There's the rub. Exactly what evidence do you have that the fallen
>stalactites are way too small? Or that the wound is shaped unlike any
>stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere?
The evidence of my eyes, which says that flagellae are quite unlike
structures whose evolutionary paths we know about, like the one-toed
leg of a horse.
>Flagella are constructed out of the same materials as every other
>structure and protein in a cell.
And stalactites are constructed out of the same materials that
the murder weapon was fashioned from, in the analogy.
>are part of a larger more complex structure. The same could be said of
>the solar system. Planets differ from each other and are complex
>entities with complex histories and unique geological structures. Why
>don't you take that complexity and those unique features as signs of
>intelligent design?
Because I am an intelligent adult, not some primitive ENIAC-level
computer you can program with a few words like "complexity" and
have it keep spitting out the output you want me to.
Why are the canyons and channels of Mars attributed
>to the action of natural law mechanisms using liquids like water (which
>is nowhere to be seen in sufficient quantity on the present planet)
>acting in some hypothetical wetter past rather than ascribing these
>observed features to the action of intelligent designers.
You don't need a hypothetical wetter past. An asteroid smashing
into Mars right now could probably produce enough heat to melt
the polar ice caps briefly.
Get rid of your fantasies about me, Howard. Start treating me
like the person I am instead of some idiot who salivates
"design" at the drop of a hat. I haven't even used the word
as often as you do.
>features of these channels look like water-formed channels (just as
>flagella have some features that imply a relationship with pilins and/or
>protein transport pores
...once you actually start imagining your IPUEPs and IPUNSPs instead
of just having blind faith in them.
>and are constructed of the same materials as
>other proteins),
Two can play this disingenous game of yours, Howard, but
I have little stomach for it. If I had
as little integrity as you do, I'd have long ago started yammering about how
Shakespeare's plays are all put together using the 26 letters
of the alphabet, and only a creationist would think they were the
product of intelligent design rather than just a bunch of chimps
hitting a bunch of typewriters at random.
Remainder deleted and saved until January 1998.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
Howard confuses the issue with a childish pout.
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>
>> >In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>> >>But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>> >>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>> >>them on this thread so far.
>> >>
>> >Peter, do you think that multiple repetitions of this claim will make
>> >it correct?
Matt was disingenously pretending to be skeptical of something
that should have been abundantly clear to him long ago. Hershey
obviously does NOT deny that this is all he has going for him.
>> Don't ask silly questions. What would falsify it is Hershey and
>> co. coming up with actual theories, including hypothesized evolutionary
>> paths (EPs) and natural selection pressures (NSPs) to fuel them.
>What Peter wants is that someone know all the answers to all life's
>scientific mysteries RIGHT NOW!
What Peter wants is for Hershey to stop behaving like a
a spoiled two-year old who exaggerates the bejesus out of
what Peter is doing.
> Well, scientists do not claim the kind
>of omniscience that can satisfy every whim of every spoiled two-year old
>(or the equivalent in maturity level).
...glass houses...stones.
Sorry. Science works with
>evidence.
Except when it doesn't, like when Hershey thinks he is indulging
in pure science when he claims that Ockham's Razor favors the hypothesis
that earth life is the product of home-grown abiogenesis.
> Until there is evidence *for* or *against* a particular
>pathway, all possible pathways have to be considered.
...and so Howard refuses to consider a single one. For months,
despite repeated challenges, even though without his doing so,
there is no reason to think there IS a possible pathway that
can be expected to occur in less than a quadrillion years.
[...]
>> > Mutation in its various forms is not an IPU.
>>
>> There you go again, taking refuge in the generic singular. A
>> theory is nothing without specifics. Which mutations, in what
>> order, and how did they benefit the organisms? We don't even
>> have a *hypotheis* from Hershey and co., let alone evidence
>> of its plausibility.
>>
>> Oh, sure, he's hypothesized a detail or two in the long
>> process of using pilins as one of the 50 or so building
>> blocks in a bacterial flagellum, but he hasn't even committed
>> himself on what stage the insertion into a pore could conceivably
>> have taken place or what selection pressures favored it.
>Nor does he think that all 50 subunits are equally important.
Nor has he committed himself on even ONE subunit that he can
delete and still have a functioning flagellum.
Peter Nyikos
d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>: d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>: >Peter Nyikos (nyi...@math.sc.edu) wrote:
>: >: d...@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
>: >: >Behe, remarkably, fails to grasp this concept.
>: >: Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of ever having cracked open
>: >: _Darwin's Black Box_, by Behe.
>: >Nyikos is, as usual, full of shit.
>: Nyikos, as usual, knows that such childish insults are no
>: substitute for actually leaving in one's own words as to
>: what "this concept" was.
>You asserted I have never cracked the book. You are full of shit.
Doug, unremarkably, shows no sign of knowing the difference
between "shows no sign of having done X" and "did not
do X". In the post in question, he showed no such sign; in a followup
he did claim to have read parts, and may even have belatedly
shown signs of having done so.
>: If you are so sure I am wrong, why didn't you have the guts
>: to let readers know what "concept" it is that Behe allegedly
>: fails to grasp, and explain how he failed to grasp it?
>I did, nitwit. It is in the "Behe's Rancid Little Bucket" posting
>I made some time ago. I amn't ALL that interested in what
>you, specifically, have to say about it...
Doug, unremarkably, STILL won't say what concept it is that
Behe allegedly fails to grasp, havaing deleted it two posts ago
because he is more interested in MAKING scatological insults
than in supporting them.
Peter Nyikos
nos...@MAPSON.rsn.hp.com (Mike S) writes:
>In <1997121022...@milo.math.sc.edu> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
>>ca...@cc.UManitoba.CA (Don Cates) writes:
>[snip]
>>Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>>abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>>about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>>to count as evidence to him, eh?
>>>A better analogy would be, for example, animal remains in a cave dated
>>>to 30 million years ago that was killed by stabbing. There are fallen
>>>stalactites in evidence, but no direct evidence that the animal was
>>>killed by a falling stalagtite.
>>And no direct evidence that a fallen stalactite COULD have
>>killed it: the fallen stalactites actually found are way too small
>>to have done the job, and the wound is shaped unlike any
>>stalactite ever found in a cave, anywhere.
>>THAT is a proper analogy to the bogus logic that "the flagellum
>>evolved because lots of other things have evolved."
>The logic of the above statement is not "bogus." It's inductive.
>Ie,
>We find organism 1 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>We find organism 2 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>We find organism 3 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
We find structure 4, unlike any organism for which we've found
an evolutionary explanation, unlike any structure for which
we've found an evolutionary explanation. We decide on the basis
of 1, 2, and 3 that we don't NEED to find an evolutionary explanation
for 4 because 1, 2, and 3 are enough to convince us there MUST
be one, even if we can't imagine what it might be.
Peter Nyikos
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> writes:
>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>>
>> In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>> >abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>> >about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>> >to count as evidence to him, eh?
>> >
>> Why "nothing short"? It seems to me that there are quite a number of
>> steps between why you have provided and abduction.
Matt is indulging in simulated amnesia about an exchange between
me and Hershey where I EXPLICITLY asked whether anything less
would convince him, and his reply did NOTHING to dispel the
impression that nothing less would do; quite the contrary.
>Perhaps that's what originally convinced Peter of the existence
>of alien intelligent designers? If so, pity he didn't retain
>more of the knowledge he was force-fed; I'm sure the biochemists
>would love to have it.
>--
>Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
And I'm sure Matt is ROTFLHAO over how completely Ken was taken
in by Matt's simulated amnesia over documentation I reposted
in direct followup to Matt, after Matt was also in on the
original exchange.
howard hershey
Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >> [snip]
>
> The evidence of my eyes, which says that flagellae are quite unlike
> structures whose evolutionary paths we know about, like the one-toed
> leg of a horse.
>
[snip]
In other words, it "looks like design" to him. No evidence is presented
that these systems require a different mechanism, no evidence that these
systems are constructed by mechanisms any different than any system that
he admits evolved. All we have is Peter's profound religious belief
that it is different. It "looks designed to him". Are you absolutely
sure it is not simply the lack of evidence for a sufficiently complete
(as judged by the great Peter) 'just-so' story and a slightly higher
*degree* of complexity that causes you problems?
BTW, the only way you can tell that Shakespeare was written by an
intelligence is that it uses word symbols which we can recognize as
identical to ones written only by entities as intelligent as ourselves.
If the body of Shakespeare were to be translated into one of the very
difficult to break codes using the same letter symbols (rather than
presented in standard English), the body of work would have the same
meaning, but you would be unable to, by simply looking at it, tell it
from the gibberish written by monkeys.
Alternatively, one could look at a Harold Robbins novel and Shakespeare
and conclude that both arose by the same mechanism (from the mind of an
intelligence) for the reasons mentioned above, that such word symbols
are almost always the product of intelligences like our own, and thus
are not usually considered natural artifacts regardless of the level of
sophistication of the prose. One is simply simpler than the other.
For proteins, we have proteins which have known evolutionary pathways,
and other proteins of *equal complexity* for which the pathway is not
known. No intelligent person claims that *all* or nearly all proteins
are the product of intelligent design (thus, proteins are unlike English
words). Most, in fact, are undoubtedly the product of evolutionary
modification. In science, you assume that, unless there is some
specific reason to reject it, the same mechanisms that can explain the
cases with the best evidence and the simpler cases are also involved in
the more complex and/or less well evidenced cases. You have not
provided any reason to reject the evolutionary mechanisms aside from
pointing out that your examples are more complex and less well evidenced
and "look designed to you".
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>Howard confuses the issue with a childish pout.
>
>howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>>>
>>> >In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>>> >>But not over non-theories that postulate the existence of
>>> >>IPUEPs and IPUNSPs, which is all Hershey & co. have going for
>>> >>them on this thread so far.
>>> >>
>>> >Peter, do you think that multiple repetitions of this claim will make
>>> >it correct?
>
>Matt was disingenously pretending to be skeptical of something
>that should have been abundantly clear to him long ago. Hershey
>obviously does NOT deny that this is all he has going for him.
>
What is clear that you are trying to attack evolution as "unseen"
because you can't defend you unseen designer.
[snip]
>
>> Until there is evidence *for* or *against* a particular
>>pathway, all possible pathways have to be considered.
>
>...and so Howard refuses to consider a single one. For months,
>despite repeated challenges, even though without his doing so,
>there is no reason to think there IS a possible pathway that
>can be expected to occur in less than a quadrillion years.
>
And of course you have evidence to support this number.
As to arguments against it. We do know that know that amino acids can
form from basic elements under reasonable conditions. We do know that
there are interesting possibilities with self-organizing systems. That
is certainly more than "It looks designed to me".
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>nos...@MAPSON.rsn.hp.com (Mike S) writes:
>
>>In <1997121022...@milo.math.sc.edu> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
[snip]
>>We find organism 1 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>>We find organism 2 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>>We find organism 3 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>
>We find structure 4, unlike any organism for which we've found
>an evolutionary explanation, unlike any structure for which
>we've found an evolutionary explanation. We decide on the basis
>of 1, 2, and 3 that we don't NEED to find an evolutionary explanation
>for 4 because 1, 2, and 3 are enough to convince us there MUST
>be one, even if we can't imagine what it might be.
>
How is it unlike the others? More to the point, in what evolutionary
meaningful way is it different? Can you abstract this difference into
a set of rules for determining which systems were evolved and which
were not.
Matt Silberstein
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> writes:
>
>>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>>>
>>> In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> >Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
>>> >abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>>> >about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>>> >to count as evidence to him, eh?
>>> >
>>> Why "nothing short"? It seems to me that there are quite a number of
>>> steps between why you have provided and abduction.
>
>Matt is indulging in simulated amnesia about an exchange between
>me and Hershey where I EXPLICITLY asked whether anything less
>would convince him, and his reply did NOTHING to dispel the
>impression that nothing less would do; quite the contrary.
>
Peter, you lack of ability to understand is not a constraint on me or
my thinking. You proposed kidnapping by aliens as proof, I pointed out
that finding myself in a white room with strange devices would not
necessarily convince me that there are aliens nor would my recounting
of such an event necessarily convince anyone else. That your single
point is silly does not mean that there are no other steps. As I have
said several times, but you do not wish to respond, why can't you
consider anything short of active aliens today as evidence of aliens
3B years ago?
>>Perhaps that's what originally convinced Peter of the existence
>>of alien intelligent designers? If so, pity he didn't retain
>>more of the knowledge he was force-fed; I'm sure the biochemists
>>would love to have it.
>
>And I'm sure Matt is ROTFLHAO over how completely Ken was taken
>in by Matt's simulated amnesia over documentation I reposted
>in direct followup to Matt, after Matt was also in on the
>original exchange.
>
What in the world are you talking about? What documentation?
Wade Hines
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> writes:
>>We find organism 1 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>>We find organism 2 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>>We find organism 3 for which we find an evolutionary explanation.
>We find structure 4, unlike any organism for which we've found
>an evolutionary explanation, unlike any structure for which
>we've found an evolutionary explanation. We decide on the basis
>of 1, 2, and 3 that we don't NEED to find an evolutionary explanation
>for 4 because 1, 2, and 3 are enough to convince us there MUST
>be one, even if we can't imagine what it might be.
Find structure 1 in organisms 1-N which has a solid evolutionary
explaination in evidence. Iterate through structure 3 with
some varation on the 1-N part.
Find individuals who accept evolutionary origins of 1-3 without
actually understanding them.
Find structure 4 for which there isn't a clear evolutionary
origin in evidence and watch individual mentioned above
dance about like chicken little.
Add a particularily nasty disposition, a penchant for
ad homenium arguements, a tendency to think in terms of
conspiracies and which includes general distrust of anyone
who doesn't see things his way and then give this individual
a computer with network access.
Peter Nyikos
I won't be posting over the break, so this is probably the last
post I do to it this year.
mat...@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> writes:
>>
>>>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>>>>
>>>> In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >Yeah, I've heard it all before: nothing short of Howard being
Matt acts below as though I had said "...Matt being"
>>>> >abducted by a UFO and being force fed an encyclopedia of information
>>>> >about exactly how the flagellum was designed in a lab is going
>>>> >to count as evidence to him, eh?
>>>> >
>>>> Why "nothing short"? It seems to me that there are quite a number of
>>>> steps between why you have provided and abduction.
>>
>>Matt is indulging in simulated amnesia about an exchange between
>>me and Hershey where I EXPLICITLY asked whether anything less
>>would convince him, and his reply did NOTHING to dispel the
>>impression that nothing less would do; quite the contrary.
Correction: I asked Matt, and Hershey butted in of his own free will,
as indicated in the clause following "and".
>Peter, you lack of ability to understand is not a constraint on me or
>my thinking. You proposed kidnapping by aliens as proof, I pointed out
>that
My comments above referred to Hershey, not you.
[Remainder deleted and saved for reply in 1998.]
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina