The Argument for Suboptimal Design of the Eye "Is Folly"

[Steady Eddie]

...And I was wondering why there was no mention of the EYE when you Darwinists started listing off
"defective" design features...

So now you can repent at leisure... again...
----
This refuted the old objection to intelligent design that the vertebrate eye is "poorly designed" because the optic nerve extends over the retina instead of going out the back of the eye. These cells ensure that there is no loss of visual acuity due to the presence of the optic nerve, as the paper found, revealing the retina "as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images." As New Scientist put it at the time, these funnel-shaped cells "act as optical fibres, and rather than being just a workaround to make up for the eye's peculiarities, they help filter and focus light, making images clearer and keeping colours sharp."
----
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/physorg_special088541.html

[broger...@gmail.com]

So stingy of God not to share this with the squids.

[Steady Eddie]

I'll take that as a token of leisurely repentance.

[Jimbo]

Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
device was designed?

[jillery]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

Could you at least pretend to reply to the point being raised, instead
of evading it so blatantly?

[johnetho...@yahoo.com]

I guess he couldn't find anything that looked relevant to cut and paste.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Jimbo <jimbol...@nospam.com> wrote in
news:7e5qu9hv0ru9spj28...@4ax.com:

> On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
> <1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Thursday, 14 August 2014 12:59:56 UTC-6, broger...@gmail.com
>>wrote:

[snip]

>>> So stingy of God not to share this with the squids.
>>
>>I'll take that as a token of leisurely repentance.
>
> Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
> explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
> design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
> point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
> that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
> of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery.

'Only a fiend'? How narrow-minded. Clearly the designed flagellum was the
work of the Divine Bacterium, bestowing another blessing upon The Germy
Creation. All available evidence indicates that bacteria are, and have
always been, the dominant lifeforms on Earth, and there is good reason to
suppose that they will remain dominant for as long as life itself exists:
bacterial world without end, amen. The untold death and misery of a
comparatively few multicellular organisms don't amount to a hill of
amoebae in this crazy world.
--
S.O.P.

[Jimbo]

Well, I'll admit that yours is the most plausible intelligent design
hypothesis I've heard so far. The bacterial flagellum and a host of
other adaptations would make a lot more sense as the work of bacterial
engineers. The development and implementation of all those
invertebrate and vertebrate digestive tracts has provided our
bacterial overlords with vast numbers of roomy and comfortable
habitats.

But something tells me that ID proponents will have a hard time seeing
it that way. They want a smart and benevolent designer, a great
eukaryote up in the sky. But the Great Taboo forbids them from
confirming this fact. That's why Behe and the other prophets gave them
the Seven Commandments (plus addendum):

1. Thou shalt not make a graven image of the Designer.
2. Thou shalt not seek to define nor to describe the Designer in any
way.
3. Keep thine concepts of the Designer to thine own self and thy
fellow believers.
4. Know ye that the Designer loves thee.
5. Question not the Designer's motives nor seek ye to understand the
functions of the Designer's wonderful molecular machines.
6. Disregard commandment 5 in those cases where a molecular system is
clearly beneficial to mankind.
7. Shun ye all the unbeliever's attempts to question ye about such
matters - for they are materialists and unable to comprehend the
meaning of the Designer's designs.
7a. Moreover ... It ain't nobody's business but the Designer's.

[Mark Buchanan]

On Thursday, August 14, 2014 6:00:55 PM UTC-4, johnetho...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 14, 2014 2:30:00 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
> >

-snip=

>
> > Could you at least pretend to reply to the point being raised, instead
> > of evading it so blatantly?
> I guess he couldn't find anything that looked relevant to cut and paste.

Maybe Steady needs to have it spelled out clearly.

Steady, if the vertebrate eye is so perfectly designed by God then why did He do it the other way around in other species?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage

[Steady Eddie]

You'll have to ask Him if you get a chance.
that in no way excuses Darwinist hubris in declaring "junk!" before understanding how a feature really
works.

[RonO]

Is the vertebrate eye with the support cells in front of the
photoreceptors the way a good engineer would have designed the eye?
Having the junk in front made it necessary to "design" a blind spot hole
in the receptor panel so that all the wiring and support vessels could
go back through to where they need to go. This was not good design, but
just a design that was good enough to work. Why didn't the designer
give us the eye of a squid (designed the way a good engineer would
design it, support cells in back and no blind spot). Your designer
obviously had the better design, but what did the designer do? Why did
we get stuck with the eye of a fish instead of a squid?

Would a good engineer design a photoreceptor panel with the wiring in
the front partially obstructing the light that the panel was designed to
detect? When he figured out that he would have to make a blind spot
hole in the photoreceptor panel in order to get the wiring to the rear
of the photoreceptors and back to the processor would he have second
guessed his design and improved it before going into production?

Another company did it right and had the support cells in the back and
did not require a blind spot. Do you think the designer of the
vertebrate eye would have gotten the same bonus as the designer that did
it in a more sensible and efficient manner? Would you buy a camera
designed by the designer of the vertebrate eye or the designer of the
mollusc eye?

The eye is so much better evidence for descent with modification than
intelligent design that it is laughable. Why do all vertebrates have
the same eye design when there is an obviously better design in
existence? Why are the designs consistent with evolutionary lineages?

You are an IDiot what is Behe's explanation? Why don't you agree with
Behe's explanation? Why are you still an IDiot?

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Just as it doesn't excuse IDiots from declaring "designed" before

[jillery]

Why ask why? Apparently God made him that way.

[TomS]

"On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 07:07:11 -0500, in article <lskt5h$17v$1...@dont-email.me>,
RonO stated..."

I suggest that there are two issues:

1) The structure of the vertebrate eye is evidence for its being
designed.

2) The structure of the vertebrate eye is evidence for its *not*
being designed.

How do sub-optimal features relate to these issues?

As far as (2) is concerned, I would say that (2) is not well supported.

"The eye" might well be designed, despite the "backward wiring".

For one can point that "the eye" in any vertebrate arises by a complex
series of events in development. To "rewire" the retina would not take
just a simple change. It would take a change in the developmental
processes. *Moreover* it would take a change in the evolutionary history
of vertebrates.

On the other hand, because of suboptimal features of "the eye", it makes
a poor example to support (1). Especially if one is going to propose
design as an *alternative* to naturalistic accounts for the structure
of the eye. Design does not account sub-optimal features *except* by
appealing to there being naturalistic processes. *Moreover*, design
does not account for the eye working *at all* except that it uses
natural processes.


--
La trahison des images, Ren� Magritte ("Ceci n'est pas un pipe")
"the map is not the territory", Alfred Korzbyski
Design is not production.
---Tom S.

[TomS]

"On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 07:07:11 -0500, in article <lskt5h$17v$1...@dont-email.me>,
RonO stated..."
>

[Mark Buchanan]

On 8/15/2014 7:54 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Friday, 15 August 2014 00:22:07 UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>>
>> Maybe Steady needs to have it spelled out clearly.
>>
>> Steady, if the vertebrate eye is so perfectly designed by God then why did He do it the other way around in other species?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage
>
> You'll have to ask Him if you get a chance.
>

What you seem to be saying is that you are not willing to ask Him that
question yourself or consider the implications of the question. So God
gets credit for all the good and perfect design but anything bad or
contradictory we are supposed to ignore.

I'm certainly not the first person to ask these kinds of questions -
Darwin himself asked many like it in 1859.

> that in no way excuses Darwinist hubris in declaring "junk!" before >
> understanding how a feature really works.

Of course not, but you seem to be avoiding the issue simply by going
into attack mode.

[deadrat]

No, no, we declare your arguments "junk!" after reading them and
understanding how ludicrous they are.

[deadrat]

Yet another argument against Intelligent Design.

[Jimbo]

Good points. If there is a designer it operated under certain
constraints dictated by the basic developmental programs it chose to
employ. Since those developmental processes are evident everywhere,
design proponents might be able to come up with an actual theory if
they postulated a designer who made the universe in the manner these
engineers created a self-assembling robot:

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140807145900.htm>

Creating an entire universe might be a little more complex, of course,
but an immortal seven or eight dimensional being should be able to
handle it. Just create the initial conditions and let the whole thing
unfold for a few billion years.

[RonO]

Maybe the designer wanted eddie to be the way he is.

[deadrat]

Which is worse, that the Designer created steadfastly in his [God's] own
image or that the Designer created steadfastly because he wanted him
[steadfastly] to be that way?

An unintelligent designer or a a malicious designer?

[RonO]

The option that makes the most sense is none of the above. The best
supported conclusion is that the vertebrate eye is evidence for
biological evolution. Even Behe admits that descent with modification
happened, so the most viable conclusion is that the vertebrate eye is
evidence for descent with modification. If anyone wants to claim that
it is evidence that the designer tweeked some genomes to make the
vertebrate eye it would be up to them to support their claims with data
that obviously does not exist.

Ron Okimoto

[TomS]

"On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:30:57 -0500, in article <lsm1n4$t2l$1...@dont-email.me>,
RonO stated..."

But *before* trying to support their claims, I suggest that they
ought to describe what their claims are.

As things stand, it seems to be that the claims amount to something
like this: "Somewhere, somehow, something is amiss with evolutionary
biology".

Because of the negative vacuity of the claims, it is difficult to
propose a good argument against it. I know that many smart people
have come up with arguments against it, but those anti-ID
arguments rely on our knowing something about design works.

The only examples of generally recognized design provide hints as
to what ID can do. But we know that the advocates of ID will tell
us that "that is not what is meant", or "you are assuming how a
designer would work".

That's why IMHO the argument from suboptimal design doesn't work
in casting doubt on design.

Design as we know it takes account of the ways of the world. For
example, the vertebrate eye is make up of the same sort of
materials as the rest of life, and it works because of the laws
of optics, and it grows by naturalistic/materialistic development.

That's the way that a design is implicated in the production of
projects. A designer, by resorting to design, takes account of
what can be done with the raw materials. For all we know about
design, that's what it means.

>
>>
>> How do sub-optimal features relate to these issues?
>>
>> As far as (2) is concerned, I would say that (2) is not well supported.
>>
>> "The eye" might well be designed, despite the "backward wiring".
>>
>> For one can point that "the eye" in any vertebrate arises by a complex
>> series of events in development. To "rewire" the retina would not take
>> just a simple change. It would take a change in the developmental
>> processes. *Moreover* it would take a change in the evolutionary history
>> of vertebrates.
>>
>> On the other hand, because of suboptimal features of "the eye", it makes
>> a poor example to support (1). Especially if one is going to propose
>> design as an *alternative* to naturalistic accounts for the structure
>> of the eye. Design does not account sub-optimal features *except* by
>> appealing to there being naturalistic processes. *Moreover*, design
>> does not account for the eye working *at all* except that it uses
>> natural processes.
>>
>>
>

[Steady Eddie]

On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
L, O, L.

[Steady Eddie]

You've always been a bit squirrelly.
Why don't you try to explain yourself again, this time type slower.

[Jimbo]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:26:15 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
>> On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>>
>> >On Thursday, 14 August 2014 12:59:56 UTC-6, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> >> On Thursday, August 14, 2014 2:26:09 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>
>> >> > ...And I was wondering why there was no mention of the EYE when you Darwinists started listing off
>>
>> >> > "defective" design features...
>> >> > So now you can repent at leisure... again...
>>

>> >> > This refuted the old objection to intelligent design that the vertebrate eye is "poorly designed" because the optic nerve extends over the retina instead of going out the back of the eye. These cells ensure that there is no loss of visual acuity due to the presence of the optic nerve, as the paper found, revealing the retina "as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images." As New Scientist put it at the time, these funnel-shaped cells "act as optical fibres, and rather than being just a workaround to make up for the eye's peculiarities, they help filter and focus light, making images clearer and keeping colours sharp."
>>

>> >> > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/physorg_special088541.html
>>
>> >> So stingy of God not to share this with the squids.
>>
>> I'll take that as a token of leisurely repentance.
>> Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
>> explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
>> design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
>> point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
>> that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>> of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
>> different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
>> device was designed?
>
>What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
>I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
>L, O, L.

ID proponents refuse to engage in scientific investigation of the
putative designer. They say such investigation is beyond current human
capacity. But they are wrong. It may not be possible to observe the
putative intelligent designer or designers (possibly because no such
designers ever existed) but they certainly could, if they were so
inclined, investigate how molecular systems function to achieve
particular goals.

The bacterial flagellum can be analyzed in the same we would analyze a
hammer or wrench to find out what it's good for. Entire complex
electro-mechanical systems such as airplanes can be analyzed in this
way and reverse engineered. Ideally this analysis will consider how
each part and subsystem functions with the broader systems it
functions within, but that's not an impossible thing to do. Real
scientists do it everyday.

So why can't intelligent design proponents operate in this practical
way and objectively analyze how their putative intelligently designed
systems function? They could start with what is supposed to be one of
the supreme examples of intelligent design, the bacterial flagellum.
It's not difficult to begin such an analysis, but they won't do it
because it functions to make pathogenic bacteria more virulent. It
helps those bacteria infect us and other creatures. ID proponents must
have a Great Taboo which prevents them from considering such facts. It
also prevents them from even attempting any real science.

So how is my challenge 'religious?' Why do you immediately take it as
such when I merely asked you to analyze the function of the bacterial
flagellum in the same way you would analyses the function of a wrench
or a screwdriver? Your response reveals that you believe the putative
designer must be a supernatural entity. It also reveals that you, like
all other design proponents, are unwilling to analyze the motives of
that entity by examining the functions of many molecular machines (or
of many macro-scale plant and animal adaptations for that matter).

Why are you so reluctant? It's probably because such analysis would
lead us immediately to question why any intelligent entity would
design systems that function to bring about death and misery, not only
to ourselves but to other creatures.

[Steady Eddie]

On Friday, 15 August 2014 19:31:25 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:26:15 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

I rest my case.

[deadrat]

Yup, steadfastly, that's what it is. If Goddidit, then we have some
evidence for the kind of god that did it. How do you like your god?

<snip/>

[Vincent Maycock]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:54:06 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, 15 August 2014 00:22:07 UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 14, 2014 6:00:55 PM UTC-4, johnetho...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> > On Thursday, August 14, 2014 2:30:00 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>>
>> >
>>
>> > > On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>>
>> >
>>
>> > >
>>
>> -snip=
>>
>> >
>>
>> > > Could you at least pretend to reply to the point being raised, instead
>>
>> > > of evading it so blatantly?
>>
>> > I guess he couldn't find anything that looked relevant to cut and paste.
>>
>>
>>
>> Maybe Steady needs to have it spelled out clearly.
>>
>>
>>
>> Steady, if the vertebrate eye is so perfectly designed by God then why did He do it the other way around in other species?
>>
>>
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage
>
>You'll have to ask Him if you get a chance.

We should only be willing to ask people for things if there's some
reason to think they'll give them to us. But if God could tell us
things, there would be no need for a Web site to email us our password
if we forget it; we could just ask God and he would tell us what it
is.

>that in no way excuses Darwinist hubris in declaring "junk!" before understanding how a feature really
>works.

No, you declared Darwinian macroevolution to be "junk" without
understanding it, so you're the one with the problem here.

Non-functional DNA is well-understood enough that we can be fairly
certain that it isn't any use for anything for the living things in
which it's found. In fact, in many cases we can even identify how the
uselessness in the genome got there, and what its future in the genome
is, now that it's sitting there, uselessly taking up space in the
genome.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <XnsA3899F4A6472Bsn...@78.46.70.116>,

"Sneaky O. Possum" <sneaky...@gmail.com> wrote:

And that is why the Divine Creator does so much to further antibiotic
resistance.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge — 'He prayeth best, who loveth best All things
both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and
loveth all.'

Just think of the tender care God gives to Syphilis bacteria and the
Aid virus and grants immunity to our medicines to the malaria parasite.

--
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <g5mqu99jae61sfpg9...@4ax.com>,

Jimbo <jimbol...@nospam.com> wrote:

> Well, I'll admit that yours is the most plausible intelligent design
> hypothesis I've heard so far. The bacterial flagellum and a host of
> other adaptations would make a lot more sense as the work of bacterial
> engineers. The development and implementation of all those
> invertebrate and vertebrate digestive tracts has provided our
> bacterial overlords with vast numbers of roomy and comfortable
> habitats.

Oh, they are not confined to the digestive tract, but inhabit all our
organs. And the benevolence is not confined to procaryotes, but the
Creator has provided for liver flukes, and the guinea worm which we
have blasphemously almost eradicated. This anti environmental
extermination of whole species must stop.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <nhatu9lu5dh59f6hg...@4ax.com>,

Jimbo <jimbol...@nospam.com> wrote:

> ID proponents must
> have a Great Taboo which prevents them from considering such facts. It
> also prevents them from even attempting any real science.

It's also known as "thought stopping".

[TomS]

"On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:31:25 -0700, in article
<nhatu9lu5dh59f6hg...@4ax.com>, Jimbo stated..."

The examples taken for the analogy of design seem to be predominantly
of cells, organs, or individuals.

Far more complex are the ways that things that relate to one another.
The subject matter of ecology, biogeography, or taxonomy. Or even
paleobiology.

Why not wonder at the ways of the Lord as manifested in the emergence
of morganucodon?

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote in
news:proto-D075B2....@news.panix.com:

It's sad that we humans always look for somebody else to blame for our
own mistakes. The Divine Bacterium is not responsible for our
overuse of antibiotics.

> Samuel Taylor Coleridge �" 'He prayeth best, who loveth best All
> things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made
> and loveth all.'
>
> Just think of the tender care God gives to Syphilis bacteria and the
> Aid virus and grants immunity to our medicines to the malaria
> parasite.

Typical antibacterial bigotry. There are tens of thousands of species of
bacteria, and the vast majority of them never did our species any harm,
but who cares about them, right? And of course you lump bacteria and
viruses together, as though bacteria themselves weren't vulnerable to
viral infections! Hmph. No more sourdough bread for *you*.
--
S.O.P.

[Steady Eddie]

So you want to talk religion. Hmm...

[Steady Eddie]

On Saturday, 16 August 2014 02:19:39 UTC-6, Vincent Maycock wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:54:06 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

Go ahead, make the same mistake again without even missing a beat:
declare "JUNK!" in haste, and repent at leisure.

[Steady Eddie]

On Saturday, 16 August 2014 07:05:23 UTC-6, Walter Bushell wrote:
> In article <XnsA3899F4A6472Bsn...@78.46.70.116>,
>
> "Sneaky O. Possum" <sneaky...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Jimbo <jimbol...@nospam.com> wrote in
>
> > news:7e5qu9hv0ru9spj28...@4ax.com:
>
> >
>
> > > On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
> > >
>

> > >>On Thursday, 14 August 2014 12:59:56 UTC-6, broger...@gmail.com
>
> > >>wrote:
>
> > [snip]
>
> > >>> So stingy of God not to share this with the squids.
>
> > >>
>
> > >>I'll take that as a token of leisurely repentance.
>
> > >
>
> > > Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
>
> > > explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
>
> > > design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
>
> > > point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
>
> > > that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>
> > > of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery.
>
> >
>
> > 'Only a fiend'? How narrow-minded. Clearly the designed flagellum was the
>
> > work of the Divine Bacterium, bestowing another blessing upon The Germy
>
> > Creation. All available evidence indicates that bacteria are, and have
>
> > always been, the dominant lifeforms on Earth, and there is good reason to
>
> > suppose that they will remain dominant for as long as life itself exists:
>
> > bacterial world without end, amen. The untold death and misery of a
>
> > comparatively few multicellular organisms don't amount to a hill of
>
> > amoebae in this crazy world.
>
>
>
> And that is why the Divine Creator does so much to further antibiotic
>
> resistance.
>
>
>

> Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- 'He prayeth best, who loveth best All things

>
> both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and
>
> loveth all.'
>
>
>
> Just think of the tender care God gives to Syphilis bacteria and the
>
> Aid virus and grants immunity to our medicines to the malaria parasite.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

LOL
sore loser,
but loser nonetheless.

[Vincent Maycock]

Realistically speaking, your scenario is not going to happen. We know
so much about the genome now and have performed so many checks on the
idea that much of non-coding DNA really is non-functional (compared
to the early days when some scientists assumed it was non-functional
without today's massive amount of accumulated knowledge on the matter
-- and these moderately irresponsible scientists who made that mistake
early on immediately drew criticism from other scientists of course),
that we can pretty sure that there's not going be another mistake
waiting for us down the road if we state that it's more or less a
fact that about approximately 90% of the genome serves no purpose, and
is merely evolutionary baggage.

The real debate is whether it's between 85% and 88%, like ENCODE would
is now claiming (having repented of their claim that it was only
20%-30%), or between 90 and 91%, which is the more mainstream view on
the matter. And of course that means 0% non-functionality, the number
creationists would need in order to claim that the genome was formed
by a wise and loving God, rather than a creator of junk, is out of the
question.

[Nick Roberts]

In message <1f919f49-6f4a-4652...@googlegroups.com>

> LOL
> sore loser,
> but loser nonetheless.

No argument then?

Why do you bother making postings that basically say "I got nothing"?
Wouldn't it be better just to post nothing?

I am slowly awakening to the possibility that SE is a loki. He's
beginning to show signs of flagging in his determination to rehash
every single one of the creationist mantras, and is now doing nothing
other than c&p a random "it's all so perfect hence God" every few days,
and ignoring all responses other than "lol" or similar null-value
comments.

C'mon, Steadly, you can do better than this! Where's the determination
to exhibit your total but determined ignorance that captivated us all
just a few months ago?

--
Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/16/14 5:59 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> [...]

> So you want to talk religion. Hmm...

I would like to, yes. Please explain what, if anything, creationism
brings to religion that is good.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Keep the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who have
found it." - Vaclav Havel

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 05:29:23 UTC-6, Vincent Maycock wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Aug 2014 18:04:01 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>

>
>
>

Please cite your source on that.

or between 90 and 91%, which is the more mainstream view on
>
> the matter. And of course that means 0% non-functionality, the number
>
> creationists would need in order to claim that the genome was formed
>
> by a wise and loving God, rather than a creator of junk, is out of the
>
> question.

We'll see.
It's still early days.

[Steady Eddie]

Sorry. I let the Darwinists talk religion, as I know you must, for your theory is based on your belief
that there is no Creator.

Suffice it to say that the Bible contains sufficient information to make rational assumptions as to why
nature (and humankind, if you think there's a difference between the two) is the way it is at present.
But I only discuss the Bible with spiritually-minded people if at all, and you don't qualify.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 06:19:41 UTC-6, Nick Roberts wrote:
> In message <1f919f49-6f4a-4652...@googlegroups.com>

----
Michael Behe explains that ID remains silent on questions about whether the designer is natural or supernatural:

"[ID] is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God, as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel--fallen or not; Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science. Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo."(8)

Some critics allege that ID proponents are "coy" about the identity of the designer, which they really believe is God. Yet ID proponents are also very open about their views about the identity of the designer--they have just made it clear that these are their own personal beliefs and not conclusions of intelligent design theory proper. For example, Michael Behe explains:

"most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God--based in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made--I did not claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that, from a scientific point of view, the question remains open. ... The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not show who the designer was"(9)
- See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/id-does-not-address-religious-claims-about-the-supernatural#sthash.Hcn3n7k8.dpuf
----

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:13:43 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> Michael Behe explains that ID remains silent on questions about whether the designer is natural or supernatural:
>

> "[ID] is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God, as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel--fallen or not; Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science. Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo."(8)
>
>
>
> Some critics allege that ID proponents are "coy" about the identity of the designer, which they really believe is God. Yet ID proponents are also very open about their views about the identity of the designer--they have just made it clear that these are their own personal beliefs and not conclusions of intelligent design theory proper. For example, Michael Behe explains:
>
>
>
> "most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God--based in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made--I did not claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that, from a scientific point of view, the question remains open. ... The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not show who the designer was"(9)
>
> - See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/id-does-not-address-religious-claims-about-the-supernatural#sthash.Hcn3n7k8.dpuf
>
> ----

But ID really cannot accommodate anything except a supernatural designer. The whole argument of ID is that something as complex as the eye or the brain cannot have arisen by purely natural processes. Well if an eye cannot evolve by natural processes, surely something complex enough to design and manufacture an eye cannot occur by natural processes. So the only choice for ID is a supernatural designer. In principle, it needn't be a Christian God, but it has to be supernatural or it doesn't solve any of the problems that ID thinks it has found with evolution, it merely pushes them off onto another planet.

[Steady Eddie]

On Friday, 15 August 2014 19:31:25 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:26:15 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

-----
The explanation why we have death and disease is in the Bible, the Creator's communication with man.

As for this 'reluctance' to investigate how the bacterial flagellum works and is built:
What rock have you been living under?
Obviously you haven't read Darwin's Black Box OR The Edge of Evolution, which has an appendix
entitled "Assembling the Bacterial Flagellum".

[Steady Eddie]

That is a valid INFERENCE; the logical conclusion we can DRAW from the science, but that is not the
science itself and bears no influence on what the scientific facts are.

So I agree with you, but don't confuse the implications of a theory with the content of the theory itself.

[jillery]

That's one way to rationalize preaching to the choir.

[deadrat]

On 8/17/14 11:10 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 17 August 2014 09:15:26 UTC-6, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/16/14 5:59 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>>> So you want to talk religion. Hmm...
>>
>>
>>
>> I would like to, yes. Please explain what, if anything, creationism
>>
>> brings to religion that is good.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
>>
>> "Keep the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who have
>>
>> found it." - Vaclav Havel
>
> Sorry. I let the Darwinists talk religion, as I know you must, for your theory is based on your belief
> that there is no Creator.
>
> Suffice it to say that the Bible contains sufficient information to make rational assumptions as to why
> nature (and humankind, if you think there's a difference between the two) is the way it is at present.

Sure, for credulous ignoramuses like you.

> But I only discuss the Bible with spiritually-minded people if at all, and you don't qualify.

I'm gonna guess that first clause isn't true. First of all, I doubt you
know much about the Bible. For instance, I'll bet you can read it only
in translation. Secondly, I doubt your "discussions" involve
"spiritually-minded people," but only like-minded bibliolators.

But it's a good strategy. After all, when you think a book is evidence,
what can you say when non-spiritually minded people ask why you don't
believe that the Harry Potter series is evidence for the truth of its
narrative? Or The Book of Mormon?

I expect it wouldn't take many discussions with skeptics in which you
try to defend the Noachian flood as a historical event before you decide
not to talk to those people again. Even given your high tolerance for
ridicule.

[deadrat]

IDiocy is not really an argument at all. It's an assertion.

> I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God,

Despite all the evidence to the contrary. But that's practically the
definition of methodology of IDiocy.

> and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument.

Again, there's nothing to extend. IDiocy is philosophy and theology for
the credulous.

> But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far.

In the sense of "that far" equaling zero.

> Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open.

The necessity of this ruse vanished when the pros at Dover demolished
IDiocy as a scientific enterprise.

> Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity;
> an angel--fallen or not; Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force;
> space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being.

Convenient that for all of these either scientific evidence is
impossible or if possible, is non-existent.

> Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science.

Aren't they all pretty much at the same level of plausibility? I'm
going with Yaldabaoth.

> Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo."(8)

And happily the pros at Dover saw through this ploy and understood that
IDiots were merely trying to fingo themselves into public-school science
classes. Newton may not have understood the why of gravity, but he at
least gave us something useful. IDiots cannot even come up with a
definition of design.

> Some critics allege that ID proponents are "coy" about the identity of the designer, which they really believe is God.
> Yet ID proponents are also very open about their views about the identity of the designer--they have just made it clear
> that these are their own personal beliefs and not conclusions of intelligent design theory proper.

There simply are no scientific conclusions of IDiocy, proper or
improper. In fact, the only conclusion is "Goddidit!"

For example, Michael Behe explains:
>
> "most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God--based in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made--
> I did not claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that,
> from a scientific point of view, the question remains open. ...

From a scientific point of view this isn't even a scientific question.

> The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not show who the designer was"(9)

Since there's no operational definition of design, this seems a tad bold.

> - See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/id-does-not-address-religious-claims-about-the-supernatural#sthash.Hcn3n7k8.dpuf

See more of the same, you mean.

[deadrat]

Then game over, Steadfastly. Let me put it in a form you can
understand: GAME OVER, LOL.

> the logical conclusion we can DRAW from the science, but that is not the
> science itself and bears no influence on what the scientific facts are.

If the logical conclusion of your effort is supernatural, then your
effort is a religious enterprise. Science doesn't enter into it.

> So I agree with you, but don't confuse the implications of a theory with the content of the theory itself.

I don't think you should be offering advice on how not to be confused.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:41:02 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> That is a valid INFERENCE; the logical conclusion we can DRAW from the science, but that is not the
>
> science itself and bears no influence on what the scientific facts are.
>
>
>
> So I agree with you, but don't confuse the implications of a theory with the content of the theory itself.

Since the valid inference from the theory of ID is that the designer of ID must be supernatural, it is disingenuous at least, if not outright dishonest, for ID advocates like Behe to claim that they are NOT specifying a supernatural designer.

However, the fact that their designer MUST be supernatural easily explains why ID has no scientific program to identify the designer or the designer's methods, or the period during which the designer was active, or the manufacturing process he used. You know, any of the questions that would be obvious and exciting if ID were an actual scientific theory instead of a very thinly disguised God of the Gaps argument.

[Mark Buchanan]

Every time you mention ID you are talking religion. The smoke screen of
neither identifying nor describing the designer simply doesn't work.
Anything unnatural has to be supernatural.

[jillery]

Too bad for you that the "theory" of ID, that the INFERENCE of design
proves the INFERENCE of an unknown, unseen, undefined designer, which
proves the INFERENCE of design, isn't a scientific theory. It's not
even logical.

[Jimbo]

The reason we have infectious diseases is that pathogenic bacteria,
viruses, parasitic protozoans and prions exist. Although the Bible
writers knew nothing of these microscopic organisms, the Bible claims
that Yahweh created everything and this would imply that he also
created pathogenic bacteria and also every sort of loathsome parasite.
If you claim that such organisms are the work of the Devil, this would
imply that Satan's creative powers are as great as God's, because the
mechanisms by which pathogenic microbes infect, and by which they
defend against their victim's immune systems, are among the best
examples of so-called 'intelligent design.' I believe it's considered
heretical to claim co-equal creative powers for God and Satan,
therefore the only option left, if Genesis is to be interpreted
literally, is that God is an evil being who likes to design clever
mechanisms by which, for example, worms can migrate into children's
eyes and make them go blind.

ID proponents have had twenty years to test the implications of their
claims and in all that time they've never taken even the first step
toward doing so. Behe's descriptions of the bacterial flagellum aren't
science. If he were an archaeologist he would minutely describe copper
chisels that had been discovered in a pyramid. He might even describe
the chisel marks on the stones. And then he'd conclude that, although
these curious objects were clearly the product of intelligent design,
it was impossible to determine their function.

ID, as presently constituted, has no explanatory power - none at all.
It has contributed nothing to the progress of science. This stands in
stark contrast to modern evolutionary theory which can and does
account for adaptations of every type.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 12:02:37 UTC-6, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:41:02 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

Too bad you can't understand it.

[jillery]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:04:25 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >So I agree with you, but don't confuse the implications of a theory with the content of the theory itself.
>>
>> Too bad for you that the "theory" of ID, that the INFERENCE of design
>> proves the INFERENCE of an unknown, unseen, undefined designer, which
>> proves the INFERENCE of design, isn't a scientific theory. It's not
>> even logical.
>
>Too bad you can't understand it.

So what's your excuse?

[alias Ernest Major]

With defenders like you ID doesn't need enemies. (You are spending your
time telling us the Behe's "The Edge of Evolution" is vacuous. That is
consistent with ID not being a scientific theory.)

--
alias Ernest Major

[eridanus]

El s�bado, 16 de agosto de 2014 01:26:15 UTC+1, Steady Eddie escribi�:

> On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > >On Thursday, 14 August 2014 12:59:56 UTC-6, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >
>
> > >> On Thursday, August 14, 2014 2:26:09 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> > ...And I was wondering why there was no mention of the EYE when you Darwinists started listing off
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> > "defective" design features...
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> > So now you can repent at leisure... again...
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>

> > >> > ----

>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> > This refuted the old objection to intelligent design that the vertebrate eye is "poorly designed" because the optic nerve extends over the retina instead of going out the back of the eye. These cells ensure that there is no loss of visual acuity due to the presence of the optic nerve, as the paper found, revealing the retina "as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images." As New Scientist put it at the time, these funnel-shaped cells "act as optical fibres, and rather than being just a workaround to make up for the eye's peculiarities, they help filter and focus light, making images clearer and keeping colours sharp."
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>

> > >> > ----

>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> >
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/physorg_special088541.html
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >>
>
> >
>
> > >> So stingy of God not to share this with the squids.
>
> >
>
> > >
>
> >
>
> > >I'll take that as a token of leisurely repentance.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
>
> >
>
> > explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
>
> >
>
> > design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
>
> >
>
> > point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
>
> >
>
> > that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>
> >
>
> > of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
>
> >
>
> > different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
>
> >
>
> > device was designed?
>
>
>
> What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
>
> I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
>
> L, O, L.

from where do you took they were motivated by religion?
It is clear that the naturalistic approach of scientists, including
Darwin, have an indirect relation to religion. This indirect relation
was that "arguments from the bible as the word of god, and thus they
were to be considered as true do not convinced those scientists."
I mean, if I were convinced, or anyone here were so, that the truth is
within the literal interpretation of the bible and the Genesis, not
anyone was going to make or to accept such ideas as the Theory of Evolution
or the Heliocentric theory, or to accept the atomic radiation as
portraying the age of the earth about 4.5 billion years old. Then, the
quest of scientists is not that of opposing religion; they simply are
"ignoring religion" as the mother lode of intelligence.
Eri

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/17/14 9:10 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 17 August 2014 09:15:26 UTC-6, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/16/14 5:59 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>> So you want to talk religion. Hmm...
>>
>> I would like to, yes. Please explain what, if anything, creationism
>> brings to religion that is good.
>

> Sorry. I let the Darwinists talk religion, as I know you must,
> for your theory is based on your belief that there is no Creator.

You are bearing false witness. Evolution is entirely compatible with a
Creator, and its basis has exactly zilch to do with belief in a creator.
Furthermore, you do not even know whether or not I personally believe
in a Creator.

> Suffice it to say that the Bible contains sufficient
> information to make rational assumptions as to why
> nature (and humankind, if you think there's a difference
> between the two) is the way it is at present.

I have read the Bible, and it is entirely inadequate to the task of
explaining the origin of the rings of Saturn, the distribution of
earthquakes, or the Flynn effect, among about a billion other things.
Why do you think God inspired other books, too?

> But I only discuss the Bible with spiritually-minded people
> if at all, and you don't qualify.

Neither do you. Just above, you blatantly broke one of the Bible's
commandments. Many of your posts show that you do not even appreciate
humility much less strive for it, and your unwillingness to study
biology shows, above all, a lack of appreciation of God's creation.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 13:00:58 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:36:28 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

Yup, when you're cornered, go on the attack and change the subject with vaporous assertions...lol

[Jimbo]

You claimed that the Bible contains 'the explanation of why we have
death and disease.' I replied that infectious disease is caused by
pathogenic microbes unknown to the writers of the Bible. That wasn't a
change of subject. It was a direct response to your claim. It also was
a true and valid response. Pathogenic microbes indeed *are* the cause
of infectious disease. It's also true that, if God directly created
all life forms, he created all the virulent bacteria and all the
parasites that afflict humans and other creatures.

You can claim that Satan, not God, created all such virulent and
loathsome organisms, but you will be directly contradicting scripture
and professing a heretical viewpoint.

Isaiah 45:7 : I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and
create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

So who created all those pathogenic bacteria with their marvelous
molecular motors and flagella? Do you have the guts, intelligence and
knowledge to answer that question?

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 16:20:32 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 14:47:08 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

Go ahead, Bible scholar, believe what you want.
Like I said, I don't discuss the Bible with the likes of you.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 16:20:32 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 14:47:08 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

You're just sore because I pointed out another instance where Darwinian hubris was wrong in
proclaiming "JUNK!"

[Dana Tweedy]

On 8/17/14, 10:10 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 17 August 2014 09:15:26 UTC-6, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 8/16/14 5:59 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>>> So you want to talk religion. Hmm...
>>
>>
>>
>> I would like to, yes. Please explain what, if anything, creationism
>>
>> brings to religion that is good.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
>>
>> "Keep the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who have
>>
>> found it." - Vaclav Havel
>
> Sorry. I let the Darwinists talk religion, as I know you must, for your theory is based on your belief
> that there is no Creator.

The theory of evolution takes no position at all on whether or not there
is a "creator". It simply explains the evidence, without regard to
unnecessary complications, which include supernatural beings.

Many people believe in God, and also accept the fact of evolution.
There's no need to reject a belief in God in order to accept the
scientific findings about the Earth and it's inhabitants.

>
> Suffice it to say that the Bible contains sufficient information to make rational assumptions as to why
> nature (and humankind, if you think there's a difference between the two) is the way it is at present.

Actually, one doesn't require anything to make assumptions. Assumptions
don't have to be based on any actual knowledge, or experience. What
the Bible says may allow one to rationalize current conditions, but it
hardly permits rational conclusions. For that, one requires evidence.

> But I only discuss the Bible with spiritually-minded people if at all, and you don't qualify.

Apparently a "spiritually minded person" is code for one you agree with.


DJT

>

[jillery]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 14:47:08 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Yup, when you're cornered, go on the attack and change the subject with vaporous assertions...lol

<PING!> Dammit!

[jillery]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 16:51:36 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:


>> >Yup, when you're cornered, go on the attack and change the subject with vaporous assertions...lol
>>
>> You claimed that the Bible contains 'the explanation of why we have
>> death and disease.' I replied that infectious disease is caused by
>> pathogenic microbes unknown to the writers of the Bible. That wasn't a
>> change of subject. It was a direct response to your claim. It also was
>> a true and valid response. Pathogenic microbes indeed *are* the cause
>> of infectious disease. It's also true that, if God directly created
>> all life forms, he created all the virulent bacteria and all the
>> parasites that afflict humans and other creatures.
>>
>> You can claim that Satan, not God, created all such virulent and
>> loathsome organisms, but you will be directly contradicting scripture
>> and professing a heretical viewpoint.
>>
>> Isaiah 45:7 : I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and
>> create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
>>
>> So who created all those pathogenic bacteria with their marvelous
>> molecular motors and flagella? Do you have the guts, intelligence and
>> knowledge to answer that question?
>
>You're just sore because I pointed out another instance where Darwinian hubris was wrong in
>proclaiming "JUNK!"

So that's a "no".

[deadrat]

Go ahead, Bibliolator, believe what you want.

> Like I said, I don't discuss the Bible with the likes of you.
>

Sure thing, Brave Sir Robin.

[deadrat]

Because you're so desperate to be right, you think scientists are just
as desperate. But they're not. All science is provisional.

[Jimbo]

I wasn't asking you about the Bible. I was asking whether you had the
courage and ability to demonstrate that ID has explanatory power. I
claim that it has no explanatory power whatever. No ID science has
ever been done. In the entire decades long period of its existence it
hasn't contributed to a single scientific discovery.

If you believe that bacterial flagella and other molecular systems
were designed, you should be able to discuss the apparent purpose or
purposes of those systems in the same way that we can discuss the
purpose of a chisel or the airfoil design of an airplane wing. There's
no need to discuss the Bible in any of this. I wouldn't have quoted
any verses if you yourself hadn't claimed that the explanation for
sickness is in the Bible.

Don't you think it's sort of odd that you claim the Bible explains the
cause of disease and yet you refuse to discuss that claim? You also
seem completely unwilling to discuss the scientific explanation. Can
you do more than cut and paste? I'll ask you again: do you accept that
pathogenic microbes are the cause of infectious disease? it's an easy
question and there's no reason you should refuse to answer it. Why
won't you even attempt to support your claims?

[Vincent Maycock]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:05:46 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, 17 August 2014 05:29:23 UTC-6, Vincent Maycock wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Aug 2014 18:04:01 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>>
>
>>
>>
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>> >On Saturday, 16 August 2014 02:19:39 UTC-6, Vincent Maycock wrote:
>>
>> >> On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:54:06 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
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>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >> >On Friday, 15 August 2014 00:22:07 UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
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>> >> >> On Thursday, August 14, 2014 6:00:55 PM UTC-4, johnetho...@yahoo.com wrote:

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>> >> >> > On Thursday, August 14, 2014 2:30:00 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
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>> >> >> > > On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:29:27 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
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>> >> >> -snip=
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>> >> >> > > Could you at least pretend to reply to the point being raised, instead
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>> >> >> > > of evading it so blatantly?
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>> >> >> > I guess he couldn't find anything that looked relevant to cut and paste.
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>> >> >> Maybe Steady needs to have it spelled out clearly.
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>> >> >> Steady, if the vertebrate eye is so perfectly designed by God then why did He do it the other way around in other species?
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>> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage
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>> >> >You'll have to ask Him if you get a chance.
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>> >> We should only be willing to ask people for things if there's some
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>> >> reason to think they'll give them to us. But if God could tell us
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>> >>
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>> >> things, there would be no need for a Web site to email us our password
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>> >>
>>
>> >> if we forget it; we could just ask God and he would tell us what it
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>> >> is.
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>> >> >that in no way excuses Darwinist hubris in declaring "junk!" before understanding how a feature really
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>> >> >works.
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>> >> No, you declared Darwinian macroevolution to be "junk" without
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>> >>
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>> >> understanding it, so you're the one with the problem here.
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>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >> Non-functional DNA is well-understood enough that we can be fairly
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>> >>
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>> >> certain that it isn't any use for anything for the living things in
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>> >>
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>> >> which it's found. In fact, in many cases we can even identify how the
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>> >>
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>> >> uselessness in the genome got there, and what its future in the genome
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>> >>
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>> >> is, now that it's sitting there, uselessly taking up space in the
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>> >>
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>> >> genome.
>>
>> >
>>
>> >Go ahead, make the same mistake again without even missing a beat:
>>
>> >declare "JUNK!" in haste, and repent at leisure.
>>
>>
>>
>> Realistically speaking, your scenario is not going to happen. We know
>>
>> so much about the genome now and have performed so many checks on the
>>
>> idea that much of non-coding DNA really is non-functional (compared
>>
>> to the early days when some scientists assumed it was non-functional
>>
>> without today's massive amount of accumulated knowledge on the matter
>>
>> -- and these moderately irresponsible scientists who made that mistake
>>
>> early on immediately drew criticism from other scientists of course),
>>
>> that we can pretty sure that there's not going be another mistake
>>
>> waiting for us down the road if we state that it's more or less a
>>
>> fact that about approximately 90% of the genome serves no purpose, and
>>
>> is merely evolutionary baggage.
>>
>>
>>
>> The real debate is whether it's between 85% and 88%, like ENCODE would
>>
>> is now claiming (having repented of their claim that it was only
>>
>> 20%-30%),
>Please cite your source on that.

Instead of setting yourself up to getting shot down like this, I would
think you would want to take to Google yourself rather than publicly
asking me if I know what I'm talking about. But since you did feed me
the straight line, so to speak, here you go:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/reports-junk-dnas-demise-were-based-junky-logic-and-dubious-definitions



> or between 90 and 91%, which is the more mainstream view on
>>
>> the matter. And of course that means 0% non-functionality, the number
>>
>> creationists would need in order to claim that the genome was formed
>>
>> by a wise and loving God, rather than a creator of junk, is out of the
>>
>> question.
>
>We'll see.
>It's still early days.

Early days was decades ago, since we've been studying this the 1970s.
You're obviously an optimistic person (to use a charitable description
of what could be an inappropriate application of some sort of
religious faith to a matter that's been scientifically settled), but
at some point you've got to face scientific reality: 0% is never going
to happen.

[Steady Eddie]

Of course, when Darwiinists describe why evolution is "true": you have to be "dumb" not to believe it.
When backed into a corner: all science is provisional.

[Steady Eddie]

On Sunday, 17 August 2014 19:39:00 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 16:50:21 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

The immediate cause of infectious disease is pathogenic microbes of course, silly.

[Steady Eddie]

On Monday, 18 August 2014 01:35:37 UTC-6, Vincent Maycock wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:05:46 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
>
>
>

Thanks for supplying your source.
This article discusses philosophical and definitional arguments; not scientific ones.
Of course Darwinists are going to throw all the shit they can at ENCODE the same way they do to
all of ID theory.
But it's just philosophy and word games.

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > or between 90 and 91%, which is the more mainstream view on
>
> >>
>
> >> the matter. And of course that means 0% non-functionality, the number
>
> >>
>
> >> creationists would need in order to claim that the genome was formed
>
> >>
>
> >> by a wise and loving God, rather than a creator of junk, is out of the
>
> >>
>
> >> question.
>
> >
>
> >We'll see.
>
> >It's still early days.
>
>
>
> Early days was decades ago, since we've been studying this the 1970s.
>
> You're obviously an optimistic person (to use a charitable description
>
> of what could be an inappropriate application of some sort of
>
> religious faith to a matter that's been scientifically settled), but
>
> at some point you've got to face scientific reality: 0% is never going
>
> to happen.

LOL, the hubris of Darwinism... in thirty years this will be 'decades ago' and you'll still have the same
problems with your theory.

[David Fritzinger]

In article <dedc7e7b-896a-413e...@googlegroups.com>,

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

> On Sunday, 17 August 2014 09:15:26 UTC-6, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 8/16/14 5:59 PM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> >
> > > [...]
> >
> > > So you want to talk religion. Hmm...
> >
> >
> >
> > I would like to, yes. Please explain what, if anything, creationism
> >
> > brings to religion that is good.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
> >
> > "Keep the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who have
> >
> > found it." - Vaclav Havel
>
> Sorry. I let the Darwinists talk religion, as I know you must, for your
> theory is based on your belief
> that there is no Creator.

You don't know much about your so-called "Darwinists", do you? There are
quite a number of biologists who study evolution and/or use evolutionary
explanations in their work. Chief among them would be Francis Collins,
who is now the Director of the NIH. In the past, he was in charge of the
NIH's sequencing of the human genome.

>
> Suffice it to say that the Bible contains sufficient information to make
> rational assumptions as to why
> nature (and humankind, if you think there's a difference between the two) is
> the way it is at present.

> But I only discuss the Bible with spiritually-minded people if at all, and
> you don't qualify.

Cop out!

[jillery]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 05:06:21 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
<1914o...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >Please cite your source on that.
>>
>> Instead of setting yourself up to getting shot down like this, I would
>> think you would want to take to Google yourself rather than publicly
>> asking me if I know what I'm talking about. But since you did feed me
>> the straight line, so to speak, here you go:
>>
>> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/reports-junk-dnas-demise-were-based-junky-logic-and-dubious-definitions
>
>Thanks for supplying your source.
>This article discusses philosophical and definitional arguments; not scientific ones.
>Of course Darwinists are going to throw all the shit they can at ENCODE the same way they do to
>all of ID theory.
>But it's just philosophy and word games.

Apparently you didn't follow the embedded links, plenty of science
there. Perhaps you didn't see them because your feet in your mouth
blocked your view.

>> >> or between 90 and 91%, which is the more mainstream view on
>> >> the matter. And of course that means 0% non-functionality, the number
>> >> creationists would need in order to claim that the genome was formed
>> >> by a wise and loving God, rather than a creator of junk, is out of the
>> >> question.
>>
>> >We'll see.
>> >It's still early days.
>>
>> Early days was decades ago, since we've been studying this the 1970s.
>> You're obviously an optimistic person (to use a charitable description
>> of what could be an inappropriate application of some sort of
>> religious faith to a matter that's been scientifically settled), but
>> at some point you've got to face scientific reality: 0% is never going
>> to happen.
>
>LOL, the hubris of Darwinism... in thirty years this will be 'decades ago' and you'll still have the same
>problems with your theory.

And those problems are...??? You don't say.

[Jimbo]

Alright. You accept that pathogenic microbes cause disease. You claim
that molecular machines that enhance the virulence of these pathogens
were deliberately designed by some kind of intelligent entity. Why are
you and all other ID proponents so reluctant to consider the question
of why an intelligent entity would deliberately design devices whose
primary function is to enhance their capacity to afflict both young
and old, both humans and other creatures, with disease, suffering and
death? Why would it design all the loathsome parasites that cause
suffering, debility and disfigurement?

Why would anyone even consider the idea of a fiend who would put huge
amounts of effort into designing such monstrous devices? The idea has
no explanatory power. In twenty years it has contributed absolutely
nothing to human knowledge of the natural world. In all that time no
ID proponent seems even to have considered the obvious fact that the
functions of machines can be analyzed. You and every other ID
proponent refuse to scientifically investigate the implications of
your claims.

But ID isn't merely an unscientific idea - it's an *anti-scientific*
enterprise. At the same time you refuse to engage in real science by
testing your basic claims, you engage in propagandistic efforts to
misrepresent evolutionary theory which *has* been empirically tested
and stood up to the tests.

It's no wonder that ID has never contributed to our understanding of
the functioning of biological systems. You can't even begin to explain
why an intelligent designer would create your flagship example of ID:
the bacterial motor and flagellum. Why would any sane intelligence
design devices that function to enhance the virulence of
disease-causing organisms?

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/18/14 4:45 AM, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Sunday, 17 August 2014 19:30:26 UTC-6, deadrat wrote:

>>> [...]

>>
>> Because you're so desperate to be right, you think scientists are just
>> as desperate. But they're not. All science is provisional.
>
> Of course, when Darwiinists describe why evolution is "true":
> you have to be "dumb" not to believe it.
> When backed into a corner: all science is provisional.

All knowledge is provisional. That's not a corner we're backed into; it
is the entire universe. The corner is where you are sitting, staring at
blank walls, refusing to move or even to look around.

[deadrat]

People are sometimes sloppy in phrasing things. It's better said that
evolution is valid, and you have to be willfully ignorant not to
understand why that is. Because you're pathetically desperate to cling
to some universal "truth," you thinks scientists are grudging about
admitting their work is provisional. They're not. That point is
fundamental to the exercise.

Once you recognize that, perhaps you'll understand that science isn't
competing with your god or your holy book. *You* are the one setting
them in opposition.

[deadrat]

There is no scientific cause beyond that "immediate" one.

If your benighted religion requires one, that's up to you to believe it.
But it's not a scientific concept.

[deadrat]

How about the hubris of a total ignoramus who denies the findings of
biology?

> in thirty years this will be 'decades ago'

Assuming we haven't set the world on fire, three decades to be precise,
a rather long time in biology.

> and you'll still have the same problems with your theory.

You still don't understand. It's possible that in thirty years, new
evidence will radically alter the theory. Given what we know now,
what's more likely is that we will have solved things that puzzle us now
and there will be *different* problems to grapple with.

Assuming you're still around, it's a good bet that you'll be no more
informed and using the future equivalent of LOL to bluster your way
through your continuing and continuous ignorance.

[Mark Buchanan]

On 8/18/2014 9:33 AM, Jimbo wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:52:24 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie

<< snip for brevity >>

>
> Alright. You accept that pathogenic microbes cause disease. You claim
> that molecular machines that enhance the virulence of these pathogens
> were deliberately designed by some kind of intelligent entity. Why are
> you and all other ID proponents so reluctant to consider the question
> of why an intelligent entity would deliberately design devices whose
> primary function is to enhance their capacity to afflict both young
> and old, both humans and other creatures, with disease, suffering and
> death? Why would it design all the loathsome parasites that cause
> suffering, debility and disfigurement?
>
> Why would anyone even consider the idea of a fiend who would put huge
> amounts of effort into designing such monstrous devices? The idea has
> no explanatory power.

To me this is why ID is much worse than other forms of creationism. Most
creationists explain nasty designs as the result of God's curse because
of man's sin - not a really good option but at least it's logically
consistent. ID forces you into a logical position that is quite ridiculous.

[johnetho...@yahoo.com]

Thank you for acknowledging that you are unwilling to discuss the matter. Most people take such refusals as strong evidence that you cannot defend your position.

[Glenn]

<johnetho...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:abcb36b7-04ea-4a61...@googlegroups.com...

That isn't what he said.

>Most people take such refusals as strong evidence that you cannot defend your position.
>

Some people take such strawmen as your's as evidence that you can't defend your claim.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Friday, August 15, 2014 8:26:15 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
> On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:

> > Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
> > explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
> > design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
> > point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
> > that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
> > of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
> > different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
> > device was designed?

> What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
> I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
> L, O, L.

Well, you've got to understand Jimbo. He is a fiend who promotes the
virulence of pathogenic atheism. :-)

But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with something
that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial flagellum
evolved from via exaptation. The bacterial flagellum's function is
motility of the bacterium, not the injection of poisons.

Note, by the way, how Jimbo is continuing his habit of changing the
subject and acting as though the subject he is keen on at the moment
is THE subject you have to deal with. In a thread that started out
talking about a bit of fakery by "Mr. Science" (Bill Nye) and morphed
into an argument about the authenticity of Noah's Ark, Jimbo insisted that
Noah's Ark is THE theme we should all be looking at, and any correction of
scientific inaccuracy (like Tim Norfolk making foolish claims about
tidal waves -- not tides, mind you -- being caused by the moon) is mere "quibble" unworthy of me.

I'm pretty sure my correction about the function of the
bacterial flagellum will be denounced as a "mere quibble" by him.

Peter Nyikos

[Jimbo]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 16:54:25 -0400, Mark Buchanan
<marklynn...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 8/18/2014 9:33 AM, Jimbo wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:52:24 -0700 (PDT), Steady Eddie
>
><< snip for brevity >>
>
>>
>> Alright. You accept that pathogenic microbes cause disease. You claim
>> that molecular machines that enhance the virulence of these pathogens
>> were deliberately designed by some kind of intelligent entity. Why are
>> you and all other ID proponents so reluctant to consider the question
>> of why an intelligent entity would deliberately design devices whose
>> primary function is to enhance their capacity to afflict both young
>> and old, both humans and other creatures, with disease, suffering and
>> death? Why would it design all the loathsome parasites that cause
>> suffering, debility and disfigurement?
>>
>> Why would anyone even consider the idea of a fiend who would put huge
>> amounts of effort into designing such monstrous devices? The idea has
>> no explanatory power.
>
>To me this is why ID is much worse than other forms of creationism. Most
>creationists explain nasty designs as the result of God's curse because
>of man's sin - not a really good option but at least it's logically
>consistent. ID forces you into a logical position that is quite ridiculous.

Yes. This very thread illustrates how ridiculous it is. Steady Eddie
does a cut-n-paste job of an article that's supposed to prove the
'folly' of the argument that the vertebrate eye is sub-optimal. Yet
Eddie himself is pushing a view that forces him into the logical
position that the putative designer of the eye also designed parasitic
eye-worms, along with all the other parasites and pathogenic bacteria

that afflict humans and other creatures.

Of course ID proponents won't willingly acknowledge that this is their
logical position. They have to focus exclusively on the beauty and
ingenuity of molecular machines like bacterial flagella without
considering how those molecular subsystems actually function to
enhance the virulence of pathogenic bacteria.

They claim that ID is a potent new avenue of research in the
biological sciences when in fact they've refused for twenty years even
to consider a basic question that's been staring them in the face for
all that time. "What kind of intelligent being would create organs
like the eye and also the equally well designed parasites and diseases
that attack those organs?" If they were forced to face this question
their twenty year con game would fall apart.

[Jimbo]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:14:20 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

>On Friday, August 15, 2014 8:26:15 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>> On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
>
>> > Now that you've got this self-declared victory under your belt, please
>> > explain who or what is responsible for that paragon of intelligent
>> > design, the bacterial flagellum. All design theorists, including Behe,
>> > point to the ingenuity of its rotor mechanism, but none will admit
>> > that only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>> > of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
>> > different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
>> > device was designed?
>
>> What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
>> I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
>> L, O, L.
>
>Well, you've got to understand Jimbo. He is a fiend who promotes the
>virulence of pathogenic atheism. :-)

Aren't you a mathematician? Aren't you supposed to have an
understanding of logic? By what logic or evidence have you decided
that anything I've said has anything to do with atheism?

>But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with something
>that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial flagellum
>evolved from via exaptation. The bacterial flagellum's function is
>motility of the bacterium, not the injection of poisons.

Do a google search using the keywords flagellum, pathogenic, and
bacteria if you want to be learn the extent of your ignorance.

>Note, by the way, how Jimbo is continuing his habit of changing the
>subject and acting as though the subject he is keen on at the moment
>is THE subject you have to deal with. In a thread that started out
>talking about a bit of fakery by "Mr. Science" (Bill Nye) and morphed
>into an argument about the authenticity of Noah's Ark, Jimbo insisted that
>Noah's Ark is THE theme we should all be looking at, and any correction of
>scientific inaccuracy (like Tim Norfolk making foolish claims about
>tidal waves -- not tides, mind you -- being caused by the moon) is mere "quibble" unworthy of me.

And yet you refused to put out the effort to simply ASK him if he
thinks length of fetch is a factor in generating large waves. Didn't
the idea even occur to you? Don't you think going directly to the
source would have settled a question that you *still* seem to be
obsessed with. Your approach is counter-productive and a complete
waste of time if you are genuinely interested in analyzing the
plausibility of the flood story. On the other hand, if you just like
to fantasize about the supposed wickedness of evolutionists, then I
suppose you should carry on with what you're doing.

>I'm pretty sure my correction about the function of the
>bacterial flagellum will be denounced as a "mere quibble" by him.

No, I'm telling you that it has other functions connected to enhanced
virulence, such as chemotaxis, adhesion to and invasion of host
surfaces.. Do the Google search. You will find many papers describing
these functions.

>Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:14:20 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

Nobody challenged the function of the bacterial flagellum, so your
"correction" doesn't even qualify as a quibble.

The motility of the bacterium increases its virulence. Even you
should be able to understand that.

And since you mentioned the Type Three Secretory System, please
explain why an Intelligent Designer would design such a system.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:30:48 PM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:13:43 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:

> > Michael Behe explains that ID remains silent on questions about
> > whether the designer is natural or supernatural:

> > "[ID] is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God,
> > as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a
> > benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology
> > may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument
> > for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I
> > argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer
> > is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer
> > include: the God of Christianity; an angel--fallen or not;
> > Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens
> > from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown
> > intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may
> > seem more plausible than others based on information from fields
> > other than science. Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the
> > designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase
> > hypothesis non fingo."(8)

That was a very well chosen quote, and Steady Eddie lives up to
his handle for once, with his next comment:

> > Some critics allege that ID proponents are "coy" about the identity
> > of the designer, which they really believe is God. Yet ID proponents
> > are also very open about their views about the identity of the designer--
> > they have just made it clear that these are their own personal beliefs
> > and not conclusions of intelligent design theory proper.
> > For example, Michael Behe explains:

> > "most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God--based
> > in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made--I did not
> > claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion
> > about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that, from a
> > scientific point of view, the question remains open. ...
> > The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not
> > show who the designer was"(9)

> > - See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/id-does-not-address-religious-claims-about-the-supernatural#sthash.Hcn3n7k8.dpuf

> But ID really cannot accommodate anything except a supernatural designer.
> The whole argument of ID is that something as complex as the eye or the
> brain cannot have arisen by purely natural processes.

You've been misled by some of the less authoritative proponents of ID--
or of its opponents. Not all ID proponents claim the eye or brain is
designed. In fact, Behe specifically excludes the eye in the first
chapter of _Darwin's Black Box_.

> Well if an eye cannot evolve by natural processes, surely something
> complex enough to design and manufacture an eye cannot occur by
> natural processes.

Behe is very selective. I don't know whether he has claimed outright
about anything that it could not have evolved by natural processes.
But he gives very high marks as a candidate to a number of things,
for instance, the bacterial flagellum.

> So the only choice for ID is a supernatural designer.

Not if one is merely trying to show that there is SOMETHING
on earth that was designed by an intelligent agency. I for one
think the odds are in favor of the bacterial flagellum having been
designed by intelligent beings that arose on another planet ca.
4 billion years ago, and seeded earth with a number of
microorganisms including some flagellated bacteria.

> In principle, it needn't be a Christian God, but it has to be
> supernatural or it doesn't solve any of the problems that ID
> thinks it has found with evolution, it merely pushes them off
> onto another planet.

That's solving them in a way, because, while assuming that the
intelligent creatures themselves evolved naturally, my hypothesis
solves the problem of how the flagellum came to be. More importantly,
it makes a very small bit of ID theory have a scientific foundation.
And that would be quite a game-changer all by itself.

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

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Monday, August 18, 2014 9:04:45 PM UTC-4, Jimbo wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:14:20 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

> >On Friday, August 15, 2014 8:26:15 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>> >On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:

>> >> only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>> >> of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
>> >> different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
>> >> device was designed?

> >> What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
> >> I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
> >> L, O, L.

> >Well, you've got to understand Jimbo. He is a fiend who promotes the
> >virulence of pathogenic atheism. :-)

> Aren't you a mathematician? Aren't you supposed to have an
> understanding of logic? By what logic or evidence have you decided
> that anything I've said has anything to do with atheism?

Humorless as always when the joke is on you, eh, Jimbo? You get to
resembling Robert Camp more and more each day.

> >But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with something
> >that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial flagellum
> >evolved from via exaptation. The bacterial flagellum's function is
> >motility of the bacterium, not the injection of poisons.

> Do a google search using the keywords flagellum, pathogenic, and
> bacteria if you want to be learn the extent of your ignorance.

Sorry, if you are too lazy to give me a reference, this will have
to wait until tomorrow. Until then, I rely on the extensive
testimony of Minnich at Dover about the experiments he did on
the bacterial flagellum; I don't recall him anywhere talking about
the flagellum itself being used to do what the mechanism to which
he was comparing it was doing.

> >Note, by the way, how Jimbo is continuing his habit of changing the
> >subject and acting as though the subject he is keen on at the moment
> >is THE subject you have to deal with. In a thread that started out
> >talking about a bit of fakery by "Mr. Science" (Bill Nye) and morphed
> >into an argument about the authenticity of Noah's Ark, Jimbo insisted that
> >Noah's Ark is THE theme we should all be looking at, and any correction of
> >scientific inaccuracy (like Tim Norfolk making foolish claims about
> >tidal waves -- not tides, mind you -- being caused by the moon) is mere
> > "quibble" unworthy of me.

> And yet you refused to put out the effort to simply ASK him if he
> thinks length of fetch is a factor in generating large waves.

How nice of you to leave "wind" out of it again, and again to ignore
the two different definitions of "fetch" that I told you about.

> Didn't
> the idea even occur to you? Don't you think going directly to the
> source would have settled a question that you *still* seem to be
> obsessed with.

What question? Now that you've fed him the "right" answer on
a golden platter while LYING that he had acknowledged it and
then wildly speculating that he KNEW the right answer, what
point would be served by asking him this question?

To how many people have you tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge today?

>Your approach is counter-productive and a complete
> waste of time if you are genuinely interested in analyzing the
> plausibility of the flood story.

I TOLD you I am uninterested in analyzing something I have long
been convinced is wildly implausible. Keyword: overkill.

> On the other hand, if you just like
> to fantasize about the supposed wickedness of evolutionists,

I am an evolutionist myself, and only consider a select few
evolutionists to be evil -- and NOT because they are evolutionists.

For instance, when I was 12, I read that one of the authors
Stalin read was Darwin. Though knowing what a monster Stalin had been,
my reaction was "Anyone who reads Darwin can't be ALL bad."

Perhaps I was being naive, and Stalin only read Darwin to help
confirm him in his atheism. But that reaction gives you some
idea on where I stood on evolution back then already.

> then I
> suppose you should carry on with what you're doing.

Well, I *am* steadily accumulating evidence of how dishonest,
arrogant, and hypocritical YOU, "Jimbo," might be, so yes,
I WILL carry on.

[snip rest, see above about "not today."]

Peter Nyikos

[Jimbo]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:51:26 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

>On Monday, August 18, 2014 9:04:45 PM UTC-4, Jimbo wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:14:20 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
>
>> >On Friday, August 15, 2014 8:26:15 PM UTC-4, Steady Eddie wrote:
>>> >On Thursday, 14 August 2014 14:43:27 UTC-6, Jimbo wrote:
>
>>> >> only a fiend would create something that promotes the virulence
>>> >> of pathogenic bacteria and has caused untold death and misery. Are you
>>> >> different? Can you tell us the reason such a devilish (but optimal)
>>> >> device was designed?
>
>> >> What, are you offering a RELIGIOUS challenge?
>> >> I THOUGHT DARWINISTS WERE NOT (OPENLY) RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED.
>> >> L, O, L.
>
>> >Well, you've got to understand Jimbo. He is a fiend who promotes the
>> >virulence of pathogenic atheism. :-)
>
>> Aren't you a mathematician? Aren't you supposed to have an
>> understanding of logic? By what logic or evidence have you decided
>> that anything I've said has anything to do with atheism?
>
>Humorless as always when the joke is on you, eh, Jimbo? You get to
>resembling Robert Camp more and more each day.

If you weren't trying to make a point, then you weren't telling a
joke. Jokes are supposed to have a point. That's a large part of what
makes them funny. Either you were trying to make a point or you were
merely pointlessly babbling in some attempt at low buffoonery. I
wouldn't have pegged you as a deliberate buffoon.

>> >But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with something
>> >that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial flagellum
>> >evolved from via exaptation. The bacterial flagellum's function is
>> >motility of the bacterium, not the injection of poisons.
>
>> Do a google search using the keywords flagellum, pathogenic, and
>> bacteria if you want to be learn the extent of your ignorance.
>
>Sorry, if you are too lazy to give me a reference, this will have
>to wait until tomorrow. Until then, I rely on the extensive
>testimony of Minnich at Dover about the experiments he did on
>the bacterial flagellum; I don't recall him anywhere talking about
>the flagellum itself being used to do what the mechanism to which
>he was comparing it was doing.

Wait as long as you like. It's never too late to learn something new.

>> >Note, by the way, how Jimbo is continuing his habit of changing the
>> >subject and acting as though the subject he is keen on at the moment
>> >is THE subject you have to deal with. In a thread that started out
>> >talking about a bit of fakery by "Mr. Science" (Bill Nye) and morphed
>> >into an argument about the authenticity of Noah's Ark, Jimbo insisted that
>> >Noah's Ark is THE theme we should all be looking at, and any correction of
>> >scientific inaccuracy (like Tim Norfolk making foolish claims about
>> >tidal waves -- not tides, mind you -- being caused by the moon) is mere
>> > "quibble" unworthy of me.
>
>> And yet you refused to put out the effort to simply ASK him if he
>> thinks length of fetch is a factor in generating large waves.
>
>How nice of you to leave "wind" out of it again, and again to ignore
>the two different definitions of "fetch" that I told you about.

From google:

"The fetch, also called the fetch length, is the length of water over
which a given wind has blown."

Do you have another definition that's relevant to the question of
whether a Noachian flood would have developed large waves?

>> Didn't
>> the idea even occur to you? Don't you think going directly to the
>> source would have settled a question that you *still* seem to be
>> obsessed with.
>
>What question? Now that you've fed him the "right" answer on
>a golden platter while LYING that he had acknowledged it and
>then wildly speculating that he KNEW the right answer, what
>point would be served by asking him this question?

It would only be useful if you actually wanted to discuss the wave
formation dynamics of a world-wide flood covering all the mountains.
Since you don't want to do that, and since you passed up the chance to
do so when the relevant thread was active, all your attempts to rehash
what posters did or didn't say at specific times is completely futile
and useless.

>To how many people have you tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge today?

You don't seem to understand that the plausibility of a Noachian flood
can be empirically tested. That's what the discussion was about. From
start to finish your own contribution was only to question the motives
of those posters who were approaching the subject with a rational and
scientific attitude. Why did you get involved if you're not interested
in the discussion but only in speculating about people's character and
motives? If you like, you can return to that thread and attempt to
make some substantive contribution. But that doesn't appear to be your
interest or your style.

>>Your approach is counter-productive and a complete
>> waste of time if you are genuinely interested in analyzing the
>> plausibility of the flood story.
>
>I TOLD you I am uninterested in analyzing something I have long
>been convinced is wildly implausible. Keyword: overkill.

Yet you involved yourself to the extent of impugning the motives of
some posters. Is that your sole interest?

>> On the other hand, if you just like
>> to fantasize about the supposed wickedness of evolutionists,
>
>I am an evolutionist myself, and only consider a select few
>evolutionists to be evil -- and NOT because they are evolutionists.
>
>For instance, when I was 12, I read that one of the authors
>Stalin read was Darwin. Though knowing what a monster Stalin had been,
>my reaction was "Anyone who reads Darwin can't be ALL bad."
>
>Perhaps I was being naive, and Stalin only read Darwin to help
>confirm him in his atheism. But that reaction gives you some
>idea on where I stood on evolution back then already.

Fear not, Peter; an actual understanding of evolutionary theory won't
make you a bad person. Many, however, misunderstand it, and the
misunderstandings have contributed in some cases to bad behavior among
some individuals who think they accept it as well as those who think
it's part of an evil Satanic or atheist plot.

>> then I
>> suppose you should carry on with what you're doing.
>
>Well, I *am* steadily accumulating evidence of how dishonest,
>arrogant, and hypocritical YOU, "Jimbo," might be, so yes,
>I WILL carry on.

Isn't that God's job?

[Mitchell Coffey]

On 8/18/2014 10:51 PM, nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:
[snip]

> I am an evolutionist myself, and only consider a select few
> evolutionists to be evil -- and NOT because they are evolutionists.
>
> For instance, when I was 12, I read that one of the authors
> Stalin read was Darwin. Though knowing what a monster Stalin had been,
> my reaction was "Anyone who reads Darwin can't be ALL bad."
>
> Perhaps I was being naive, and Stalin only read Darwin to help
> confirm him in his atheism. But that reaction gives you some
> idea on where I stood on evolution back then already.

[snip]

<joke>If it makes you feel any better</joke> Stalin published an
pamphlet critical of Darwin:

http://cyber.eserver.org/stalin.txt

Mitchell Coffey

[Sneaky O. Possum]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
news:8bbd6805-9974-4f7d...@googlegroups.com:

> On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:30:48 PM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com
> wrote:

[snip]

>> So the only choice for ID is a supernatural designer.
>
> Not if one is merely trying to show that there is SOMETHING
> on earth that was designed by an intelligent agency.

Oddly enough, that's true: for example, one need not resort to a
supernatural designer to show that an automobile is SOMETHING on earth
that was designed by an intelligent agency. But perhaps that wasn't what
you meant.

> I for one think the odds are in favor of the bacterial flagellum
> having been designed by intelligent beings that arose on another
> planet ca. 4 billion years ago, and seeded earth with a number of
> microorganisms including some flagellated bacteria.

In light of the fact that no one can demonstrate how the flagellum could
have been designed by beings acting under the constraints of reality,
and the fact that there is no trace of evidence that organisms have ever
existed on any planet other than Earth (much less evidence of organisms
capable of developing interstellar or interplanetary vehicles), would
you care to estimate those odds?

>> In principle, it needn't be a Christian God, but it has to be
>> supernatural or it doesn't solve any of the problems that ID
>> thinks it has found with evolution, it merely pushes them off
>> onto another planet.
>
> That's solving them in a way, because, while assuming that the
> intelligent creatures themselves evolved naturally, my hypothesis
> solves the problem of how the flagellum came to be.

On the contrary. Your hypothesis doesn't even show that the bacterial
flagellum *could have been* designed naturally, much less show that it
*was* designed naturally. And designing it would be the easy part: how
did they *make* the damned thing?

But it's worse than that. I'll accept, solely for the sake of argument,
that the bacterial flagellum is a designed structure. That raises a
problem. We may reasonably suppose that these intelligent
extraterrestrials evolved from bacteria, and were aware of that fact:
otherwise it's difficult to see why they would have used bacteria to
'seed' other planets. But *none of their bacteria would have needed a
flagellum*. Their bacteria would either have evolved other means of
increasing their motility or not needed such means in the first place.
So why would the extraterrestrial have gone to the trouble of figuring
out how to design and construct a workable flagellum in the first place?

> More importantly, it makes a very small bit of ID theory have a
> scientific foundation.

Unless you can demonstrate a testable method of designing bacterial
flagella, your hypothesis remains completely unscientific.

> And that would be quite a game-changer all by itself.

If any portion of your panspermic hypothesis were experimentally or
observationally falsifiable in any way, that would be quite the
breakthrough, yes.
--
S.O.P.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
news:61623796-1a35-4f51...@googlegroups.com:

[snip]

> But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with
> something that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial
> flagellum evolved from via exaptation.

Are you deliberately misreading other people's posts? Jimbo wrote that
the flagellum 'promotes the virulence of pathogenic bacteria', i.e., by
increasing the motility of said bacteria. Now, if you'd wanted to
quibble about applying the term 'virulence' to things that are neither
actually nor metaphorically viral, you might have had a point.

> The bacterial flagellum's function is motility of the bacterium, not
> the injection of poisons.

And a more motile bacterium is a more infectious bacterium, nu?

> Note, by the way, how Jimbo is continuing his habit of changing the
> subject and acting as though the subject he is keen on at the moment
> is THE subject you have to deal with.

Must you troll like this? It's unbecoming for someone of your years.
Though I concede that changing the subject in order to claim that
someone else has a habit of changing the subject is mildly amusing.

> In a thread that started out talking about a bit of fakery by "Mr.
> Science" (Bill Nye)

Ooh, what a shiny hook! Should I? Nope. Not gonna bite. Wouldn't be
prudent.

> and morphed into an argument about the authenticity of Noah's Ark,
> Jimbo insisted that Noah's Ark is THE theme we should all be looking
> at,

That is not only untrue, but tediously untrue. Bad troll!

> and any correction of scientific inaccuracy (like Tim Norfolk
> making foolish claims about tidal waves -- not tides, mind you --
> being caused by the moon) is mere "quibble" unworthy of me.

Oh, now, I'm sure no one thinks that anything you post here is unworthy
of you.

> I'm pretty sure my correction about the function of the
> bacterial flagellum will be denounced as a "mere quibble" by him.

No, just a (deliberate?) misreading.
--
S.O.P.

[John Bode]

On Thursday, August 14, 2014 1:26:09 PM UTC-5, Steady Eddie wrote:
> ...And I was wondering why there was no mention of the EYE when you
> Darwinists started listing off "defective" design features...
>

Meaning, the vertebrate eye (as opposed to the other types of eyes found in nature)...

>
>
> So now you can repent at leisure... again...
>

> ----

>
> This refuted the old objection to intelligent design that the vertebrate
> eye is "poorly designed" because the optic nerve extends over the retina
> instead of going out the back of the eye. These cells ensure that there
> is no loss of visual acuity due to the presence of the optic nerve, as the
> paper found, revealing the retina "as an optimal structure designed for
> improving the sharpness of images." As New Scientist put it at the time,
> these funnel-shaped cells "act as optical fibres, and rather than being
> just a workaround to make up for the eye's peculiarities, they help filter
> and focus light, making images clearer and keeping colours sharp."
>

> ----
>
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/physorg_special088541.html

And yet, we still have that pesky blind spot.

I also wonder how "optimal" a design is that allows for myopia and
astigmatism; gonna start needing those large-print books before too
long.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:24:05 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in

> > But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with
> > something that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial
> > flagellum evolved from via exaptation.

> Are you deliberately misreading other people's posts? Jimbo wrote that
> the flagellum 'promotes the virulence of pathogenic bacteria', i.e., by
> increasing the motility of said bacteria.

The part after "i.e." is you feeding Jimbo the correct interpretation
of his grand equivocation on a silver platter, just as jillery did
earlier, and similarly to the way Jimbo fed Tim the correct replacement
for "tidal waves created by the moon" on a golden platter.

If Jimbo REALLY meant what you and Jillery are feeding him, he would
have, logically, given an entirely different response to the one
HE gave to my words. Instead of bluffing about the "depth of" my
"ignorance" about the pathology the flagellum promotes, and telling
me to google this and that, he would logically have simply told
me that I was mistaken about what he meant, and corrected me along
the lines of your silver platter feeding.

Unfortunately, Jimbo is an arrogant, agenda-driven ideologue,
who cannot bring himself to treat his opponents with the
minimum of courtesy that even logic suggests.

>Now, if you'd wanted to
> quibble about applying the term 'virulence' to things that are neither
> actually nor metaphorically viral, you might have had a point.

Aren't poisons injected by Type III gizmos? [See jillery's silver
platter post for the technical term for those gizmos.]

I've snipped the rest of your highly revealing post. I doubt that
you or Jimbo can guess what it reveals--you have both been spoiled
rotten by being on the side of dominant cliques.

After all, neither of you would think of participating in a forum
[in the broad sense of the word, to include blogs, newsgroups, etc.]
where you are opposed to the dominant clique, would you?

Peter Nyikos

[Jimbo]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2014 15:58:59 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

>On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:24:05 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
>> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
>
>> > But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with
>> > something that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial
>> > flagellum evolved from via exaptation.
>
>> Are you deliberately misreading other people's posts? Jimbo wrote that
>> the flagellum 'promotes the virulence of pathogenic bacteria', i.e., by
>> increasing the motility of said bacteria.
>
>The part after "i.e." is you feeding Jimbo the correct interpretation
>of his grand equivocation on a silver platter, just as jillery did
>earlier, and similarly to the way Jimbo fed Tim the correct replacement
>for "tidal waves created by the moon" on a golden platter.

I told you that the bacterial flagellum has functions other than
motility that increase the virulence (capacity of a microorganism to
cause disease) of pathogenic bacteria. There was no equivocation.
Motility is one factor among a number of others that enhance
virulence. I gave you examples and you could easily have found others
for yourself if you were interested in learning. They include (besides
enhanced motility) increased adherence to host, enhanced colonization,
and invasion, and enhanced ability to form bacterial mats.

The flagellum-specific export apparatus has a dual function, both for
the flagellar export machinery in flagellum biogenesis and for the
secretion of proteins including virulence factors. If you'd only do a
simple google search you'd find numerous papers supporting the fact
that the flagellum enhances bacterial virulence. Why haven't you done
the search?

>If Jimbo REALLY meant what you and Jillery are feeding him, he would
>have, logically, given an entirely different response to the one
>HE gave to my words. Instead of bluffing about the "depth of" my
>"ignorance" about the pathology the flagellum promotes, and telling
>me to google this and that, he would logically have simply told
>me that I was mistaken about what he meant, and corrected me along
>the lines of your silver platter feeding.

Your ignorance of this topic is deep and you seem to have no
inclination to lessen it. Do the search. learn something. Quit playing
your worthless little blame games.

>Unfortunately, Jimbo is an arrogant, agenda-driven ideologue,
>who cannot bring himself to treat his opponents with the
>minimum of courtesy that even logic suggests.

If you'd stop focusing on my real or imagined character flaws you
might have time to check my claims about the role of the bacterial
flagellum in enhancing the virulence of pathogenic bacteria.

>>Now, if you'd wanted to
>> quibble about applying the term 'virulence' to things that are neither
>> actually nor metaphorically viral, you might have had a point.
>
>Aren't poisons injected by Type III gizmos? [See jillery's silver
>platter post for the technical term for those gizmos.]

The base of the bacterial flagellum is homologous with the type III
secretory system and apparently functions in the secretion of proteins
including virulence factors. Google for 'Flagella and bacterial
pathogenicity' and see for yourself.

>I've snipped the rest of your highly revealing post. I doubt that
>you or Jimbo can guess what it reveals--you have both been spoiled
>rotten by being on the side of dominant cliques.

I'm not surprised you snipped it. Sneaky O Possum has possumed you
good with irrefutable logic. If the putative designers designed the
flagellum then they themselves evolved to a high state of intelligence
without benefit of pre-existing flagella in their world. Did they
invent the bacterial flagellum to inflict deliberate suffering on the
worlds they seeded?

>After all, neither of you would think of participating in a forum
>[in the broad sense of the word, to include blogs, newsgroups, etc.]
>where you are opposed to the dominant clique, would you?

If you had a real argument it could stand on its own even in the face
of concerted attack.

>Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2014 15:58:59 -0700 (PDT), nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote:

>On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:24:05 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
>> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
>
>> > But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with
>> > something that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial
>> > flagellum evolved from via exaptation.
>
>> Are you deliberately misreading other people's posts? Jimbo wrote that
>> the flagellum 'promotes the virulence of pathogenic bacteria', i.e., by
>> increasing the motility of said bacteria.
>
>The part after "i.e." is you feeding Jimbo the correct interpretation
>of his grand equivocation on a silver platter, just as jillery did
>earlier, and similarly to the way Jimbo fed Tim the correct replacement
>for "tidal waves created by the moon" on a golden platter.

It's not an equivocation when it's correct and relevant.

>If Jimbo REALLY meant what you and Jillery are feeding him, he would
>have, logically, given an entirely different response to the one
>HE gave to my words. Instead of bluffing about the "depth of" my
>"ignorance" about the pathology the flagellum promotes, and telling
>me to google this and that, he would logically have simply told
>me that I was mistaken about what he meant, and corrected me along
>the lines of your silver platter feeding.

Jimbo has no obligation to align his every word and nuance to other
posters. More to the point, what he wrote is entirely consistent with
what Sneaky and I wrote. OTOH nothing that you wrote has any
coherence to reality. More likely, you know that you're wrong, but
you won't admit it, and now you're just obfuscating.

>Unfortunately, Jimbo is an arrogant, agenda-driven ideologue,
>who cannot bring himself to treat his opponents with the
>minimum of courtesy that even logic suggests.
>
>>Now, if you'd wanted to
>> quibble about applying the term 'virulence' to things that are neither
>> actually nor metaphorically viral, you might have had a point.
>
>Aren't poisons injected by Type III gizmos? [See jillery's silver
>platter post for the technical term for those gizmos.]

Still waiting for you to explain why an Intelligent Designer would
design those gizmos. At least then you would be on-topic.

>I've snipped the rest of your highly revealing post. I doubt that
>you or Jimbo can guess what it reveals--you have both been spoiled
>rotten by being on the side of dominant cliques.
>
>After all, neither of you would think of participating in a forum
>[in the broad sense of the word, to include blogs, newsgroups, etc.]
>where you are opposed to the dominant clique, would you?

So you admit that you're just posting noise to be contrary to the
dominant clique. No surprise there.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in news:09a18907-b9ea-4cd2...@googlegroups.com:

> On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:24:05 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
>> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
>
>> > But seriously, Jimbo is confusing the bacterial flagellum with
>> > something that his ideological bedfellows like to claim the bacterial
>> > flagellum evolved from via exaptation.
>
>> Are you deliberately misreading other people's posts? Jimbo wrote that
>> the flagellum 'promotes the virulence of pathogenic bacteria', i.e., by
>> increasing the motility of said bacteria.
>
> The part after "i.e." is you feeding Jimbo the correct interpretation
> of his grand equivocation on a silver platter, just as jillery did
> earlier, and similarly to the way Jimbo fed Tim the correct replacement
> for "tidal waves created by the moon" on a golden platter.

What a tedious little man you are.
--
S.O.P.

[nyi...@bellsouth.net]

On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:23:29 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
> nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
> news:8bbd6805-9974-4f7d...@googlegroups.com:
> > On Sunday, August 17, 2014 12:30:48 PM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
> [snip]
> >> So the only choice for ID is a supernatural designer.
> >
> > Not if one is merely trying to show that there is SOMETHING
> > on earth that was designed by an intelligent agency.

I should have added "non-terrestrial" after "intelligent".

<snip for focus>

> > I for one think the odds are in favor of the bacterial flagellum
> > having been designed by intelligent beings that arose on another
> > planet ca. 4 billion years ago, and seeded earth with a number of
> > microorganisms including some flagellated bacteria.
>
> In light of the fact that no one can demonstrate how the flagellum could
> have been designed by beings acting under the constraints of reality,

You seem to be stuck in the dark ages of biochemistry. Look at the
following testimony from Dr. Scott Minnich at Dover. True, he does
not actually design a flagellum, but biochemistry can be expected to
advance within a century to where even such things are not out of
the question.

Minnich (A.):
"I work on the bacterial flagellum, understanding the function of the
bacterial flagellum for example by exposing cells to mutagenic compounds
or agents, and then scoring for cells that have attenuated or lost motility.
This is our phenotype. The cells can swim or they can't. We mutagenize the
cells, if we hit a gene that's involved in function of the flagellum, they
can't swim, which is a scorable phenotype that we use. Reverse engineering is
then employed to identify all these genes. We couple this with biochemistry to
essentially rebuild the structure and understand what the function of each
individual part is. Summary, it is the process more akin to design that
propelled biology from a mere descriptive science to an experimental science
in terms of employing these techniques.

Q. Do you have some examples employing this particular concept of the flagella?

A. I do, in the next slide. Hopefully this will cut to the chase and show you
what we're talking about. This is an organism that my students and I work on.
This is a petri dish about 15 millimeters size, filled with this soft auger food
source for the organism. It's soft in the sense the organisms can swim in it,
but it has some rigidity that they just don't slosh around. Now, each one of
these areas showing growth were inoculated with a toothpick of cells, the wild
type parent here. So this is yersinia enterocolitica, a good pathogen, double
bucket disease if you ingest it."

A bit later, Minnich really cuts to the chase:

"We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can't
swim. Now, to confirm that that's the only part that we've affected, you know,
is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild type and
reintroduce it by mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells
up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy
of the gene.

"One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in
we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, put a
good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition the system is
irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum,
and we get the same effect."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day20pm2.html

> and the fact that there is no trace of evidence that organisms have ever
> existed on any planet other than Earth (much less evidence of organisms
> capable of developing interstellar or interplanetary vehicles), would
> you care to estimate those odds?

Done already, with all those objections and more taken into account.
You've never read my threads with drafts for a long FAQ on
directed panspermia, have you?

I've also answered most of your later objections [snipped] in detail
in those FAQs. I'll be glad to rehash them if you are at all interested,
and willing to read them with an open mind.

But are you?

Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

Unless you are suggesting that "design" consists of removing a part and
then putting it back -- in which case I am an automobile designer by
dint of having changed a tire -- I cannot imagine how you could think
that any of this is relevant to the fact that no one can demonstrate

how the flagellum could have been designed by beings acting under the

constraints of reality.