Wistar's Half-Century Challenge: Will Neo-Darwinism Work?

[Steady Eddie]

"Today, as we noted on Friday, marks two momentous anniversaries -- of the elucidation of the structure of
the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick (they published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953), and that of
the opening of the Wistar Institute conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian
Interpretation of Evolution" (1966).

The latter, if only because fifty years is a nice round number and because Wistar is less familiar to the public,
may for us be the more significant of the two. Wistar was the beginning of the end for neo-Darwinism, and in
a sense the inception of the modern intelligent design movement."
Wistar and DNA Day: A 50-Year Fuse Under Neo-Darwinism
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/04/wistar_and_dna102795.html

50 years earlier...


"THE ASCRIPTION OF ALL CHANGES IN FORM TO CHANCE HAS LONG CAUSED RAISED EYEBROWS. Let us
not dally with the doubts of nineteenth-century critics, however; for the issue subsided. But it raised its ugly
head again in a fairly dramatic form in 1967 [I think this should read "1965"], when a handful of mathematicians and biologists were chattering over a picnic lunch organized by the PHYSICIST, VICTOR WEISSKOPF, who is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the original Los Alamos atomic bomb group, at his house in Geneva.
`A RATHER WEIRD DISCUSSION' took place. The subject was EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION. The
mathematicians were STUNNED BY THE OPTIMISM OF THE EVOLUTIONISTS about what could be achieved
by chance. So wide was the rift that they decided to organize a conference, which was called
MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN THEORY OF EVOLUTION. The conference was
chaired by SIR PETER MEDAWAR, whose work on graft rejection won him a NOBLE PRIZE and who, at the
time, was director of the Medical Research Council's laboratories in North London. Not, you will understand,
the kind of man to speak wildly or without careful thought...."--*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983),
p. 4.

"The immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of DISSATISFACTION about what has
come to be thought as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called NEO-
DARWINIAN THEORY . . These OBJECTIONS to current neo-Darwinian theory are VERY WIDELY HELD AMONG BIOLOGISTS generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them."--*Peter Medawar,
remarks by the chairman, *Paul Moorhead and *Martin Kaplan (ed.), Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-
Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Institute Monograph No. 5.
-Chairman Sir Peter Medawar's opening remark, Wistar Symposium, Philadelphia, April 25, 1966

"IT WAS THE DEVELOPMENT OF TREMENDOUSLY POWERFUL DIGITAL COMPUTERS THAT SPARKED THE CONTROVERSY. At last mathematicians were able to work out the probability of evolution ever having occurred. They discovered that, MATHEMATICALLY, LIFE WOULD NEITHER HAVE BEGUN NOR EVOLVED BY RANDOM ACTION."
-WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm

Mathematician David Berlinski, colleague of Eden, Schutzenburger (sp?) and others who attended the
conference, reports that these mathematicians and engineers LAUGHED

[Steady Eddie]

...in fact, says Berlinski, they "HOOTED"!

[RonO]

Eddie, what you need to do is tell us what you think that the issues
were that were brought up by the Wistar conference, and if they are
still issues. 1966 is quite a while ago, so what is the beef?

Really, what are the IDiots still confused about? Does it even matter
to their alternative? Tell us how it matters. Remember IDiots like
Behe and Denton believe that common descent is a fact of nature and that
biological evolution happened over billions of years, so what is the
beef and does it matter?

It has been 3 years since the last ID scam double bait and switch in
Louisiana and Texas, and no IDiots that have ever gotten the promised ID
science when they have needed it for over 14 years since Ohio in 2002.
My guess is that nearly all IDiots have managed to figure out that there
is no ID science and there is no sense in trying. Why aren't the IDiots
crowing over those anniversaries? The ISCID died 8 years ago. The
IDiots stopped publishing the ISCID scientific journal over a decade
ago. If I were an IDiot there are more relevant things to worry about
than obfuscate about something that happened back in 1966 and likely
doesn't even matter for their cause any longer.

So enlighten us Eddie, what makes Wistar so special in the face of
reality as it stands today.

Ron Okimoto

[John Stockwell]

Nobody in the biological sciences took the Wistar 1966 pronouncement seriously, because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition. As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.

Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on. A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!

-John

[Steady Eddie]

U.R. Oblivious:
All you need to do is click on the links in the opening post and LEARN.

[Steady Eddie]

I quoted an OBSERVATION from Berlinski. Hearing laughter does not require specialized training, moron.

> Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on. A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!

...said the clown.

Go ahead, school me on Eden's combinatorial analysis if you think you know anything about it.

> -John

[RSNorman]

On Sun, 1 May 2016 06:18:07 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 4/29/2016 2:50 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>> "Today, as we noted on Friday, marks two momentous anniversaries -- of the elucidation of the structure of
>> the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick (they published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953), and that of
>> the opening of the Wistar Institute conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian
>> Interpretation of Evolution" (1966).
>>
>> The latter, if only because fifty years is a nice round number and because Wistar is less familiar to the public,
>> may for us be the more significant of the two. Wistar was the beginning of the end for neo-Darwinism, and in
>> a sense the inception of the modern intelligent design movement."
>> Wistar and DNA Day: A 50-Year Fuse Under Neo-Darwinism
>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/04/wistar_and_dna102795.html
>>

<snip details from the Wistar conference>

>
>Eddie, what you need to do is tell us what you think that the issues
>were that were brought up by the Wistar conference, and if they are
>still issues. 1966 is quite a while ago, so what is the beef?
>
>Really, what are the IDiots still confused about? Does it even matter
>to their alternative? Tell us how it matters. Remember IDiots like
>Behe and Denton believe that common descent is a fact of nature and that
>biological evolution happened over billions of years, so what is the
>beef and does it matter?
>
>It has been 3 years since the last ID scam double bait and switch in
>Louisiana and Texas, and no IDiots that have ever gotten the promised ID
>science when they have needed it for over 14 years since Ohio in 2002.
>My guess is that nearly all IDiots have managed to figure out that there
>is no ID science and there is no sense in trying. Why aren't the IDiots
>crowing over those anniversaries? The ISCID died 8 years ago. The
>IDiots stopped publishing the ISCID scientific journal over a decade
>ago. If I were an IDiot there are more relevant things to worry about
>than obfuscate about something that happened back in 1966 and likely
>doesn't even matter for their cause any longer.
>
>So enlighten us Eddie, what makes Wistar so special in the face of
>reality as it stands today.

Ron, not everything is involved with ID. Your obsession with tagging
any critics of evolution as "IDiots" has worn rather thin as is your
carping on "bait and switch".

That conference on "Mathematical Challenges" had absolutely nothing to
do with ID. It has nothing at all to do with Behe and Denton.
Criticize it on its own lack of merit, not as another excuse to rage
against the IDiots.

[RonO]

The point is that you are again clueless about what you are putting up.
Go for it and demonstrate otherwise.

Ron Okimoto

[RSNorman]

I got the proceedings of that conference soon after it was held and
saw at the time how ignorant were the mathematicians and physicists
and computer scientists of the realities of biology. They were
roundly lectured about that by some of the finest biologists of the
day.

I wrote at length about the conference and what people said there some
years ago. Unfortunately most of my science library is packed away in
books from my move last year and are awaiting refurbishing our
basement from a concrete storage pit into livable space so I can't
quote from the work, itself. But what I recall is that the
mathematicians really were quite unaware of the work of population
genetics. It is true that the notions of genomic analysis and gene
regulatory networks and evo-devo were quite undeveloped at the time
but there was enough known to give the dissidents quite a good
drubbing.

[RonO]

The point that you seem to miss is that Eddie doesn't have a clue about
what Wistar was about, and you only back me up in that conclusion.

Ron Okimoto

[RSNorman]

Eddie doesn't have a clue about anything.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 1 May 2016 07:03:31 UTC-6, John Stockwell wrote:

Nice fact-free opinion piece.
So, why not refresh yourself on the conference and try to defend your assertions?
Myself, I have yet to get my hands on the whole publication from the proceedings.

BTW - Anyone have an online source for the complete book:
"Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution"?

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 1 May 2016 07:03:31 UTC-6, John Stockwell wrote:

That's right.
And perhaps nobody in the mathematics and engineering sciences took the TOE seriously after
that conference.
LOL!

, because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition.

Anxious to look at it firsthand. Should be a lively debate.

As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.

Oh, and by the way, mathematics is foundational to all serious physical sciences.

> Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on.

Yes.
I can image that would be about the time that they declared Neo-Darwinism an 'unserious' science.

Hence the HOOTING!

[Steady Eddie]

Uhh, don't forget the ENGINEERS.

of the realities of biology. They were
> roundly lectured about that by some of the finest biologists of the
> day.
>
> I wrote at length about the conference and what people said there some
> years ago. Unfortunately most of my science library is packed away in
> books from my move last year and are awaiting refurbishing our
> basement from a concrete storage pit into livable space so I can't
> quote from the work, itself. But what I recall is that the
> mathematicians really were quite unaware of the work of population
> genetics. It is true that the notions of genomic analysis and gene
> regulatory networks and evo-devo were quite undeveloped at the time
> but there was enough known to give the dissidents quite a good
> drubbing.

You wouldn't be the clown that cited your own review of the Biola conference, are you?

[RSNorman]

I have no idea what you mean by the "Biola conference". Are you
speaking of that Wistar event?

I did very specifically say I wrote once about that conference some
years ago. I forgot to include the fact that it was a post here on
t.o. Does referring to something you yourself write make you a
clown?

[Steady Eddie]

No, I was reminded of the time when someone promoted his own on-line commentary on the conference
at Biola where some scholars from Fullerton, and some media people, were invited to question the panel
of experts on ID.

[Steady Eddie]

Crickets...

[RSNorman]

On Tue, 17 May 2016 17:47:12 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

You can't be referring to me because nothing in our last several
exchanges requires any response.

If you mean something upstream in this thread, please specify just
what it might be.

[RonO]

He may be noticing that everyone else has a conscience and he doesn't
have one to be his guide.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Apparently he thinks aping others makes him look clever. Is anybody
surprised?
--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 17 May 2016 17:47:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com>:

With respect to what? I see nothing in the previous exchange
requiring an additional response.
--

Bob C.

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

- Isaac Asimov

[Steady Eddie]

I was asking you whether it was you who attended the Biola conference and wrote a review of it.
Here is the conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hO0A4gPv2o

Ring any bells?

[Steady Eddie]

On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 19:08:24 UTC-6, RSNorman wrote:

No, you just happen to be a clown who referred to something you yourself wrote.

[RSNorman]

On Wed, 18 May 2016 17:00:06 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

As you very well know I answered you as is clearly visible above. I
said "I have no idea what the Biola conference is. Now that you give
me a reference to it I can confirm that I still have no idea what it
is and I have no interest in watching 2 hours of video to find out."

So I answered your question about whether I attended the Biola
conference. I did say that I wrote a review of the Wistar conference
but that was something totally different.

You now ask where your citation of the Biola conference rings any
bells. The answer is: no, it does not.

You asked a question and I answered it. End of story.

[RSNorman]

On Wed, 18 May 2016 18:31:35 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

Now I see that I was not completely clear in the words I chose. I
said I don't know anything about the Biola conference. Then I
referred to the Wistar event and said I wrote once about "that"
conference. I thought from context that you would understand that I
wrote only about the Wistar conference because just in the previous
exchange I said that " I got the proceedings of that conference"
clearly meaning the Wistar conference and that " I wrote at length
about the conference".

So, no, I am not the clown that cited my own review of the Biola
conference since I have explained several times that I have no
knowledge of the Biola conference. I did write about the Wistar
conference which is the supposed subject of this post.

If you prefer, I am the clown that cited my own review of the Wistar
conference. I see nothing wrong with referring to something you
previously wrote.

Now exactly what is it that you want to know?

[RAM]

Ah, but you are the silliest clown of all to not see that the last ten years of ID effort is reducing rather than growing. Remember the video prediction about ten years from now there would be marvelous ID data and theories, and a growing cadre of ID advocates that would begin to displace the dominant Darwinian view. Ten years later, none of that is evident at the Discovery Institute nor anywhere in IDiocy land.

Your silly mouthings and assertions about ID based on your own JW absolutists convictions have had zero or possibly negative effects. Further, your obvious ignorance of the empirical methods, strategies and practices of science lead to a silly assertions about science, biology and "Darwinism" that sometimes is amusing as well as encouraging for seeing that ID has no future in your silly hands.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 18 May 2016 22:19:41 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by RSNorman
<r_s_n...@comcast.net>:

Almost certainly, although an actual end-of-story would
entail an acknowledge by Eddie that he was mistaken. Good
luck on that...

[Steady Eddie]

Thank you - that's all I was asking. No need to be coy.
So you aren't that clown.
Okay, then at least what you wrote may have some substance. Too bad you can't access it.

[Steady Eddie]

I didn't think so.

[Steady Eddie]

In fact, it appears that Eden's combinatorial analysis is a hard-science extension of Crick's Sequence Hypothesis, which pointed out that it is the specific SEQUENCE of bases on the DNA helix that needs
explanation.
This has not been TOUCHED by Darwinian "science" in - what - 60 years?

What's the hold-up, Professors?

[Steady Eddie]

Considering the characteristic smug yappiness of Darwinists, the silence on this topic is deafening.

[Steady Eddie]

...But I must admit, it's music to my ears.
LOL!
Run away! Run away!

[Öö Tiib]

What are you, Eddie, lolling there with yourself? Some mathematicians and
electrical engineers wrote some nonsense about biology 60 years ago?
What it was? People did already respond that it was not worth attention
back then and is nothing to discuss now.

There are "TREMENDOUSLY POWERFUL" supercomputers of sixties in your quote?
It is likely your capitalization? Is it joke? That is clearly grotesque and what
you expect us to respond to that? The actual facts and numbers are easy
to find out online.

For example IBM 7030 Stretch (price was 13 millions of dollars 1961) was
some thousands of times less powerful computing device than current
low-end smartphones. For example electrical engineer Murray Eden was
researching computer tomography back then and barely got 16x16 pixel
pictures that medical equipment manufacturers were not interested in.

So ... nothing to LOL. Evolutionary computing and genetic algorithms
were invented lot later. Evolution just works and achieves better
efficiencies than manually designed.

[John Stockwell]

That's basically it. If you want to claim that proteins form by random assembly, then the small subset of proteins that we find in biology would be an astonomically small target to hit. The problem is, of course that proteins don't form that way. Wistar mathematicians erected a strawman and demolished it.

I have talked to Berlinski. He was pissed because the community of biologists
ignored the work of his buddy Marcel Shutzenberger, who was brilliant in
the subject of semigroups and combinatorics, but knew nothing about chemistry.
There is a pretty wide gap between the stuff that was discussed at Wistar
and any sort of reasonable mathematical theory of evolution.

Wistar didn't disprove evolution, they disproved their characterization of evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry.


>
> > -John

[jillery]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2016 08:51:17 -0700 (PDT), 嘱 Tiib <oot...@hot.ee>
wrote:

Apparently Steadly has such a compulsive need to spew gibberish, he
has to argue with himself. Too bad for him he still loses the
argument.

[Steady Eddie]

No, YOU want to claim that proteins form by random assembly.
It's called Darwinian evolution.
Unless you have some other mechanism in mind...

[RSNorman]

I have been travelling and so did not respond earlier to steady's
recent revival of this nonsense.

The Wistar Institute volume includes not only the papers presented but
the subsequent discussion where the biologists quite thoroughly
dismissed the papers and arguments of Shutzenberger and Eden. And it
was based exactly on what John Stockwell wrote above: the
mathematicians-engineers only "disproved their characterization of

evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry".

Steady now continues the same mis-characterization "that proteins form
by random assembly". Yes, the mutational process is random. But the
biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
probabilities does not apply. The simplistic models involve the
production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
functional. The biological models involve selection and random
mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
process.

Jonathan-speak notwithstanding, the mathematics of self-organizing
systems was not developed at the time of the Wistar conference nor
were the molecular biological mechanisms, especially of evo-devo,
known at the time although Waddington did try to explain early aspects
of these ideas to the mathematics and engineers.

[Steady Eddie]

This is going to be fun...

> Steady now continues the same mis-characterization "that proteins form
> by random assembly". Yes, the mutational process is random.

Yes, and the mutational process is your only mechanism of how any particular sequence of amino acids
arises - thus "proteins form by random assembly". They may, in your scenario get selected once formed,
but that doesn't change the chemistry or math involved in their forming.

> But the
> biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
> protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
> probabilities does not apply.

Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows
from physics, which flows from mathematics.
Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
that flows from hopeful story-telling.

> The simplistic models involve the
> production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
> selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
> functional.

Exactly. It's called Darwinian evolution. Selection cannot work until there is a final product; a fully-formed
protein that actually DOES SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE ORGANISM, almost always in conjunction with
other fully-formed proteins and systems of proteins.

What part of your own theory do you not understand???

> The biological models involve selection and random
> mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
> process.

And this simplistic Darwinian story-telling does not make the chemistry, physics, or mathematics involved
go away.

> Jonathan-speak notwithstanding, the mathematics of self-organizing
> systems was not developed at the time of the Wistar conference nor
> were the molecular biological mechanisms, especially of evo-devo,
> known at the time although Waddington did try to explain early aspects
> of these ideas to the mathematics and engineers.

Thus the hooting.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel...
A Darwinists simply cannot speak to this topic without firmly affixing a "kick me" sign to their forehead.

[RSNorman]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 07:50:26 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

Don't try to pull a "crickets" stunt on my failure to answer this
nonsense. There are statements (just as there are people) who do not
deserve responses.

Note: I would not take this attitude was there not a long history of
people patiently trying to explain science to you but to no avail.

[jillery]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 07:50:26 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, 15 June 2016 06:38:51 UTC-6, RSNorman wrote:

<mercy snip of Steadly spam>

>> I have been travelling and so did not respond earlier to steady's
>> recent revival of this nonsense.
>>
>> The Wistar Institute volume includes not only the papers presented but
>> the subsequent discussion where the biologists quite thoroughly
>> dismissed the papers and arguments of Shutzenberger and Eden. And it
>> was based exactly on what John Stockwell wrote above: the
>> mathematicians-engineers only "disproved their characterization of
>> evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry".
>
>This is going to be fun...

Actually, you have dug yourself into so many holes, it's just boring.

>> Steady now continues the same mis-characterization "that proteins form
>> by random assembly". Yes, the mutational process is random.
>
>Yes, and the mutational process is your only mechanism of how any particular sequence of amino acids
>arises - thus "proteins form by random assembly". They may, in your scenario get selected once formed,
>but that doesn't change the chemistry or math involved in their forming.

Your claim notwithstanding, random mutations have nothing to do with
protein assembly, and proteins don't form by random assembly. Instead,
they form by a very precise system based on the DNA code. Everything
you say based on your claim is also false.

>> But the
>> biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
>> protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
>> probabilities does not apply.
>
>Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows
>from physics, which flows from mathematics.

Physics flows from fundamental principles. Mathematics describes, not
prescribes.

>Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
>that flows from hopeful story-telling.

Even if so, how is that different from your theistic philosophy that
flows from hopeless story-telling?

>> The simplistic models involve the
>> production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
>> selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
>> functional.
>
>Exactly. It's called Darwinian evolution. Selection cannot work until there is a final product; a fully-formed
>protein that actually DOES SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE ORGANISM, almost always in conjunction with
>other fully-formed proteins and systems of proteins.
>
>What part of your own theory do you not understand???

All proteins are fully-formed, by definition. Some do something
useful for the organism, some don't, depending on the environment at
the time. You have been told this many times.

>> The biological models involve selection and random
>> mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
>> process.
>
>And this simplistic Darwinian story-telling does not make the chemistry, physics, or mathematics involved
>go away.

"Darwinian story-telling" has no problem with chemistry, physics, or
mathematics. It's IDiots who have problems with the chemistry,
physics and mathematics. For example, you still haven't described the
math that shows the odds for body armor arising without intelligent
design.

>> Jonathan-speak notwithstanding, the mathematics of self-organizing
>> systems was not developed at the time of the Wistar conference nor
>> were the molecular biological mechanisms, especially of evo-devo,
>> known at the time although Waddington did try to explain early aspects
>> of these ideas to the mathematics and engineers.
>
>Thus the hooting.
>
>This is like shooting fish in a barrel...
>A Darwinists simply cannot speak to this topic without firmly affixing a "kick me" sign to their forehead.

One almost always puts "kick me" signs on another's back. Foreheads
are usually reserved for "Loser", in your case in mirror image, to
make it easier for you to read in the morning.

[Steady Eddie]

On Wednesday, 15 June 2016 11:15:03 UTC-6, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 07:50:26 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
> <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, 15 June 2016 06:38:51 UTC-6, RSNorman wrote:
>
> <mercy snip of Steadly spam>
>
> >> I have been travelling and so did not respond earlier to steady's
> >> recent revival of this nonsense.
> >>
> >> The Wistar Institute volume includes not only the papers presented but
> >> the subsequent discussion where the biologists quite thoroughly
> >> dismissed the papers and arguments of Shutzenberger and Eden. And it
> >> was based exactly on what John Stockwell wrote above: the
> >> mathematicians-engineers only "disproved their characterization of
> >> evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry".
> >
> >This is going to be fun...
>
>
> Actually, you have dug yourself into so many holes, it's just boring.
>
>
> >> Steady now continues the same mis-characterization "that proteins form
> >> by random assembly". Yes, the mutational process is random.
> >
> >Yes, and the mutational process is your only mechanism of how any particular sequence of amino acids
> >arises - thus "proteins form by random assembly". They may, in your scenario get selected once formed,
> >but that doesn't change the chemistry or math involved in their forming.
>
>
> Your claim notwithstanding, random mutations have nothing to do with
> protein assembly, and proteins don't form by random assembly. Instead,
> they form by a very precise system based on the DNA code. Everything
> you say based on your claim is also false.

Of course, the actual assembly of proteins in an existing cell is not done by random mutations. That's
trivially true.
What Wistar was discussing is the origination of the "precise" DNA code sequences that build the entire
system in the first place, including the "precise" specifications of each protein.
Your attempts to obfuscate the topic show your inability and unwillingness to speak to the core issue.
If this was how the biologists at Wistar reasoned, the HOOTING was well-warranted.

> >> But the
> >> biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
> >> protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
> >> probabilities does not apply.
> >
> >Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows
> >from physics, which flows from mathematics.
>
>
> Physics flows from fundamental principles. Mathematics describes, not
> prescribes.

Without accurate, quantitative description, you don't have science - you have story-telling.

> >Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
> >that flows from hopeful story-telling.
>
>
> Even if so, how is that different from your theistic philosophy that
> flows from hopeless story-telling?

YOU are the ones presumably claiming that Darwinism is 'different from theistic philosophy that flows from
story-telling'.
Here you implicitly admit that Darwinism is no different than any other philosophy.
LOL!
You might want to try improving Darwinism's image by retiring from TO.
Just a thought...

> >> The simplistic models involve the
> >> production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
> >> selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
> >> functional.
> >
> >Exactly. It's called Darwinian evolution. Selection cannot work until there is a final product; a fully-formed
> >protein that actually DOES SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE ORGANISM, almost always in conjunction with
> >other fully-formed proteins and systems of proteins.
> >
> >What part of your own theory do you not understand???
>
>
> All proteins are fully-formed, by definition. Some do something
> useful for the organism, some don't, depending on the environment at
> the time. You have been told this many times.

Again, trivially true. At issue is the origin of the "blueprint" for the proteins, a topic that Darwinism can't
touch.
Thus the "hooting" from the real scientists at Wistar.

> >> The biological models involve selection and random
> >> mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
> >> process.
> >
> >And this simplistic Darwinian story-telling does not make the chemistry, physics, or mathematics involved
> >go away.
>
>
> "Darwinian story-telling" has no problem with chemistry, physics, or
> mathematics. It's IDiots who have problems with the chemistry,
> physics and mathematics. For example, you still haven't described the
> math that shows the odds for body armor arising without intelligent
> design.

Nice example of the tactic: When cornered, counter-attack with whatever rhetoric you have at hand.
It doesn't have to be on-topic or true, just throw it out there like the crew of a sinking ship throwing
everything overboard.
LOL!

[Steady Eddie]

Taking the "high ground" and refusing to speak to the topic, are you?
That's probably your best strategy here.
Anything else would almost certainly expose your intellectual bankruptcy on the topic.

[jillery]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 07:08:48 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

Then you shouldn't have argued that proteins were assembled by random
mutations, not just once but several times. Apparently you don't even
realize that you just contradicted yourself.

>What Wistar was discussing is the origination of the "precise" DNA code sequences that build the entire
>system in the first place, including the "precise" specifications of each protein.

Even if Wistar was discussing the *origination* of the DNA code
sequence, then it was *not* discussing its evolution, and so you just
flushed your entire argument down the toilet, where it rightfully
belongs.

>Your attempts to obfuscate the topic show your inability and unwillingness to speak to the core issue.
>If this was how the biologists at Wistar reasoned, the HOOTING was well-warranted.

'Tis you who attempt to obfuscate the topic. You don't even know what
you're talking about, so you just spew one nonsense statement after
another, as if hoping that something might make sense by random
chance. Here's a clue for you; it ain't working.

>> >> But the
>> >> biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
>> >> protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
>> >> probabilities does not apply.
>> >
>> >Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows
>> >from physics, which flows from mathematics.
>>
>>
>> Physics flows from fundamental principles. Mathematics describes, not
>> prescribes.
>
>Without accurate, quantitative description, you don't have science - you have story-telling.

Non-sequitur. So go ahead and make with the accurate, quantitative
descriptions already, just once, if only for the novelty of it,
instead of your nonsensical story-telling.

>> >Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
>> >that flows from hopeful story-telling.
>>
>>
>> Even if so, how is that different from your theistic philosophy that
>> flows from hopeless story-telling?
>
>YOU are the ones presumably claiming that Darwinism is 'different from theistic philosophy that flows from
>story-telling'.

YOU posted multiple false claims, and now you refuse to back them up.
Where is the atheistic story-telling? You don't say. How does Wistar
justify your Biblical story-telling? You don't say. All that you
post is meaningless noise.

>Here you implicitly admit that Darwinism is no different than any other philosophy.
>LOL!

Here you explicitly demonstrate your inability to understand written
English. What part of "even if" don't you understand? Do those two
words really confuse you? No wonder you're still the village IDiot.

>You might want to try improving Darwinism's image by retiring from TO.
>Just a thought...

Apparently you just realized you dug yourself into another hole, and
now you try to get out of it by blaming me for it. Could you be more
stupid and dishonest than that?

>> >> The simplistic models involve the
>> >> production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
>> >> selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
>> >> functional.
>> >
>> >Exactly. It's called Darwinian evolution. Selection cannot work until there is a final product; a fully-formed
>> >protein that actually DOES SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE ORGANISM, almost always in conjunction with
>> >other fully-formed proteins and systems of proteins.
>> >
>> >What part of your own theory do you not understand???
>>
>>
>> All proteins are fully-formed, by definition. Some do something
>> useful for the organism, some don't, depending on the environment at
>> the time. You have been told this many times.
>
>Again, trivially true.

Again, then don't argue that it's not true, and not just once, but
multiple times, and IN ALL CAPS no less.

>At issue is the origin of the "blueprint" for the proteins, a topic that Darwinism can't
>touch.

Nope. There is no "blueprint" for proteins, anymore than there is a
"blueprint" for the structure of the Universe. Biologists have no
need to deal with every IDiot fantasy; the basics are more than
sufficient.

>Thus the "hooting" from the real scientists at Wistar.
>
>> >> The biological models involve selection and random
>> >> mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
>> >> process.
>> >
>> >And this simplistic Darwinian story-telling does not make the chemistry, physics, or mathematics involved
>> >go away.
>>
>>
>> "Darwinian story-telling" has no problem with chemistry, physics, or
>> mathematics. It's IDiots who have problems with the chemistry,
>> physics and mathematics. For example, you still haven't described the
>> math that shows the odds for body armor arising without intelligent
>> design.
>
>Nice example of the tactic: When cornered, counter-attack with whatever rhetoric you have at hand.
>It doesn't have to be on-topic or true, just throw it out there like the crew of a sinking ship throwing
>everything overboard.
>LOL!

Nice example of the tactic: When cornered, counter-attack by blaming
others for what you do yourself, a tactic worn to death by your
mentor.

Right here would have been a good place for you to back up any one of
your claims. Failing that...

>> >> Jonathan-speak notwithstanding, the mathematics of self-organizing
>> >> systems was not developed at the time of the Wistar conference nor
>> >> were the molecular biological mechanisms, especially of evo-devo,
>> >> known at the time although Waddington did try to explain early aspects
>> >> of these ideas to the mathematics and engineers.
>> >
>> >Thus the hooting.
>> >
>> >This is like shooting fish in a barrel...
>> >A Darwinists simply cannot speak to this topic without firmly affixing a "kick me" sign to their forehead.
>>
>>
>> One almost always puts "kick me" signs on another's back. Foreheads
>> are usually reserved for "Loser", in your case in mirror image, to
>> make it easier for you to read in the morning.

[jillery]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 07:13:28 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, 15 June 2016 09:20:03 UTC-6, RSNorman wrote:

<mercy snip of everything Steadly ignored>

>> Don't try to pull a "crickets" stunt on my failure to answer this
>> nonsense. There are statements (just as there are people) who do not
>> deserve responses.
>>
>> Note: I would not take this attitude was there not a long history of
>> people patiently trying to explain science to you but to no avail.
>
>Taking the "high ground" and refusing to speak to the topic, are you?
>That's probably your best strategy here.
>Anything else would almost certainly expose your intellectual bankruptcy on the topic.

Right. Far better to stay silent and have others think you a fool,
rather than spew noise and prove it. Is that what you're saying? Do
you ever listen to yourself?

[Greg Guarino]

On 6/15/2016 10:50 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look
> pompous, at best. The chemistry flows from physics, which flows from
> mathematics. Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even
> flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy that flows from
> hopeful story-telling.

What I find most interesting about you is your firm belief that there is
simply nothing to evolutionary biology at all. You know next to nothing
about biology, yet you *know* that all the world's biologists have not
merely come to erroneous conclusions from the available evidence, they
are simply bullshitting, or at least bullshitting themselves. All of
them. Every day.

One would think that such a startling conclusion would require a firm
command of biology *and* familiarity with a large cross-section of
biologists and their work, but you have neither. So what explains your
confidence?

Perhaps I - who, knowing only perhaps 10 times the biology that you do,
am still a relative biological ignoramus - can help clarify.

I have not read the Wistar report, but from what I can gather, they
attempted to compute the probability of any particular protein of
moderate length forming de novo by chance arrangement of dna codons.

There are two problems with this.

Firstly, I do not believe that any biologist anywhere thinks that new
proteins typically form de novo at all. They are instead modified,
generally slightly in multiple steps, from pre-existing proteins,
sometimes after the associated gene was copied.

Thus the relevant question is not "what is the chance of these 150
amino-acid residues lining up in this particular order, from scratch"
(20^150), but "what is the probability that this 150-amino-acid-residue
protein evolved my mutation, drift and selection from another extant
protein"?

This is of course a much higher probability, but compared with the
number of potential proteins that might evolve from an extant protein,
it is still very unlikely that any "particular" protein we choose would
be among those to evolve.

That brings us to the second problem with many anti-evolution
computations of chance. Any one protein we might find is indeed one of a
tremendous number of possible "offshoots" from extant proteins and thus,
in some sense, "unlikely". But it is very very likely that SOME amended
protein will emerge, possibly with some phenotypic effect.

Picking a specific protein as if that were a predetermined "target"
bears no relation to the actual process. Evolution did not have to
develop that particular protein, or even the function that it supports.

I've never read this anywhere, and I am, as I mentioned,
modestly-informed biologically speaking, but I strongly suspect that
those "improbability" numbers do actually mean something. They tell us
that the lifeforms that have so far appeared are the tiny subset of
possible creature types that were within evolutionary "reach" given the
available progenitors.

Is it incredibly unlikely that the Spiny Lumpsucker - that exact
particular species - would evolve? Sure. But is is very very likely that
life on earth would diverge into myriad forms over time? Yes.

[RSNorman]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 07:13:28 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

I am very happy to leave it with people here reading what yor write
and reading what I write and then making up their own minds about
intellectual bankruptcy.

[jillery]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 12:40:09 -0400, Greg Guarino <gdgu...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Excellent summary. Of course, these points have been put to Steadly
many times by many posters, including myself, all in vain, as rnorman
pointedly pointed out. Understanding rolls off Steadly's back like
water off a duck.

[ramat...@gmail.com]

This is a good critique of ID. What are the quantitative measures for I and for D. OH MY, there are none. Snicker.

>
> > >Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
> > >that flows from hopeful story-telling.
> >
> >
> > Even if so, how is that different from your theistic philosophy that
> > flows from hopeless story-telling?
>
> YOU are the ones presumably claiming that Darwinism is 'different from theistic philosophy that flows from
> story-telling'.

No you don't understand science well enough to discern the difference.

Your silly distortions get in the way.

> Here you implicitly admit that Darwinism is no different than any other philosophy.
> LOL!

Your stupidity is showing.

> You might want to try improving Darwinism's image by retiring from TO.
> Just a thought...

You might want to improve the image of JWs by retiring from TO. A strong recommendation based on know you do not understand science well enough to help TOers.

[Steady Eddie]

I'm not one of Jehovah's Witnesses. If I were, I would not be posting on TO, as the Bible prohibits getting
into arguments with senseless people.

[Steady Eddie]

Good. So am I.

[Steady Eddie]

Wow. That's truly a lame attempt at side-stepping the issue of the ORIGIN of the DNA code sequence
responsible for creating the machinery of life.
You might have noticed, this newsgroup is entitled "talkORIGINS".
To simply state that any given protein is a minor tweak from a pre-existing protein and pretend that means
something is to show off your vacuous intellect.

Wistar was convened to discuss the ULTIMATE origin of the DNA code sequence that "happens" to code
for the building of all life forms. Specifically, could these precise, specific sequences arise without
intelligent design?

Francis Crick was clear on the issue; he termed it the "sequence hypothesis", and was unable to find any
way these DNA sequences could have arisen without intelligent design.

Does that tell you something?

And, 50 years after Wistar, neither can you or any Darwinist.

[Vincent Maycock]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 17:14:38 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

snip

>You might have noticed, this newsgroup is entitled "talkORIGINS".
>To simply state that any given protein is a minor tweak from a pre-existing protein and pretend that means
>something is to show off your vacuous intellect.
>
>Wistar was convened to discuss the ULTIMATE origin of the DNA code sequence

It appears to have evolved from RNA; I don't think they knew about
that in the 1960s.

> that "happens" to code for the building of all life forms.

That *evolved* to code for them.

>Specifically, could these precise, specific sequences arise without
>intelligent design?

Probably could have happened, yes.

[Steady Eddie]

Thus the hooting.

[ramat...@gmail.com]

Snicker, snicker. ID is religious story-telling for those ignorant of science.

> > >
> > > > >Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
> > > > >that flows from hopeful story-telling.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Even if so, how is that different from your theistic philosophy that
> > > > flows from hopeless story-telling?
> > >
> > > YOU are the ones presumably claiming that Darwinism is 'different from theistic philosophy that flows from
> > > story-telling'.
> >
> > No you don't understand science well enough to discern the difference.
> >
> > Your silly distortions get in the way.
> >
> > > Here you implicitly admit that Darwinism is no different than any other philosophy.
> > > LOL!
> >
> > Your stupidity is showing.
> >
> > > You might want to try improving Darwinism's image by retiring from TO.
> > > Just a thought...
> >
> > You might want to improve the image of JWs by retiring from TO.
>
> I'm not one of Jehovah's Witnesses. If I were, I would not be posting on TO, as the Bible prohibits getting
> into arguments with senseless people.

Projection.

So the JW's view you as persona non grata?

[Steady Eddie]

On Thursday, 16 June 2016 10:45:00 UTC-6, Greg Guarino wrote:
> On 6/15/2016 10:50 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look
> > pompous, at best. The chemistry flows from physics, which flows from
> > mathematics. Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even
> > flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy that flows from
> > hopeful story-telling.
>
> What I find most interesting about you is your firm belief that there is
> simply nothing to evolutionary biology at all.

Depends what you mean by "evolutionary": If you're talking about the belief that all life evolved without
intelligent direction from one or a few life forms, then yes, there is simply nothing to that belief except
hopeful atheistic conjecture masquerading as science.

> You know next to nothing
> about biology, yet you *know* that all the world's biologists have not
> merely come to erroneous conclusions from the available evidence, they
> are simply bullshitting, or at least bullshitting themselves. All of
> them. Every day.

Not all biologists, by a long shot.
The vast majority of biologists, though, are enslaved by a theory for reasons having nothing to do with
science.
Do you find this "inconceivable"?

> One would think that such a startling conclusion would require a firm
> command of biology *and* familiarity with a large cross-section of
> biologists and their work, but you have neither. So what explains your
> confidence?

Simple common sense, acting on easily available scientific information, exercised by a mind free from atheistic propaganda.
Darwinists aren't rocket scientists, you know.

> Perhaps I - who, knowing only perhaps 10 times the biology that you do,
> am still a relative biological ignoramus - can help clarify.
>
> I have not read the Wistar report, but from what I can gather, they
> attempted to compute the probability of any particular protein of
> moderate length forming de novo by chance arrangement of dna codons.

"de no·vo
dā ˈnōvō,di/
adverb & adjective
starting from the beginning; anew."

Yes, though I haven't read the report either, it seems the scientists at Wistar were interested in Darwinists'
explanation of how any functional protein could originate, from the BEGINNING, without intelligent design.

To say that they simply came from previously-existing proteins is blatantly side-stepping the question.
Thus the hooting.

> There are two problems with this.
>
> Firstly, I do not believe that any biologist anywhere thinks that new
> proteins typically form de novo at all. They are instead modified,
> generally slightly in multiple steps, from pre-existing proteins,
> sometimes after the associated gene was copied.

That doesn't explain their origin - it just attempts to sweep the question of origins under the rug, so to
speak.
Thus the hooting.

> Thus the relevant question is not "what is the chance of these 150
> amino-acid residues lining up in this particular order, from scratch"
> (20^150), but "what is the probability that this 150-amino-acid-residue
> protein evolved my mutation, drift and selection from another extant
> protein"?

Thus the hooting.
Real scientists can immediately identify the canard being promulgated here. Simply saying "it came from
the previous (usually imaginary) protein" is sufficient to elicit hooting in any rational, informed person.

> This is of course a much higher probability, but compared with the
> number of potential proteins that might evolve from an extant protein,
> it is still very unlikely that any "particular" protein we choose would
> be among those to evolve.

And, thus freed from the bonds of reason, the Darwinist launches into the deep blue sky of just-so stories...

> That brings us to the second problem with many anti-evolution
> computations of chance. Any one protein we might find is indeed one of a
> tremendous number of possible "offshoots" from extant proteins and thus,
> in some sense, "unlikely". But it is very very likely that SOME amended
> protein will emerge, possibly with some phenotypic effect.

"Possibly"?
Are you referring here to a "technical possibility" (such as the notion that we're all brains in a vat), or a
"functional possibility", which is something that has been DEMONSTRATED to be possible, and is worthy
of serious consideration?

Spoiler alert: "functional" possibilities generally require math to evaluate the degree of probability involved. Without that, it's pure story-telling.
Thus the hooting.

> Picking a specific protein as if that were a predetermined "target"
> bears no relation to the actual process. Evolution did not have to
> develop that particular protein, or even the function that it supports.
>
> I've never read this anywhere, and I am, as I mentioned,
> modestly-informed biologically speaking, but I strongly suspect that
> those "improbability" numbers do actually mean something. They tell us
> that the lifeforms that have so far appeared are the tiny subset of
> possible creature types that were within evolutionary "reach" given the
> available progenitors.
>
> Is it incredibly unlikely that the Spiny Lumpsucker - that exact
> particular species - would evolve? Sure. But is is very very likely that
> life on earth would diverge into myriad forms over time? Yes.

So the story goes...

[jillery]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2016 17:14:38 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

Can you possibly stick to one subject per thread, if only for the
novelty of it? Are you arguing the veracity of the Wistar report? Or
its relevance to Evolution? Or the origin of proteins? Or the name
of this newsgroup? These are all entirely different subjects. Your
conflation of them only destroys whatever credibility you think you
have.

>Wistar was convened to discuss the ULTIMATE origin of the DNA code sequence that "happens" to code
>for the building of all life forms. Specifically, could these precise, specific sequences arise without
>intelligent design?
>
>Francis Crick was clear on the issue; he termed it the "sequence hypothesis", and was unable to find any
>way these DNA sequences could have arisen without intelligent design.
>
>Does that tell you something?

Since you asked, it tells me that you don't know what you're talking
about. Crick was no supporter of Intelligent Design. More to the
point, science has learned a lot more since then, so even if Crick
said what you claimed he said, it wouldn't be relevant today.

Do you even know what proteins are? They are polymers of amino acids.
Do you even know what amino acids are? They are a class of organic
compounds with a basic amine group (NH2) and an acidic carboxyl group
(COOH) attached to one carbon atom. That one carbon atom can in turn
be attached to a variety of carbon molecules of varying lengths and
properties.

There's nothing magical about any of these molecules. They form
spontaneously. Urey and Miller found various amino acids in the
residues of their experiments. Hoyle found amino acids deep in outer
space. Amino-acids have even been found from comets.

Amino acids join together spontaneously because the amine group from
one attracts the carboxyl group from another. This is a standard
acid-base reaction, similar to what happens between baking soda and
vinegar, or inside a car battery.

Dehydrate amino-acid solutions, and the amine groups release a
hydrogen atom, and the carboxyl groups release an hydroxide molecule,
to form water and peptides of varying lengths. Just keep adding
together small peptide and you will get something long enough to be
called a protein, by definition.

So that's the stupid origin of proteins. There is nothing magical or
miraculous about it. No intelligence is required. It's so simple,
even a 5th-grader can understand it. But apparently not Steadly. Thus
the hooting.

HTH but I doubt it.

I leave untouched all the rest you have left uncommented, as a
reminder of your failure to backup your claims.

[Ernest Major]

On 17/06/2016 00:59, Steady Eddie wrote:
> I'm not one of Jehovah's Witnesses. If I were, I would not be posting on TO, as the Bible prohibits getting
> into arguments with senseless people.

If the JW's were correct, presumably that would mean that people who
think that they aren't are senseless, and the JW's shouldn't be arguing
with them. So from your premise, JW door-to-door evangelism, etc.,
proves that the JW's are wrong.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Bill Rogers]

On Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 9:49:58 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> > You know next to nothing
> > about biology, yet you *know* that all the world's biologists have not
> > merely come to erroneous conclusions from the available evidence, they
> > are simply bullshitting, or at least bullshitting themselves. All of
> > them. Every day.
>
> Not all biologists, by a long shot.
> The vast majority of biologists, though, are enslaved by a theory for reasons having nothing to do with
> science.
> Do you find this "inconceivable"?
>

This is the core of most anti-science arguments. It says, science is great, and the scientific method is great, but in this particular field (evolution, climate change, safety of GMO's, vaccines and autism, whatever) the vast majority of scientists (who disagree with the anti-science guy's views on one of these areas) are motivated by powerful, non-scientific interests.

In the case of climate change it's either the fame and attention they can get by being alarmist, or their dedication to a big government socialist ideology.

In the case of vaccines and autism it's their taking massive bribes from the pharmaceutical industry to say that there's no link in order to protect the huge profits made by vaccine suppliers (in spite of the fact that vaccines are about the least profitable thing a drug company can make).

In the case of GMO safety, it's because they've been bought off by Monsanto.

And in the case of evolution it's because...... Well, there have been lots of answers. Maybe all those biologists have been successfully propagandized by the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. Maybe they are all afraid that there's a God who'll hold them accountable for looking at porn. Maybe they're all intimidated and afraid to suggest that the biological orthodoxy is wrong (all except for those brave heroes at the Discovery Institute). Maybe Eddie has another mysterious motive in mind.

It's a recurring theme. Someone wants science to support their views. When it doesn't, rather than try to understand the science, they look for an obscure, conspiratorial, non-scientific reason for scientists' coming to the conclusions they do.

[Steady Eddie]

Yawn. You're trying to put words in my mouth again.
Everybody knows that Crick was no supporter of the intelligent design hypothesis. As a scientist, he
could find no explanation for the specificity of the DNA code without resorting to an intelligent
designer. As a Darwinist, he presumably dared not 'let a divine foot in the door', so his only recourse was
to leave the question for future scientists.

> More to the
> point, science has learned a lot more since then,

Yes, even by the time of the Wistar conference, science had learned a lot more. Particularly, the true
extent of the specificity of the DNA code was described mathematically thanks to more powerful
computing technology. Thus, it became possible to make first approximations of the astronomical odds
against such specific, functional DNA blueprints being generated randomly.

> so even if Crick
> said what you claimed he said, it wouldn't be relevant today.

True, by Wistar the findings were only approximate, but the issue was laid bare for biologists to see in full
form for the first time.
What was the reaction of the Darwinist biologists?
Like I said, I haven't yet taken the time to locate the record of the proceedings of the conference, but it's
clear that quite a bit of ballyhooing went on. Perhaps the Darwinists felt the need to "school" the
physicists, mathematicians and engineers on what proteins are?
Perhaps they launched into a tirade similar to the following:

> Do you even know what proteins are? They are polymers of amino acids.
> Do you even know what amino acids are? They are a class of organic
> compounds with a basic amine group (NH2) and an acidic carboxyl group
> (COOH) attached to one carbon atom. That one carbon atom can in turn
> be attached to a variety of carbon molecules of varying lengths and
> properties.
>
> There's nothing magical about any of these molecules. They form
> spontaneously. Urey and Miller found various amino acids in the
> residues of their experiments. Hoyle found amino acids deep in outer
> space. Amino-acids have even been found from comets.
>
> Amino acids join together spontaneously because the amine group from
> one attracts the carboxyl group from another. This is a standard
> acid-base reaction, similar to what happens between baking soda and
> vinegar, or inside a car battery.
>
> Dehydrate amino-acid solutions, and the amine groups release a
> hydrogen atom, and the carboxyl groups release an hydroxide molecule,
> to form water and peptides of varying lengths. Just keep adding
> together small peptide and you will get something long enough to be
> called a protein, by definition.
>
> So that's the stupid origin of proteins. There is nothing magical or
> miraculous about it. No intelligence is required. It's so simple,
> even a 5th-grader can understand it. But apparently not Steadly. Thus
> the hooting.

...that would explain the hooting. To think that specific knowledge of the building blocks of proteins
somehow explains how they got coded for in the DNA would understandably elicit hooting in any informed
person, much like a mineralogist claiming that, because he understands the composition of bricks, he
knows how brick buildings are designed and built.

> HTH but I doubt it.

It's helpful for comic relief.

Yes, folks, it's the Jillery Jiggle once again.

You can learn everything she just "schooled" me about on Youtube.

So what's your point, Jillery? That we understand what proteins are made of?

[Steady Eddie]

Each case has to be examined on its own merits.
To conclude that, because there are denialists in the fora of climate change, vaccines and GMO safety (or the spherical shape of the earth, for that matter), Darwinism must be scientifically correct, would elicit hooting in any rational person.

[Bill Rogers]

Of course.

> To conclude that, because there are denialists in the fora of climate change, vaccines and GMO safety (or the spherical shape of the earth, for that matter), Darwinism must be scientifically correct, would elicit hooting in any rational person.

Sure. I'd hoot at that argument, too. Luckily, it's not the argument I was making.

The argument I was making was this. As in the case of climate change, vaccine safety, etc. you find yourself in the position of disagreeing with the vast majority of experts in biology. You hold that they are in error, and that the mistake they are making is so overwhelmingly obvious that someone with little or no knowledge of the field can see the obvious error (as long as he is not warped by whatever non-scientific motivation is causing all those scientists to assert something that is obviously and trivially wrong). So what is the non-scientific motivation that so overwhelms the critical thinking and experience of all those biologists to the point that they fall into an error so simple that even a layman can see the error?

[Greg Guarino]

On 6/16/2016 9:49 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Thursday, 16 June 2016 10:45:00 UTC-6, Greg Guarino wrote:
>> On 6/15/2016 10:50 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>> Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you
>>> look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows from physics, which
>>> flows from mathematics. Your concept is simply Darwinism, which
>>> doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
>>> that flows from hopeful story-telling.
>>
>> What I find most interesting about you is your firm belief that
>> there is simply nothing to evolutionary biology at all.
>
> Depends what you mean by "evolutionary": If you're talking about the
> belief that all life evolved without intelligent direction from one
> or a few life forms, then yes, there is simply nothing to that
> belief except hopeful atheistic conjecture masquerading as science.

>> You know next to nothing about biology, yet you *know* that all
>> the world's biologists have not merely come to erroneous
>> conclusions from the available evidence, they are simply
>> bullshitting, or at least bullshitting themselves. All of them.
>> Every day.
>
> Not all biologists, by a long shot.

"By a long shot"? Really? How many biologists do you imagine reject
common descent, for starters? I can think of one, offhand. I believe he
teaches biology at Liberty University. Can you name any others? Do you
imagine your "by a long shot" group adds up to even a tenth of a percent
of the world's biologists?

> The vast majority of biologists, though, are enslaved by a theory
> for reasons having nothing to do with science. Do you find this
> "inconceivable"?

It stretches credulity, yes. You have no feel for the scientific
impulse. These are people who grew up wanting to know how stuff works;
teasing out all the little bits inside the little bits inside the little
bits. Yet they willfully blind themselves, daily, to what you claim is
plainly obvious.

>
>> One would think that such a startling conclusion would require a
>> firm command of biology *and* familiarity with a large
>> cross-section of biologists and their work, but you have neither.
>> So what explains your confidence?
>
> Simple common sense, acting on easily available scientific
> information, exercised by a mind free from atheistic propaganda.
> Darwinists aren't rocket scientists, you know.

You keep using those words "Darwinist" and "Darwinism" as if they are
somehow separable from "biologists" and "biology". Virtually all
biologists are what you would call "Darwinists" and their field is at
least as demanding as "rocket science". Biologists are *exactly* the
sort of people we colloquially refer to as "rocket scientists".

>
>> Perhaps I - who, knowing only perhaps 10 times the biology that
>> you do, am still a relative biological ignoramus - can help
>> clarify.
>>
>> I have not read the Wistar report, but from what I can gather,
>> they attempted to compute the probability of any particular protein
>> of moderate length forming de novo by chance arrangement of dna
>> codons.
>
> "de no·vo dā ˈnōvō,di/ adverb & adjective starting from the
> beginning; anew."
>
> Yes, though I haven't read the report either, it seems the
> scientists at Wistar were interested in Darwinists' explanation of
> how any functional protein could originate, from the BEGINNING,
> without intelligent design.

No biologist claims to know how life began on Earth. "Darwinism" to use
an ignorant term, is about what you described reasonably accurately
above: "that all life evolved without intelligent direction from one
or a few life forms".

> To say that they simply came from previously-existing proteins is
> blatantly side-stepping the question. Thus the hooting.

Nope. It is exactly what evolutionary biology is about, and all the
theory of evolution is about. The side-stepping is your own. If you'd
like to concede that everything that biology thinks happened *after* the
earliest cellular life seems plausible, but you dispute abiogenesis,
feel free. But as that is not your position, let's discuss the actual
theories of modern biology rather that retreat to a place you figure is
more ambiguous.

>> There are two problems with this.
>>
>> Firstly, I do not believe that any biologist anywhere thinks that
>> new proteins typically form de novo at all. They are instead
>> modified, generally slightly in multiple steps, from pre-existing
>> proteins, sometimes after the associated gene was copied.
>
> That doesn't explain their origin - it just attempts to sweep the
> question of origins under the rug, so to speak. Thus the hooting.

It explains exactly what evolution is claimed to explain; the
diversification of life on Earth from a pool of early ancestors. What
happened before that is an open question.

>> Thus the relevant question is not "what is the chance of these 150
>> amino-acid residues lining up in this particular order, from
>> scratch" (20^150), but "what is the probability that this
>> 150-amino-acid-residue protein evolved my mutation, drift and
>> selection from another extant protein"?
>
> Thus the hooting. Real scientists can immediately identify the
> canard being promulgated here. Simply saying "it came from the
> previous (usually imaginary) protein" is sufficient to elicit hooting
> in any rational, informed person.

Except every biologist, minus (being generous) a few dozen. And most
other scientists. And scientifically literate people.

>> This is of course a much higher probability, but compared with the
>> number of potential proteins that might evolve from an extant
>> protein, it is still very unlikely that any "particular" protein
>> we choose would be among those to evolve.
>
> And, thus freed from the bonds of reason, the Darwinist launches
> into the deep blue sky of just-so stories...
>
>> That brings us to the second problem with many anti-evolution
>> computations of chance. Any one protein we might find is indeed
>> one of a tremendous number of possible "offshoots" from extant
>> proteins and thus, in some sense, "unlikely". But it is very very
>> likely that SOME amended protein will emerge, possibly with some
>> phenotypic effect.
>
> "Possibly"? Are you referring here to a "technical possibility"
> (such as the notion that we're all brains in a vat), or a
> "functional possibility", which is something that has been
> DEMONSTRATED to be possible, and is worthy of serious consideration?

Of course. Serious people are careful with their words. Altered proteins
do not always have any phenotypic effect at all, but sometimes they do.
Hence the word "possibly". Here's one I wish I had:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApoA-1_Milano

> Spoiler alert: "functional" possibilities generally require math to
> evaluate the degree of probability involved. Without that, it's pure
> story-telling. Thus the hooting.

Show us some math in your own words.

>> Picking a specific protein as if that were a predetermined
>> "target" bears no relation to the actual process. Evolution did not
>> have to develop that particular protein, or even the function that
>> it supports.
>>
>> I've never read this anywhere, and I am, as I mentioned,
>> modestly-informed biologically speaking, but I strongly suspect
>> that those "improbability" numbers do actually mean something.
>> They tell us that the lifeforms that have so far appeared are the
>> tiny subset of possible creature types that were within
>> evolutionary "reach" given the available progenitors.
>>
>> Is it incredibly unlikely that the Spiny Lumpsucker - that exact
>> particular species - would evolve? Sure. But is is very very
>> likely that life on earth would diverge into myriad forms over
>> time? Yes.
>
> So the story goes...

And will continue to. You haven't really presented any argument as to
why proteins cannot be altered in the way that modern biology theorizes
and observes. And you don't frankly even seem to understand the
arguments of the people you agree with.

[eridanus]

> That's right.
> And perhaps nobody in the mathematics and engineering sciences took the TOE seriously after
> that conference.
> LOL!

>
> , because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition.
>

> Anxious to look at it firsthand. Should be a lively debate.

>
> As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.
>

> Oh, and by the way, mathematics is foundational to all serious physical sciences.

>
> > Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on.
>

> Yes.
> I can image that would be about the time that they declared Neo-Darwinism an 'unserious' science.
>
> Hence the HOOTING!

>
> A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!
> >

> > -John

The word "mathematics" is not magic, Eddy. Reality is enough complex for a
mathematicians to concoct a wrong analysis about anything whatever. Then, if
you were a doubter about human intelligence, it would include, mathematics
as well, when the question in dispute were not trivial.
There are enough instances in the history of science that prove that something
that was reputed 50 or 100 years as sound was later deemed wrong. Only this
would be enough to comfort your creationist feelings. Instead in focusing
so much on the challenges science present to your creationism, try to put
the same effort to challenge your own believes in a god creator. Why are you
putting so much confidence in the existence of your creator? Because the
ancient Athenians believe in a mighty god called Zeus, that was the one that
gathered the clouds and made it rain, and created the storms, and the
lightnings? This god eventually was slain when a Roman emperor decided to
kill no only Zeus but all the other Olympian gods as well; even the Roman
gods of Rome and Egypt. Then, Zeus or Jupiter, was killed by the decision
of a simply Roman emperor. The servers of the ancient gods and goddesses,
were all killed by the desire of simple human being, it was only an emperor
that killed the ancient gods.
But several centuries later, not many, other human being, Mohammad, killed
also the servers of the new god Joshua-the Messiah, called Isa by the
Arab conquerors, created a new brand of religion called Islam. And about 95%
of the former followers of Isa-the Messiah changed of jacket or rather
they changed of djellaba and become Muslims.
Does this political warrior events do not suggest to your intelligence
(for surely you must have an intelligence) that all those gods were simply
human inventions? For if the gods were real not any emperor or Arab conqueror
would be able to erase their existence with a few wars?
I was consulting the wikipedia just to have an idea on how long took to the Emperor Constantin to erase from the minds of 90% of people living in cities
the believe they had in the ancient deposed or slain gods?
How this would had happened if the faith in the gods were a serious believe
and not an simple human obeisance to human authorities that had the power
to torture or punish them, just in case? Why it was so easy to change their
believes in the ancient gods?

Not long ago, in some other place, commenting on this change brought about
by emperor Constantin, a Christian priest commented that people hustled to
embrace the new religion of Joshua, "because Christianity has some message,
some promise that humans beings were expecting. Christian faith was
accepted so fast because its doctrinal content." "Well," I reply to him,
"It brings me now the image of the Arabian conquerors in former Christian
lands and cities in north Africa and Near East for... some 200 years and the new religion must had some special message, and the Christian people embraced
the new religion in a couple of generations."
He do not replied back to my argument.

Why most of the Jews do not changed their religion and adopted Christianity
as the new faith in god? For they were a minority and it was spared and
were not pressured into changing to the new faith. The new religions were
pressuring the majorities not the statistical outliers.

How many gods were killed by the expansion of Christianity in Europe, north
Africa and the middle East? How many gods killed the expansion of Islam?

Then, why you are believing in a god imposed on the people by emperors and
conquerors? Most of the native Americans in Central and South America, were converted to Christianity. Does this not suggest to you that the a believe
in a "new god" is the simple result of some authoritarian imposition?

It is not a rational decision, it is simple to bow your head below the power
of a conqueror, or some new emperor.
eri

[eridanus]

El lunes, 13 de junio de 2016, 20:03:57 (UTC+1), John Stockwell escribió:
> On Sunday, May 1, 2016 at 7:58:32 AM UTC-6, Steady Eddie wrote:

> > > Nobody in the biological sciences took the Wistar 1966 pronouncement seriously, because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition. As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.
> >
> > I quoted an OBSERVATION from Berlinski. Hearing laughter does not require specialized training, moron.
> >
> > > Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on. A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!
> >
> > ...said the clown.
> >
> > Go ahead, school me on Eden's combinatorial analysis if you think you know anything about it.
>

> That's basically it. If you want to claim that proteins form by random assembly, then the small subset of proteins that we find in biology would be an astonomically small target to hit. The problem is, of course that proteins don't form that way. Wistar mathematicians erected a strawman and demolished it.

>
> I have talked to Berlinski. He was pissed because the community of biologists
> ignored the work of his buddy Marcel Shutzenberger, who was brilliant in
> the subject of semigroups and combinatorics, but knew nothing about chemistry.
> There is a pretty wide gap between the stuff that was discussed at Wistar
> and any sort of reasonable mathematical theory of evolution.
>

> Wistar didn't disprove evolution, they disproved their characterization of evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry.
>
>
> >
> > > -John

that was good.
eri

[eridanus]

El miércoles, 15 de junio de 2016, 5:18:53 (UTC+1), Steady Eddie escribió:

> No, YOU want to claim that proteins form by random assembly.

> It's called Darwinian evolution.

> Unless you have some other mechanism in mind...
>

> > then the small subset of proteins that we find in biology would be an astonomically small target to hit. The problem is, of course that proteins don't form that way. Wistar mathematicians erected a strawman and demolished it.
> >
> > I have talked to Berlinski. He was pissed because the community of biologists
> > ignored the work of his buddy Marcel Shutzenberger, who was brilliant in
> > the subject of semigroups and combinatorics, but knew nothing about chemistry.
> > There is a pretty wide gap between the stuff that was discussed at Wistar
> > and any sort of reasonable mathematical theory of evolution.
> >
> > Wistar didn't disprove evolution, they disproved their characterization of evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > > -John

I do not think the theory of evolution say this. The proteins do not form
because of some random assembly. It is still too soon to explain how are the
rules or processes that are inherent in the formation of a new living being.
What is being said is that some steps of evolution could be explained by
some not yet identified random changes in the genome. You are simple
attacking a straw man. All the "random mutations" mentioned in the current
theory of evolution are not identified by as putative causes for evolution.
But not anyone had yet arrived to identify those mutations. Only in some
recent studies, like the white moth turned black, had been some explanation
that someone could dispute for a reason or other. The authors of this study
could be right or wrong in their explanation. I had not studied this case.
But if they were wrong identifying the mechanism of the mutation, from white
to black, this does not impugn the theory of evolution. The theory of
evolution is a work in progress, and I am not sure they would solve all
the problems of evolution in the next 300 years. But I am on the side of
the pessimists in regard to the advances of science.

Eri

[eridanus]

El miércoles, 15 de junio de 2016, 15:55:03 (UTC+1), Steady Eddie escribió:
> On Wednesday, 15 June 2016 06:38:51 UTC-6, RSNorman wrote:

> > I have been travelling and so did not respond earlier to steady's
> > recent revival of this nonsense.
> >
> > The Wistar Institute volume includes not only the papers presented but
> > the subsequent discussion where the biologists quite thoroughly
> > dismissed the papers and arguments of Shutzenberger and Eden. And it
> > was based exactly on what John Stockwell wrote above: the
> > mathematicians-engineers only "disproved their characterization of
> > evolution, which totally ignored biology and chemistry".
>
> This is going to be fun...
>

> > Steady now continues the same mis-characterization "that proteins form
> > by random assembly". Yes, the mutational process is random.
>
> Yes, and the mutational process is your only mechanism of how any particular sequence of amino acids
> arises - thus "proteins form by random assembly". They may, in your scenario get selected once formed,
> but that doesn't change the chemistry or math involved in their forming.
>

> > But the
> > biology and chemistry means that the sequence of events in producing a
> > protein are not independent and so simply multiplication of
> > probabilities does not apply.
>

> Don't try to claim chemistry as your friend - it only makes you look pompous, at best. The chemistry flows
> from physics, which flows from mathematics.
> Your concept is simply Darwinism, which doesn't even flow from biology - it's pure atheistic philosophy
> that flows from hopeful story-telling.
>

> > The simplistic models involve the
> > production of large polypeptides purely from random actions with
> > selection acting only afterwards to find which one might actually be
> > functional.
>
> Exactly. It's called Darwinian evolution. Selection cannot work until there is a final product; a fully-formed
> protein that actually DOES SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE ORGANISM, almost always in conjunction with
> other fully-formed proteins and systems of proteins.
>
> What part of your own theory do you not understand???
>

> > The biological models involve selection and random
> > mutation acting continuous hand-in-hand with each other throughout the
> > process.
>
> And this simplistic Darwinian story-telling does not make the chemistry, physics, or mathematics involved
> go away.
>

> > Jonathan-speak notwithstanding, the mathematics of self-organizing
> > systems was not developed at the time of the Wistar conference nor
> > were the molecular biological mechanisms, especially of evo-devo,
> > known at the time although Waddington did try to explain early aspects
> > of these ideas to the mathematics and engineers.
>
> Thus the hooting.
>
> This is like shooting fish in a barrel...
> A Darwinists simply cannot speak to this topic without firmly affixing a "kick me" sign to their forehead.

you are mis-characterizing the story of proteins. Unless you are talking
about the first burst of life, abiogenesis, you cannot say this. In general
the proteins of any living organism, are not the result of random mutations
but in some remote past. The proteins of any organism are formed according
to some almost infallible mechanism, except when it gets wrong for some
mutation that makes wrong the process. But not all mutations change the
process so dramatically. Quite often some mutation are innocuous or
indifferent and you have problems to see any difference in the result. Other
can be favorable or unfavorable like in the "sickle cell disease".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease

Some mutations can result good against malaria in some cases, or mortal
in others. Depending on the combination of alleles.

Then, you have not any argument, for most of the problems and questions
presented in the theory of evolution can not be solved yet.

If you want to attack any weak theory, start to think about the god creator
without involving science at all. You do not need to attack science, with
its limited knowledge. Try first to analyze why do you believe in god, or
the book of the Mormon, or in Jesus as the son of God, and all the rest.
What is the rational argument to believe in the gods? A why this god and not
other gods, like Allah, or Vishnu or Brahma? Why not the lustful Zeus? or Aphrodite the goddess of love?
eri

[Mark Isaak]

On 6/16/16 6:49 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> [...]

> The vast majority of biologists, though, are enslaved by a
> theory for reasons having nothing to do with
> science.

I note that you do not give any of those reasons. Can you name any
which are not obviously ludicrous?

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

[jillery]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 05:16:59 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

Nope. What you wrote is still up there in the quoted text. Instead,
you're trying to backpedal from a stupid comment. You should work for
Trump.

>Everybody knows that Crick was no supporter of the intelligent design hypothesis. As a scientist, he
>could find no explanation for the specificity of the DNA code without resorting to an intelligent
>designer. As a Darwinist, he presumably dared not 'let a divine foot in the door', so his only recourse was
>to leave the question for future scientists.

Are you now retracting your claim that Francis Crick said he "was
unable to find any way these DNA sequences could not have arisen
without intelligent design"? If not, then what was your point in
posting that ridiculous quotemine?

>> More to the
>> point, science has learned a lot more since then,
>
>Yes, even by the time of the Wistar conference, science had learned a lot more. Particularly, the true
>extent of the specificity of the DNA code was described mathematically thanks to more powerful
>computing technology. Thus, it became possible to make first approximations of the astronomical odds
>against such specific, functional DNA blueprints being generated randomly.

The "by then" to which I referred is the time of the Wistar
conference. Try to keep up.

>> so even if Crick
>> said what you claimed he said, it wouldn't be relevant today.
>
>True, by Wistar the findings were only approximate, but the issue was laid bare for biologists to see in full
>form for the first time.
>What was the reaction of the Darwinist biologists?
>Like I said, I haven't yet taken the time to locate the record of the proceedings of the conference, but it's
>clear that quite a bit of ballyhooing went on. Perhaps the Darwinists felt the need to "school" the
>physicists, mathematicians and engineers on what proteins are?
>Perhaps they launched into a tirade similar to the following:

Let's review your trolling tirade thus far:

You started by posting your OP about the decades-old Wistar
conference. Then you pretended nobody replied identifying that
conference as being irrelevant to biology. Then you posted your inane
claim that protein evolution was driven by random chance. And when
people told you why your claim is wrong, you complained they weren't
addressing the REAL issue, about the ORIGINS of proteins. So I
described the ORIGINS of proteins, just for you, showing they required
no intelligence at all, to originate or to understand . Now you
complain my answer doesn't explain the DNA code. It's as I said
before, you're just hopping from one subject to the next, hoping
nobody notices your evasion of backing up your claims. You're not
fooling anyone, except maybe yourself.

>> Do you even know what proteins are? They are polymers of amino acids.
>> Do you even know what amino acids are? They are a class of organic
>> compounds with a basic amine group (NH2) and an acidic carboxyl group
>> (COOH) attached to one carbon atom. That one carbon atom can in turn
>> be attached to a variety of carbon molecules of varying lengths and
>> properties.
>>
>> There's nothing magical about any of these molecules. They form
>> spontaneously. Urey and Miller found various amino acids in the
>> residues of their experiments. Hoyle found amino acids deep in outer
>> space. Amino-acids have even been found from comets.
>>
>> Amino acids join together spontaneously because the amine group from
>> one attracts the carboxyl group from another. This is a standard
>> acid-base reaction, similar to what happens between baking soda and
>> vinegar, or inside a car battery.
>>
>> Dehydrate amino-acid solutions, and the amine groups release a
>> hydrogen atom, and the carboxyl groups release an hydroxide molecule,
>> to form water and peptides of varying lengths. Just keep adding
>> together small peptide and you will get something long enough to be
>> called a protein, by definition.
>>
>> So that's the stupid origin of proteins. There is nothing magical or
>> miraculous about it. No intelligence is required. It's so simple,
>> even a 5th-grader can understand it. But apparently not Steadly. Thus
>> the hooting.
>
>...that would explain the hooting.

Here's a clue for you: they're hooting at you, not with you. Just
sayin'.

>To think that specific knowledge of the building blocks of proteins
>somehow explains how they got coded for in the DNA would understandably elicit hooting in any informed
>person, much like a mineralogist claiming that, because he understands the composition of bricks, he
>knows how brick buildings are designed and built.
>
>> HTH but I doubt it.
>
>It's helpful for comic relief.

Apparently you enjoy reading your inanities. That's what village
IDiots do.

So you asked your question about ORIGINS of proteins, and I answered
you. Can you identify any factual errors or flaws in my answers? Any
at all? Bueller?

<mercy snip of Steadly spam>

>Yes, folks, it's the Jillery Jiggle once again.

Right here would have been a good place for you to explain what you
think qualifies as a "Jillery Jiggle" and why. Failing that, you're
still just blowing smoke out of your ass.

>You can learn everything she just "schooled" me about on Youtube.

If you learned all that on Youtube, then you had no good reason to ask
your questions in the first place. And you had no good reason to not
answer your own questions. I mean, other than you're an ass.

>So what's your point, Jillery? That we understand what proteins are made of?

The point is I answered your question. The problem is you don't like
the answer. Too bad for you the Universe and I don't care what you
don't like.

[Steady Eddie]

You're not ready for the answer.

[Steady Eddie]

On Friday, 17 June 2016 07:49:57 UTC-6, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Friday, June 17, 2016 at 8:29:57 AM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > On Friday, 17 June 2016 05:14:57 UTC-6, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > > On Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 9:49:58 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
> > >
> > > > > You know next to nothing
> > > > > about biology, yet you *know* that all the world's biologists have not
> > > > > merely come to erroneous conclusions from the available evidence, they
> > > > > are simply bullshitting, or at least bullshitting themselves. All of
> > > > > them. Every day.
> > > >
> > > > Not all biologists, by a long shot.
> > > > The vast majority of biologists, though, are enslaved by a theory for reasons having nothing to do with
> > > > science.
> > > > Do you find this "inconceivable"?
> > > >
> > >
> > > This is the core of most anti-science arguments. It says, science is great, and the scientific method is great, but in this particular field (evolution, climate change, safety of GMO's, vaccines and autism, whatever) the vast majority of scientists (who disagree with the anti-science guy's views on one of these areas) are motivated by powerful, non-scientific interests.
> > >
> > > In the case of climate change it's either the fame and attention they can get by being alarmist, or their dedication to a big government socialist ideology.
> > >
> > > In the case of vaccines and autism it's their taking massive bribes from the pharmaceutical industry to say that there's no link in order to protect the huge profits made by vaccine suppliers (in spite of the fact that vaccines are about the least profitable thing a drug company can make).
> > >
> > > In the case of GMO safety, it's because they've been bought off by Monsanto.
> > >
> > > And in the case of evolution it's because...... Well, there have been lots of answers. Maybe all those biologists have been successfully propagandized by the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. Maybe they are all afraid that there's a God who'll hold them accountable for looking at porn. Maybe they're all intimidated and afraid to suggest that the biological orthodoxy is wrong (all except for those brave heroes at the Discovery Institute). Maybe Eddie has another mysterious motive in mind.
> > >
> > > It's a recurring theme. Someone wants science to support their views. When it doesn't, rather than try to understand the science, they look for an obscure, conspiratorial, non-scientific reason for scientists' coming to the conclusions they do.
> >
> > Each case has to be examined on its own merits.
> Of course.
>
> > To conclude that, because there are denialists in the fora of climate change, vaccines and GMO safety (or the spherical shape of the earth, for that matter), Darwinism must be scientifically correct, would elicit hooting in any rational person.
>
> Sure. I'd hoot at that argument, too. Luckily, it's not the argument I was making.
>
> The argument I was making was this. As in the case of climate change, vaccine safety, etc. you find yourself in the position of disagreeing with the vast majority of experts in biology.

Fair enough. I point out that you frame the question in order to categorize anti-Darwinism with arguably
ludicrous anti-science beliefs for a reason. One could as easily categorize anti-Darwinism with great
scientific revolutions of the past, but that is neither here nor there.

As for the objection that ID-supporting scientists disagree with the consensus view, I am reminded of
the following comment:

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Mark Twain

Of course, Mark Twain was famous for his tongue-in-cheek comments, and it's obviously not a self-
evident axiom, but it has proven true all too many times.

> You hold that they are in error, and that the mistake they are making is so overwhelmingly obvious that someone with little or no knowledge of the field can see the obvious error (as long as he is not warped by whatever non-scientific motivation is causing all those scientists to assert something that is obviously and trivially wrong). So what is the non-scientific motivation that so overwhelms the critical thinking and experience of all those biologists to the point that they fall into an error so simple that even a layman can see the error?

Since you seem much more sincere than the majority of your compatriots on this ng, perhaps we could
scratch the surface with one facet of the question: The basic human fear of ridicule or persecution, which
is the driving force behind the "mob mentality". This ties in with our natural instinct to trust the establishment; the "leader" so to speak. We all want to believe that our leaders have truth, justice, and our
best interests at heart.
Unfortunately, this lays us vulnerable to manipulation by said leaders.
Recall what Hitler once said regarding propaganda. To paraphrase and add my own spin to it:

'If you make the lie BIG ENOUGH, no one will have the courage to challenge it.'

Here, I submit that the 'big lie' is:

"There's no scientific (read 'reasonable') evidence that the universe or anything in it was created".

Which is easily and routinely re-interpreted and promoted as flat-out Atheism.
Granted, none of the above explains the root motivation behind the Atheistic mindset; it only examines
how an idea, once adopted by the one(s) with the loudest mouth or the biggest stick, gets fixed in a
population. The true ORIGIN of the Atheistic mindset is another discussion, which involves a story written
long ago.

I hope you appreciate that all this takes us on a tangent from the main purpose of this NG - to discuss
the SCIENTIFIC merits of competing views of origins. I would like to proceed with that topic, though I
invite ANYONE to email me if they want to SINCERELY further pursue the question you have asked.

Now, Back to the science, shall we?

[Bill Rogers]

I asked what non-scientific motivation you think the vast majority of biologists have to stick with the theory of evolution, even though (in your view) the theory is so full of errors that it takes no special training to recognize them.

Your answer seems to be that the theory of evolution is the consensus and scientists are intimidated by the power of the consensus and afraid of challenging it. That's just not my experience of the way scientists are. There is nothing they like more than disrupting a consensus - and it is often a difficult challenge since it's not easy for an idea to become a scientific consensus in the first place. But that's how you make your reputation in science. That's why scientists always emphasize, even exaggerate, the novelty of their findings. That's why physicists are always hoping something weird and unexpected will come out of the latest supercollider experiment. That's why they all dream of being responsible for a "paradigm shift." To me, the idea that scientists are intimidated by the consensus view of anything is an idea that could only occur to someone who never met any scientists. They (we) are a damned anti-authoritarian lot.

Overturning consensus is what scientists aspire to do. But nobody does it without a deep, detailed understanding of what the consensus view is and what the evidence is that supports it.

[Mark Isaak]

On 6/18/16 5:12 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> You're not ready for the answer.

See? That's one of my complaints about creationism. It takes people
like Steady Eddie and fills them with hubris, denial, laziness, and the
willingness to bear false witness. And it brings *nothing* good to
their personhood.

[acoust...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 9:24:54 AM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> Here, I submit that the 'big lie' is:
>
> "There's no scientific (read 'reasonable') evidence that the universe or anything in it was created".

Which is true.

There is also no scientific evidence that the universe was /not/ created. But there is excellent and voluminous evidence that the individual life forms on earth were not created separately, or recently, but rather diverged over time from a pool of common ancestors.

I submit that this is a much more reasonable explanation for why the people who are the most familiar with the workings of those life forms are near-unanimous in their acceptance of common descent. To conclude instead for separate creation in the face of the distribution of characteristics we find requires a tortured explanation: that the creator inexplicably designed all of his creatures to /precisely/ mimic branching descent.

[acoust...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 8:14:54 AM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
> You're not ready for the answer.

I had decided to "sleep in", perhaps as late as 8 am, on a lovely Saturday morning. But then there was all this hooting outside...

[acoust...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 8:14:54 AM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> You're not ready for the answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Qfbrc1jdo

I know, I don't watch "naked" Youtube links either. I couldn't help myself. This one is 4 seconds long.

[jillery]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 05:12:42 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>You're not ready for the answer.

And brave Sir Steadly runs away, away...

[jillery]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 08:15:37 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eci...@curioustax.onomy.net> wrote:

>On 6/18/16 5:12 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>> You're not ready for the answer.
>
>See? That's one of my complaints about creationism. It takes people
>like Steady Eddie and fills them with hubris, denial, laziness, and the
>willingness to bear false witness. And it brings *nothing* good to
>their personhood.

... and it raises their faith to scorn and derision, which is evidence
that Steadly's posts are examples of Poe's Law.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 05:12:42 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com>:

>You're not ready for the answer.

Wow, *that* should put them in their place...
--

Bob C.

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

- Isaac Asimov

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 07:16:21 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Bill Rogers
<broger...@gmail.com>:

Why bother to reiterate that again? The scientific
illiterates like Eddie have been told that repeatedly, and
they ignore it and all the evidence that it's correct.

[Steady Eddie]

Fair enough.
As I said, that is only a facet of the full situation.
In the final analysis, it doesn't matter what truly motivates Darwinists to blind themselves to any other
possibility being true. What matters is that science doesn't support their view.
Thus, back to the science, shall we?

[jillery]

Of course, that must be why you brought it up. Is anybody surprised?

>What matters is that science doesn't support their view.

BZZT! Science does support their view, as Bill Rogers et al amply
demonstrate. OTOH science doesn't support your view, also amply
demonstrated.

>Thus, back to the science, shall we?

The only one who left the science in this topic was you.

[Bill Rogers]

Your scientific objection seems to be that the theory of evolution does not provide an explanation for the origin of life or the first functional proteins. I completely agree. Evolution explains the diversification and distribution of life from earlier life; it does not explain the origin of life. I see no reason to think that the origin of life is an more supernatural than its subsequent evolution, but if you do, suit yourself.

[RonO]

On 6/12/2016 7:18 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Saturday, 11 June 2016 17:19:02 UTC-6, Steady Eddie wrote:
>> On Sunday, 5 June 2016 13:39:22 UTC-6, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 5 June 2016 13:24:22 UTC-6, Steady Eddie wrote:

>>>>>> -John
>>>>
>>>> I didn't think so.
>>>
>>> In fact, it appears that Eden's combinatorial analysis is a hard-science extension of Crick's Sequence Hypothesis, which pointed out that it is the specific SEQUENCE of bases on the DNA helix that needs
>>> explanation.
>>> This has not been TOUCHED by Darwinian "science" in - what - 60 years?
>>>
>>> What's the hold-up, Professors?
>>
>> Considering the characteristic smug yappiness of Darwinists, the silence on this topic is deafening.
>
> ...But I must admit, it's music to my ears.
> LOL!
> Run away! Run away!
>

Running away in denial is just projection on your part. What do IDiots
get from projecting their own stupidity onto others?

I asked you to put up what you thought was the issues and what did you
do? You ran. You do not even know what anyone is supposed to be
running from? How utterly sad is that?

What ever came out of the Wistar conference that would be of interest to
you and mean anything to your alternative?

Until anyone knows what to discuss what are we supposed to discuss?

So just state what the issue is, why it is still an issue and what it
means in terms of your alternative so that we can discuss it in a
sensible fashion.

Don't just run in denial of reality, but actually put forward a coherent
argument.

Laughing at your own antics is all that you are doing.

Ron Okimoto

[Steady Eddie]

Thank you for drifting back toward the topic of the science involved.
The reason that the theory of evolution DOES not provide an explanation for the origin of life or the first
functional proteins is because it CAN not explain this naturalistically, i.e. without intelligent design.

The fact that Darwinists have tried to rhetorically distance themselves from the topic of the ultimate origin
of life does not make it any less central to the science of biology (and does nothing to add to Darwinists'
credibility, to say the least).

Furthermore, the fact that no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life has been be developed means
that intelligent design is the best explanation at present. With respect, it seems disingenuous to claim
that you "see no reason to think that the origin of life is an more supernatural than its subsequent
evolution", at the same time admitting that you have no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life.

A more honest appraisal may be:
"I see no reason to think that the origin of the myriad basic life forms is any less intelligently designed than
the origin of the first life form".

My next post will get back to the topic of the Wistar conference in ernest.

[Vincent Maycock]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 07:42:52 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

snip

>Thank you for drifting back toward the topic of the science involved.
>The reason that the theory of evolution DOES not provide an explanation for the origin of life or the first
>functional proteins is because it CAN not explain this naturalistically, i.e. without intelligent design.

You don't have any evidence to support your speculation.

>The fact that Darwinists have tried to rhetorically distance themselves from the topic of the ultimate origin
>of life does not make it any less central to the science of biology (and does nothing to add to Darwinists'
>credibility, to say the least).
>
>Furthermore, the fact that no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life has been be developed

Progress is being made, even if it hasn't been fully "developed."

> means that intelligent design is the best explanation at present. With respect, it seems disingenuous to claim
>that you "see no reason to think that the origin of life is an more supernatural than its subsequent
>evolution", at the same time admitting that you have no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life.
>
>A more honest appraisal may be:
>"I see no reason to think that the origin of the myriad basic life forms is any less intelligently designed than
>the origin of the first life form".

Right, there is no evidence for Intelligent Design, either in
abiogenesis research or any other biological research areas.

[Bill Rogers]

But what is the "intelligent design explanation"? When I say that there is no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life at present, that means that there is no detailed, well supported pathway worked out. But there's plenty of work in the area and plenty of progress. For intelligent design there's no model, no details about the designer, nothing testable, nothing about the design process, nothing about evidence for the existence of a designer apart from the things he allegedly designed. Intelligent design is not some default theory that is true until proven wrong by a detailed naturalistic explanation. Intelligent design, if it's science at all, is a class of models that have to be supported by positive evidence, just like any other non-design, scientific model. And for the moment, all you've got is the argument that there's no current naturalistic model that's been proven. That's not positive evidence for a designer, it just means we don't know yet.

[Steady Eddie]

That an intelligent designer is required to produce the integrated, complex structures and systems we find
in life at all scales.
You didn't know that?

> When I say that there is no naturalistic explanation for the origin of life at present, that means that there is no detailed, well supported pathway worked out. But there's plenty of work in the area and plenty of progress.

Yes, apparently Darwinists have been taking plenty of creative writing courses.

> For intelligent design there's no model,

No model of what?

> no details about the designer,

None required.

> nothing testable,

It's being tested as we speak and has been tested for many decades by presumably many thousands of
Darwinists, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and they have been silent on their results because ID has
passed the test every time.

> nothing about the design process,

Nothing required.

> nothing about evidence for the existence of a designer apart from the things he allegedly designed.

Here you get to the necessary and sufficient evidence for a designer, and you dismiss it at the same time.
LOL!

> Intelligent design is not some default theory that is true until proven wrong by a detailed naturalistic explanation. Intelligent design, if it's science at all, is a class of models that have to be supported by positive evidence, just like any other non-design, scientific model. And for the moment, all you've got is the argument that there's no current naturalistic model that's been proven. That's not positive evidence for a designer, it just means we don't know yet.

You make it sound like, according to ID advocates, if I see a stick in the woods and don't know exactly
how it got there, I declare it was by intelligent design!
Is that what you are claiming?

[Bill Rogers]

No model of who the designer is or when and how he did the design work, or how he manufactured the products of design once they were designed.

>
> > no details about the designer,
>
> None required.

How convenient.

>
> > nothing testable,
>
> It's being tested as we speak and has been tested for many decades by presumably many thousands of
> Darwinists, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and they have been silent on their results because ID has
> passed the test every time.

To the extent that current biological research tests the theory of evolution it has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the many possible design theories. Even were it to prove the theory of evolution false, that would do nothing to prove any one of the possible design theories true. It would just show that one particular physical theory was false.

When holes started to appear in Newtonian dynamics or in classical theories of blackbody radiation, they were not evidence that divine intervention was required, just evidence that a different physical theory was needed to account for all the observations.

>
> > nothing about the design process,
>
> Nothing required.

How very convenient for you.

>
> > nothing about evidence for the existence of a designer apart from the things he allegedly designed.
>
> Here you get to the necessary and sufficient evidence for a designer, and you dismiss it at the same time.
> LOL!

Well, I've tried to argue civilly, but I'm happy to let my argument stand next to your LOL's.

[John Stockwell]

> That's right.
> And perhaps nobody in the mathematics and engineering sciences took the TOE seriously after
> that conference.
> LOL!


You have to remember, Eddy, that creationist literature quote mines and over inflates things for people like yourself. The Wistar 1966 meeting is universally ignored by everybody, but creationists. If you were to read the actual proceedings, you would find that it isn't nearly has damning (or even relevant to biology) as it is touted by creationists.

-John

>
> , because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition.
>

> Anxious to look at it firsthand. Should be a lively debate.

>
> As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.
>

> Oh, and by the way, mathematics is foundational to all serious physical sciences.

>
> > Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on.
>

> Yes.
> I can image that would be about the time that they declared Neo-Darwinism an 'unserious' science.
>
> Hence the HOOTING!

>
> A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!
> >

> > -John

[John Stockwell]

Nobody but creationists takes Wistar 1966 seriously.

>
> , because effectively the whole meeting was an exercise in straw man demolition.
>
> Anxious to look at it firsthand. Should be a lively debate.
>
> As far as any comments by David Berkinski, his area of expertise has nothing to do with the physical sciences. His comments are those of a layman.
>
> Oh, and by the way, mathematics is foundational to all serious physical sciences.

Not the kind of mathematics that Berlinski practiced. He was one of Alonzo
Church's students in mathematical logic.

>
> > Creationists love to tout this historical chestnut, because, in their ignorance, they think there is something magical about mathematicians, when, in fact, in the absence of a mathematical theory, mathematicians have little to go on.
>
> Yes.
> I can image that would be about the time that they declared Neo-Darwinism an 'unserious' science.
>
> Hence the HOOTING!

People mocking what they didn't understand.

>
> A case in point is the combinatorial analysis presented by Murray Eden. What a joke! No chemical process operated by a purely random addembly! The mathematicians at Wistar 1966 made complete fools of themselves!
> >
> > -John

-John

[Robert Camp]

On 6/20/16 6:23 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 19 June 2016 09:29:50 UTC-6, Bill Rogers wrote:
>> On Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 10:44:51 AM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>> On Saturday, 18 June 2016 19:39:52 UTC-6, Bill Rogers wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 5:04:52 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Saturday, 18 June 2016 08:19:54 UTC-6, Bill Rogers
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 9:24:54 AM UTC-4, Steady
>>>>>> Eddie wrote:
>>>>>>> On Friday, 17 June 2016 07:49:57 UTC-6, Bill Rogers
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 17, 2016 at 8:29:57 AM UTC-4, Steady
>>>>>>>> Eddie wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Friday, 17 June 2016 05:14:57 UTC-6, Bill Rogers
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Thursday, June 16, 2016 at 9:49:58 PM UTC-4,
>>>>>>>>>> Steady Eddie wrote:

<snip>

>>> Furthermore, the fact that no naturalistic explanation for the
>>> origin of life has been be developed means that intelligent
>>> design is the best explanation at present. With respect, it
>>> seems disingenuous to claim that you "see no reason to think that
>>> the origin of life is an more supernatural than its subsequent
>>> evolution", at the same time admitting that you have no
>>> naturalistic explanation for the origin of life.
>>
>> But what is the "intelligent design explanation"?
>
> That an intelligent designer is required to produce the integrated,
> complex structures and systems we find in life at all scales.

That is quite obviously not an explanation. An explanation illuminates
the what, when, and how of the thing to be explained.

What you have so clumsily offered is a presumption. It is, in fact, the
very thing you're hoping to prove. It's a hypothesis, and it doesn't
explain anything.

> You didn't know that?

If only you knew enough to have a clue as to how little you know.

[Steady Eddie]

You want physical science to identify who the designer is?
Sorry, he apparently didn't sign his name in the genome. There are other ways to identify the designer -
the physical science can only tell us that an intelligent agent probably created the variety of life we see.

> or when and how he did the design work,

Again, the physical science cannot currently answer these questions.
Or is it only Darwinism that is allowed to have unanswered questions?

> or how he manufactured the products of design once they were designed.

Again, beyond the reach of our current scientific understanding.

> >
> > > no details about the designer,
> >
> > None required.
>
> How convenient.
> >
> > > nothing testable,
> >
> > It's being tested as we speak and has been tested for many decades by presumably many thousands of
> > Darwinists, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and they have been silent on their results because ID has
> > passed the test every time.
>
> To the extent that current biological research tests the theory of evolution it has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the many possible design theories. Even were it to prove the theory of evolution false, that would do nothing to prove any one of the possible design theories true. It would just show that one particular physical theory was false.
>
> When holes started to appear in Newtonian dynamics or in classical theories of blackbody radiation, they were not evidence that divine intervention was required, just evidence that a different physical theory was needed to account for all the observations.
>
> >
> > > nothing about the design process,
> >
> > Nothing required.
>
> How very convenient for you.
>
> >
> > > nothing about evidence for the existence of a designer apart from the things he allegedly designed.
> >
> > Here you get to the necessary and sufficient evidence for a designer, and you dismiss it at the same time.
> > LOL!
>
> Well, I've tried to argue civilly, but I'm happy to let my argument stand next to your LOL's.

Okay, so you're content to ignore the vast array of thousands or millions of complex, integrated structures
and systems that make up the biosphere, from ecology to nano-scale machines.

> >
> > > Intelligent design is not some default theory that is true until proven wrong by a detailed naturalistic explanation. Intelligent design, if it's science at all, is a class of models that have to be supported by positive evidence, just like any other non-design, scientific model. And for the moment, all you've got is the argument that there's no current naturalistic model that's been proven. That's not positive evidence for a designer, it just means we don't know yet.
> >
> > You make it sound like, according to ID advocates, if I see a stick in the woods and don't know exactly
> > how it got there, I declare it was by intelligent design!
> > Is that what you are claiming?

Is that a no?

[Steady Eddie]

And you expect me to believe you why?

[Steady Eddie]

...says the Darwinist
LOL!

[John Stockwell]

Most people have never heard of Wistar 1966. It's that insignficant.

[John Stockwell]

Actually, not identifying the "designer" is not the weak point of ID. The
weak point is that we do not identify design at all---we model manufacturing
processes.

So, your task as a "cdesign proponentist" is to do the following:
1) figure out the manufacturing process that made the biological structure
you have in minde
2) show physical evidence that this manufacturing process has, in deed, been
applied.

That's it. That is what would make the ID claim science. What exists now is
a form of creationism, which is just religious dogma made to appear scientific.

-John

[John Stockwell]

This isn't about belief. Science is about evidence.

[Steady Eddie]

Yes, and Darwinism is about philosophy and rhetoric.

[Steady Eddie]

That's your weak point, not mine.
Design is routinely identified in the sciences - archaeology and forensics, for example.
Go tell them your model - you will be hooted at.

[jillery]

The designs which archaeology and forensics identify are either known
or assumed to be of human origin, and so your implication that they
justify your assumption of a non-human Creator is logically
unsupportable.