Clot Watch

[Glenn]

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/

Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
Enjoy!

[Lawyer Daggett]

A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.
I especially love how Doolittle was able to examine the protein domains of the multiple
clotting enzymes and discover likely pathways of duplication with recombination
involved in growing the cascade. Too bad Behe failed to grasp that lesson and instead
leveraged his ignorance to sew a tale of something he thought nearly impossible to evolve.
He sure fooled a great many dilletantes.

[Glenn]

Perhaps you're the fool who thinks he is fooling.

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:

"No. There is no evidence that beneficial mutations result in constructive changes for advancing
evolution." 10 minutes, 4 seconds in. This leveraged the sickle cell mutation which of course is
mostly beneficial to a heterozygote in the presence of endemic malaria, but is of course harmful
to the homozygote. How convenient that Behe feigns ignorance of mutations that result in a
"leaky" form of delta hemoglobin that provide a similar benefit (better) to being a heterozygote
for sickle cells but have negligible impact even in the homozygote. Fetal hemoglobin is one of
the fetal forms of hemoglobin which is functionally important as it allows a fetus to preferentially
take up oxygen from the maternal blood supply in the placenta.

In regions where malaria is endemic, and where the sickle cell allele frequency is relatively high, there
is found a number of genetic conditions that result in a persistent expression of higher levels of the
fetal form of the hemoglobin gene. In and of itself, the mutations that result in continued expression of
relatively low levels of the fetal form of hemoglobin show no adverse phenotype. When coupled with
those either heterozygotic or homozygotic for the sickle cell gene, they provide for reduced severity
of the adverse effects of the sickle cell gene. Essentially, they reduce the level of polymerization of
hemoglobin and thus reduce the anemia. The collection of mutations that increase the expression of
fetal hemoglobin show no adverse effects but clearly, in context of endemic malaria, are beneficial.

There's no plausible sense that Behe is unaware of this. Conclusion: He's lying.

On the positive side, up to that point, his video is putting greater emphasis on hemostasis than the
simplistic notion of just blood clotting. Referencing clotting as a "function" rather than hemostasis
is a pig ignorant way to look at the "system". He's made some minor progress in that respect.

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:

Poor Glenn. You are about to hear from Peter Nyikos who is going to have myriad objections to
the specifics of Behe's claims in this video. And in the coming weeks, I'm going to thrash it fully.
Behe explicitly claims that the clotting cascade could not have come about via evolution but is
absolutely the product of intelligent design. Peter will be sending him private emails asking him
"WTF?" This should ultimately provide some serious entertainment.

[erik simpson]

This could be a chez watt generator, except that there's nothing funny about it. The predictability just makes it boring as hell.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 5:35:05 PM UTC-7, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

You're funny!

[jillery]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:09:55 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

>https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
>
>Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
>Enjoy!

Here's an even more excellent convincing video about irreducible
complexity:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K_WrqNiQoU>

The fact that this one was made over 15 years ago shows that Behe,
Discotut, and cdesign proponentsists are just recycling willfully
stupid lies.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[RonO]

Why have you been running from the Top Six for half a decade if IC was
worth anything that you wanted to understand? How does this fit in with
other Top Six stupidity like the find tuning of our solar system to
produce our planet and the origin of life?

Why is it that you never want to understand the junk that you post from
the ID perps. You could demonstrate that you want to understand what
Behe is selling you by stating how the evolution of the blood clotting
system fits in with Behe's view of biological evolution and things like
the Cambrian explosion that were occurring within a couple hundred
million years of when the blood clotting system evolved in vertebrates.

You should explain why IC was dropped out of the Top Six by Sewell and
Brian Miller it it is such wonderful IDiocy.

Top Six:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ

At the very least you should try to figure out how IC fits together with
the other Top Six evidences for IDiocy.

Ron Okimoto

[Kalkidas]

Now do one about the other "Clot Watch". ;-)

[Bill]

If Behe's ideas are really as ridiculous as people here say, why do these
posts perpetuate them. Why not just ignore them? Could it be that they are
easy to debunk and therefore referred to simply as a convenient way to
dismiss Creationism and ID?

Nothing is settled if questions are merely dismissed rather than addressed.
It may be that Behe, et al, is not the final authority but just one opinion
among many. If Behe is wrong, does it follow that Creationism and ID must be
false? Attacking Behe doe not disprove Creationism or ID and, in fact,
misses the point; it's just a minor side issue.

Bill

[jillery]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2022 05:47:58 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:09:55 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>wrote:
>
>>https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
>>
>>Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
>>Enjoy!
>
>
>Here's an even more excellent convincing video about irreducible
>complexity:
>
><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K_WrqNiQoU>
>
>The fact that this one was made over 15 years ago shows that Behe,
>Discotut, and cdesign proponentsists are just recycling willfully
>stupid lies.

For those who can't tell the difference between dismissed and
debunked, here's yet another willfully stupid lie from Behe's video
cited in Glenn's article:
**********************************************
@10:05
So to answer our question, no there is no evidence that beneficial
mutation results in constructive changes for advancing evolution.
**********************************************

<http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/28/20/2189.full.html>

Short version: three separate human populations have independently
evolved different suites of mutations which increase their blood's
ability to extact oxygen at high altitudes.

Note the paper's date is Oct 2014. I am surprised that Behe's
embarrassing performance at the Kitzmiller trial didn't teach him to
keep up with the scientific literature about the things he claims
could not have evolved.

[Bill]

Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
mean that Creationism / ID is false?

Bill

[jillery]

Ask Discotut. Or Behe himself.

>Do his mistakes mean that Creationism / ID is false?

No. It does mean Behe's claims about Creationism/ID are debunked,
along with any claims based on Behe's claims. To refresh your
convenient amnesia, Behe's claims are the basis of the OP and its
cited article.

Now your turn:
What claims of Creationism/ID have not been debunked? Or alternately,
what claims of Creationism/ID do you think are valid?

[Bill]

Ridicule does not equal debunked. People claim to debunk Creationism / ID
because the alternative is that there may actually be a Creator. That of
course can't be true. Creationism / ID are points of view that are beyond
proof; there are only the beliefs of those who think about it.

Bill

[jillery]

No answers. No surprise.

>Ridicule does not equal debunked.

And you *still* can't tell the difference between dismissed and

debunked.


>People claim to debunk Creationism / ID
>because the alternative is that there may actually be a Creator. That of
>course can't be true. Creationism / ID are points of view that are beyond
>proof; there are only the beliefs of those who think about it.

I acknowledge beliefs can't be debunked. However the expressed
rationalizations for said beliefs can. There's a difference.

[Zen Cycle]

Because confirmation bias of the IDers allows them to accept his bullshit without question. Sort of like magatards.

> >
> >
> > Ask Discotut. Or Behe himself.
> >
> >
> >>Do his mistakes mean that Creationism / ID is false?
> >
> >
> > No. It does mean Behe's claims about Creationism/ID are debunked,
> > along with any claims based on Behe's claims. To refresh your
> > convenient amnesia, Behe's claims are the basis of the OP and its
> > cited article.
> >
> > Now your turn:
> > What claims of Creationism/ID have not been debunked? Or alternately,
> > what claims of Creationism/ID do you think are valid?
> >
> Ridicule does not equal debunked.

Perhaps you should take a step back and note the debunking usually precedes ridicule by a substantial margin and has in this case by over a decade.

> People claim to debunk Creationism / ID
> because the alternative is that there may actually be a Creator.

No one does that (ok, maybe there are a few, but none with any credibility)

> That of
> course can't be true.

OK, I stand corrected - no one claims to debunk creationism/ID because the alternative may actually be a creator.

> Creationism / ID are points of view that are beyond
> proof; there are only the beliefs of those who think about it.

Correct again, creationism/ID isn't provable. Evolution, however, meets all the criteria for scientific proof. That there are gaps doesn't necessarily allow "goddidit".

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/27/22 10:56 AM, Bill wrote:
> [...]

> Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
> mean that Creationism / ID is false?

Behe is considered an authority because Creationists desperately want
credibility, and Behe has a PhD and wrote a book. Behe's mistakes do
not mean ID is false (it was false long before him), but they sure don't
help his case.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> >
> > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > Enjoy!

Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:

> A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.

Yes -- evolved from an irreducible core of factors in a way that everyone missed [1]
until *after* Behe documented an account by Doolittle spreading over two pages
of _Darwin's_Black_Box [DBB]. This was followed in DBB by three pages of detailed
reasoning, with the punch line coming after just one page:

"Unfortunately, the universe hasn't got time to wait." [p. 94]

[1] The Darwinian evolution from an unidentified irreducible core uses the auto-catalytic
nature of the enzymes involved, in an indispensable way. Kenneth Miller and/or Keith Robison
figured it out after DBB was published. An account by Robison can be found in the Talk.Origins Archive.

Hardly anyone reads it, because one sophomoric participant after has claimed over
the years that "gene duplication and subsequent divergence" is enough to explain clotting,
without any awareness of the crucial role "autocatalytic" plays in it. Just as you do below:

> I especially love how Doolittle was able to examine the protein domains of the multiple
> clotting enzymes and discover likely pathways of duplication with recombination
> involved in growing the cascade.

Given your track record, you will especially *hate* the way Behe exposed a howler
by Doolittle in his Dover 2005 testimony. Instead of taking the onerous path of trying
to bring his scenario within the time frame of our universe, he attacked Behe's claim
of irreducible complexity. In so doing, he hilariously misread an article about
genetically modified mice that lacked two of the factors Behe included.

The mice were unable to form clots, but this was phrased in technical language
that Doolittle carelessly misinterpreted, and he proclaimed that the mice were normal!

> Too bad Behe failed to grasp that lesson

He grasped it all too well at Dover 2005, going over Doolittle's howler in detail.

If anyone has ever refuted the claim that either clotting pathway that Behe identified
is irreducible AS IT EXISTS IN HUMANS, I haven't seen it, have you?

> and instead leveraged his ignorance to sew a tale of something he thought nearly impossible to evolve.
> He sure fooled a great many dilletantes.

"nearly impossible to evolve" depends on what the starting point of that evolution
is claimed to be. After all, it was nearly impossible for our species to evolve from the
prokaryotes of 3.5 billion years ago, don't you agree?


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

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:

__________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________

> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
>
Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
enter the fray.

====================== end of excerpt from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/EBY15YSQBAAJ
Re: ...iIncredulity 3
Oct 27, 2022, 6:10:05 PM

Below, one can see the beginning of a (potential) retaliatory cascade that is typical
of Ron O when his scientific knowledge is challenged.

However, I do believe that my quoted comment, despite its mention of "third party" Ron Okimoto,
will not bring on any retaliatory entry of him into the fray.

OTOH the following dissection of Ron O's idiotic claims below might do the trick.

On Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 6:15:05 AM UTC-4, Ron O wrote:
> On 10/26/2022 6:09 PM, Glenn wrote:
> > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> >
> > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > Enjoy!
> >
> Why have you been running from the Top Six for half a decade if IC was
> worth anything that you wanted to understand?

Ron O has consistently used "the Top Six" to refer to six articles in _Evolution_News_
that merely introduce six enduring mysteries. He has repeatedly lied that
these six articles are "the best that the ID perps have to offer" (with
insignificant variations on the wording).

> How does this fit in with
> other Top Six stupidity like the find tuning of our solar system to
> produce our planet and the origin of life?

Ron O's use of "stupidity" here is ironic, given the stupidity
of writing "fine tuning of our solar system" for "fine tuning of the physical
constants of our universe."

> Why is it that you never want to understand the junk that you post from
> the ID perps.

The obvious answer: "because you, Ron O, show no sign of having
read what you are labeling as junk."


The following sentence by Ron O shows the influence
of Ron O's other ardent ally, who regularly posts unsupported claims
and adds "But you could prove me wrong by" followed with a self-serving
description of what is supposedly involved.

> You could demonstrate that you want to understand what
> Behe is selling you by stating how the evolution of the blood clotting
> system fits in with Behe's view of biological evolution and things like
> the Cambrian explosion that were occurring within a couple hundred
> million years of when the blood clotting system evolved in vertebrates.
>
> You should explain why IC was dropped out of the Top Six by Sewell and
> Brian Miller it it is such wonderful IDiocy.

The claim by Behe that the clotting system (along with a handful of other
carefully chosen systems) is IC have never been refuted. The problem
is that the examples aren't as challenging as the other five, which include
abiogenesis and the fine tuning [more precisely, the extreme sensitivity to minute changes]
of the physical constants of our universe.

> Top Six:
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ
>
> At the very least you should try to figure out how IC fits together with
> the other Top Six evidences for IDiocy.

All of them show how our science is still in its infancy as far as
an adequate understanding of our world is concerned.

> Ron Okimoto

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

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 12:25:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> > >
> > > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > > Enjoy!

> Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:

Behe was talking about evolution in the video, including evolution of blood clotting.
Your assertion that I'm changing the subject is dishonest or stupid. You pick.

> > A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.

> Yes -- evolved from an irreducible core of factors in a way that everyone missed [1]
> until *after* Behe documented an account by Doolittle spreading over two pages
> of _Darwin's_Black_Box [DBB]. This was followed in DBB by three pages of detailed
> reasoning, with the punch line coming after just one page:

You frequently assert that. But every biochemist knew about self-activating zymogens.
The study of trypsinogen was central to early study of biochemistry, especially those
that did protein chemistry. And self-same behavior of the coagulation cascade proteins
(in the chymotrypsin serine protease super family) was known by all, including of course
those who studied those actual enzymes. Your assertion that they didn't understand
is just you making ill-informed idle speculation.

> "Unfortunately, the universe hasn't got time to wait." [p. 94]

Using ill conceived and ignorant models of evolution does neither you or Behe any credit.

> [1] The Darwinian evolution from an unidentified irreducible core uses the auto-catalytic
> nature of the enzymes involved, in an indispensable way. Kenneth Miller and/or Keith Robison
> figured it out after DBB was published. An account by Robison can be found in the Talk.Origins Archive.

They took the time to make it clear to dilletantes like you and Behe. That doesn't mean it wasn't know.

> Hardly anyone reads it, because one sophomoric participant after has claimed over
> the years that "gene duplication and subsequent divergence" is enough to explain clotting,
> without any awareness of the crucial role "autocatalytic" plays in it. Just as you do below:

Your assertion is empty windage.

> > I especially love how Doolittle was able to examine the protein domains of the multiple
> > clotting enzymes and discover likely pathways of duplication with recombination
> > involved in growing the cascade.

> Given your track record, you will especially *hate* the way Behe exposed a howler

What "track record" do you refer to? Having to explain to you that RNA doesn't persist
around for months inside a cell? (your early attempts to question the wisdom of mRNA vaccines)
You consistently assert that I don't know much about biochemistry but it's all conclusory
accusations. And when it gets into details, you disappear, much like with immunology and vaccines.

> by Doolittle in his Dover 2005 testimony. Instead of taking the onerous path of trying
> to bring his scenario within the time frame of our universe, he attacked Behe's claim
> of irreducible complexity. In so doing, he hilariously misread an article about
> genetically modified mice that lacked two of the factors Behe included.

People often make arguments that are different from the arguments you imagine
they should make instead. For example, in your Judge Jones threads, you kept telling
[name withheld] what you thin Jones should have written in his opinion, things about
the rights of teachers to free speech --- ignoring the fact that teachers weren't part of
the lawsuit, nobody in the trial tried to raise your arguments about free speech, that
your arguments about free speech were wrong according to cited SCOTUS precidents,
and that Judges are supposed to invent hypothetical arguments from hypothetical
defendants but instead rule upon evidence presented by the parties in court on the case
before them in court. You disappeared from that thread after spamming your own
refuted contributions into multiple other threads. Now that's a track record.

But those specifics aside, you make too much out of the mouse experiment. Clotting
still occurs. Taking a modern extant system that has been optimized for its current
components and expecting it to have full functionality if you remove a component or
two is ridiculous. The fact observed was that clotting can still occur.

An informed biochemist/protein chemist would recognize the clear implication that
the reduced cascade could readily be tuned to work much better, that a pathway could
readily exist.

But you're also continuing to miss a much broader point.

In his early work on the coagulation cascade, Doolittle worked on how the know
cascade DID evolve. His early models invoked duplication and exon shuffling. You
could ask why, or you should. And you don't know the answer. I do. It was part of
a larger discussion that was both exciting and controversial at the time. But we
all innately understood that the broader homeostasis involved enzymes that did
more than just activate their trite textbook figure targets.

> The mice were unable to form clots, but this was phrased in technical language
> that Doolittle carelessly misinterpreted, and he proclaimed that the mice were normal!

You got that wrong. They were able to form clots. Their clotting was not sufficient
for full viability given the rough and tumble challenges of things like birth. The
question was with respect to the full efficiency of homeostasis which includes both
the starting and stopping of blood coagulation (stopping being important both to
avoid runaway clotting and to premature depletion of clotting factors).

> > Too bad Behe failed to grasp that lesson

> He grasped it all too well at Dover 2005, going over Doolittle's howler in detail.

In the video, Behe describes it otherwise. You're the one who constantly goes
into full drama queen mode with your over-hyping of Doolittle over-looking the
viability comparison in favor of the biochemical comparison --- because clotting
does indeed occur. Of course, doing so makes sense because demanding fully
equivalent viability for a proof of concept that clotting can still occur (Behe's
definition of the function) is moving the goal-posts. You might as well demand
that all mammal coagulation cascades be capable of wholesale or partwise substitution
from species to species as should obviously be an absurd expectation.

> If anyone has ever refuted the claim that either clotting pathway that Behe identified
> is irreducible AS IT EXISTS IN HUMANS, I haven't seen it, have you?

Why bother? It's all a red herring crafted to fool the ignorant.

> > and instead leveraged his ignorance to sew a tale of something he thought nearly impossible to evolve.
> > He sure fooled a great many dilletantes.

> "nearly impossible to evolve" depends on what the starting point of that evolution
> is claimed to be. After all, it was nearly impossible for our species to evolve from the
> prokaryotes of 3.5 billion years ago, don't you agree?

Depends on which bit of probabilistic Tom Foolery you're attempting.
If you look down at your freshly dealt bridge hand, we know it's highly improbable that
you got those cards. That you got a hand that the books say is worth opening with
one no trump isn't so hard to imagine. I don't find the biochemical and genetic
pathway that produced life like us to be that hard to believe given the broader
geochemical and climatological history of the Earth. I am far far more uncertain
about the plausibility of goldilocks planets having sufficiently long natural histories
that maintain friendly incubating conditions. Perhaps the JWST and a few other coming
observatories will provide enough data in the next few decades to address if that
sort of natural history is or isn't rare.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:15:59 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:


>Below, one can see the beginning of a (potential) retaliatory cascade that is typical
>of Ron O when his scientific knowledge is challenged.

Too bad for PeeWee Peter that neither Glenn's OP nor the article he
cited posted any challenge.

>However, I do believe that my quoted comment, despite its mention of "third party" Ron Okimoto,
>will not bring on any retaliatory entry of him into the fray.
>
>OTOH the following dissection of Ron O's idiotic claims below might do the trick.
>
>On Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 6:15:05 AM UTC-4, Ron O wrote:
>> On 10/26/2022 6:09 PM, Glenn wrote:
>> > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
>> >
>> > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
>> > Enjoy!
>> >
>> Why have you been running from the Top Six for half a decade if IC was
>> worth anything that you wanted to understand?
>
>Ron O has consistently used "the Top Six" to refer to six articles in _Evolution_News_
>that merely introduce six enduring mysteries. He has repeatedly lied that
>these six articles are "the best that the ID perps have to offer" (with
>insignificant variations on the wording).

EvolutionNews regularly refers to their "Top Six" list. This suggests
they think they are the best examples they have to offer. Too bad
PeeWee Peter doesn't blame EvolutionNews for lying instead of RonO.

>> How does this fit in with
>> other Top Six stupidity like the find tuning of our solar system to
>> produce our planet and the origin of life?
>
>Ron O's use of "stupidity" here is ironic, given the stupidity
>of writing "fine tuning of our solar system" for "fine tuning of the physical
>constants of our universe."

The phrases PeeWee Peter quotes above are PRATTs regularly posted by
EvolutionNews and other cdesign proponentsists. That PeeWee Peter
blames RonO for them suggests he has no idea what he's talking about.
But then, PeeWee Peter regularly shows how proud he is of making a
fool of himself in public.

>> Why is it that you never want to understand the junk that you post from
>> the ID perps.
>
>The obvious answer: "because you, Ron O, show no sign of having
>read what you are labeling as junk."

Sez the troll who regularly jumps into the middle of threads and
criticizes cited articles and videos while refusing to inform himself
of relevant content.

>The following sentence by Ron O shows the influence
>of Ron O's other ardent ally, who regularly posts unsupported claims
>and adds "But you could prove me wrong by" followed with a self-serving
>description of what is supposedly involved.

Too bad for PeeWee Peter that what he calls self-serving are in fact
explicit challenges to his explicit claims, which he almost never
backs up, even as he claims to have already done so.

>> You could demonstrate that you want to understand what
>> Behe is selling you by stating how the evolution of the blood clotting
>> system fits in with Behe's view of biological evolution and things like
>> the Cambrian explosion that were occurring within a couple hundred
>> million years of when the blood clotting system evolved in vertebrates.
>>
>> You should explain why IC was dropped out of the Top Six by Sewell and
>> Brian Miller it it is such wonderful IDiocy.

Not sure how expecting a poster to actually show he knows what he's
talking about qualifies as "self-serving". This is yet another
example of Pee Wee Peter's self-serving meanings.

>The claim by Behe that the clotting system (along with a handful of other
>carefully chosen systems) is IC have never been refuted. The problem
>is that the examples aren't as challenging as the other five, which include
>abiogenesis and the fine tuning [more precisely, the extreme sensitivity to minute changes]
>of the physical constants of our universe.

Given that PeeWee Peter regularly refuses to back up his own claims,
it's no surprise that he provides a transparent evasion for Glenn.
Instead of criticizing RonO, PeeWee Peter should criticize Glenn for
singling out the most unchallenging of the Top Six.

>> Top Six:
>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ
>>
>> At the very least you should try to figure out how IC fits together with
>> the other Top Six evidences for IDiocy.
>
>All of them show how our science is still in its infancy as far as
>an adequate understanding of our world is concerned.

Too bad for PeeWee Peter that the expressed understandings of
EvolutionNews and other cdesign proponentsists are even less than that
of "our science", which he would know if he actually knew what he was
talking about.

[Glenn]

That's Chez Watt material, not keeping up with things he claims could not have evolved.

But the subject is interesting, and I wouldn't mind getting Behe's take on adaptations to high altitude. So why would adapting to high altitude be regarded as advantageous, and how and why did it originate?
I suspect this is at best a case of devolution, that comes with a price. I have read that at low elevations, Sherpa with the mutations suffer from anemia, but more seriously, Sherpa cerebral blood flow is lower, which correlates to intelligence, in which lower oxygen saturation rate may also play a part. And Nepal has an average IQ of around 70.

[RonO]

On 10/28/2022 12:15 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:
>
> __________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________
>
>> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
>> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
>>
> Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
> Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
> enter the fray.

The pathetic sniveling coward has returned to lie about the past.

My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
enclosed in a cell membrane. Others have been proposing for decades
that the first self replicating molecules likely existed on crystal
surfaces or in clay matrices. Why even comment about something and be
so wrong about it? It is that hate induced maniac that you project onto
others that makes you do such stupid things.

>
> ====================== end of excerpt from
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qo9z4PTIEKg/m/EBY15YSQBAAJ
> Re: ...iIncredulity 3
> Oct 27, 2022, 6:10:05 PM
>
> Below, one can see the beginning of a (potential) retaliatory cascade that is typical
> of Ron O when his scientific knowledge is challenged.
>
> However, I do believe that my quoted comment, despite its mention of "third party" Ron Okimoto,
> will not bring on any retaliatory entry of him into the fray.
>
> OTOH the following dissection of Ron O's idiotic claims below might do the trick.

What are you lying about now? Do you even know?

>
> On Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 6:15:05 AM UTC-4, Ron O wrote:
>> On 10/26/2022 6:09 PM, Glenn wrote:
>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
>>>
>>> Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
>>> Enjoy!
>>>
>> Why have you been running from the Top Six for half a decade if IC was
>> worth anything that you wanted to understand?
>
> Ron O has consistently used "the Top Six" to refer to six articles in _Evolution_News_
> that merely introduce six enduring mysteries. He has repeatedly lied that
> these six articles are "the best that the ID perps have to offer" (with
> insignificant variations on the wording).

It is just a fact that Glenn has been running from the Top Six for half
a decade. Just ask him if he has ever dealt with the Top Six in an
honest and straightforward manner. He would have to do more than snip
and run.

>
>
>> How does this fit in with
>> other Top Six stupidity like the find tuning of our solar system to
>> produce our planet and the origin of life?
>
> Ron O's use of "stupidity" here is ironic, given the stupidity
> of writing "fine tuning of our solar system" for "fine tuning of the physical
> constants of our universe."

It is Top Six stupidity because even the ID perps don't like the Top
Six. Have you seen any IDiot here or at uncommon descent deal with the
Top Six as the best evidence that they have?

>
>
>> Why is it that you never want to understand the junk that you post from
>> the ID perps.
>
> The obvious answer: "because you, Ron O, show no sign of having
> read what you are labeling as junk."

Why is it that Glenn never wants to understand what he posts? Did he
want to understand anything that he posted in the other thread where you
lied about this junk before? Glenn is just Glenn. Get him to
demonstrate that he wants to understand the junk that he just posted.
Good luck.

>
>
> The following sentence by Ron O shows the influence
> of Ron O's other ardent ally, who regularly posts unsupported claims
> and adds "But you could prove me wrong by" followed with a self-serving
> description of what is supposedly involved.

Does anyone but Nyikos know what he is talking about?

>
>> You could demonstrate that you want to understand what
>> Behe is selling you by stating how the evolution of the blood clotting
>> system fits in with Behe's view of biological evolution and things like
>> the Cambrian explosion that were occurring within a couple hundred
>> million years of when the blood clotting system evolved in vertebrates.
>>
>> You should explain why IC was dropped out of the Top Six by Sewell and
>> Brian Miller it it is such wonderful IDiocy.
>
> The claim by Behe that the clotting system (along with a handful of other
> carefully chosen systems) is IC have never been refuted. The problem
> is that the examples aren't as challenging as the other five, which include
> abiogenesis and the fine tuning [more precisely, the extreme sensitivity to minute changes]
> of the physical constants of our universe.

What an IDiotic creationist you have to be. No one has to refute the
stupid junk when Behe has never demonstrated that his type of IC systems
even exist in nature. Behe has only claimed that they exist. That
isn't the same as doing the science that is needed to demonstrate that
his IC systems actually exist.

>
>
>> Top Six:
>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ
>>
>> At the very least you should try to figure out how IC fits together with
>> the other Top Six evidences for IDiocy.
>
> All of them show how our science is still in its infancy as far as
> an adequate understanding of our world is concerned.

There was never any IDiotic science attempted. The ID scam has been
going on for over a quarter of a century, and you can't demonstrate that
any hypothesis was put forward and tested. Only the claims were made.
Demonstrate otherwise. The last thing that Behe wants to do is
demonstrate that his 3 neutral mutations occurred in a part of the
flagellum as it evolved over a billion years ago. The majority of
IDiots are still YEC and they don't want to buy a book that tells them
about something that happened over a billion years ago.

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:30:06 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
> On 10/28/2022 12:15 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:
> >
> > __________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________
> >
> >> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
> >> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
> >>
> > Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
> > Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
> > enter the fray.
> The pathetic sniveling coward has returned to lie about the past.
>
> My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
> enclosed in a cell membrane.

"The first groups of self replicators likely didn't use membranes."

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/iyMdrLWfIrA/m/KrA5pwgbAQAJ

As if you know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the origin of life, let alone of anything else, like what "likely" means other than "I don't know".

[RonO]

Isn't that what I just told Nyikos? Are you really that out of it that
you don't know the difference between the first self replicators and
cellular life?

Willful ignorance isn't a solution for anything.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/28/22 10:15 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
[snip to one point]

> The claim by Behe that the clotting system (along with a handful of other
> carefully chosen systems) is IC have never been refuted.

The claim that anyone should give a damn whether the clotting system (or
others) is IC or not *has* been refuted.

[Gary Hurd]

I'll interject a question. Why am I not able to post an original msg to this Google list?

Plenty of crap threads started by others.

How do I ask a question, or post a thread opener?

[Lawyer Daggett]

Upper left in my view of the newsgrouop as
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins there is a large button with a
rainbow colored plus sign followed by the text "New conversation".
This is not a mobile view but the full web page.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 12:25:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> > > >
> > > > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > > > Enjoy!
>
> > Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:
> Behe was talking about evolution in the video, including evolution of blood clotting.

> Your assertion that I'm changing the subject is dishonest or stupid. You pick.

As usual, you ignore the obvious: Glenn talked about IC, you changed the subject
to evolution. Only someone with an incorrigible adversarial attitude towards
me would call what I wrote in response to that either dishonest or stupid.

The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest

or stupid. You pick.


> > > A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.
>
> > Yes -- evolved from an irreducible core of factors in a way that everyone missed [1]
> > until *after* Behe documented an account by Doolittle spreading over two pages
> > of _Darwin's_Black_Box [DBB]. This was followed in DBB by three pages of detailed
> > reasoning, with the punch line coming after just one page:

> You frequently assert that.

This is the first time I wrote anything resembling the part following "*after*".

You need to switch off your automatic pilot before you make a bigger fool of yourself.

> But every biochemist knew about self-activating zymogens.

Including Behe, of course:

"When this happens Clr cuts itself (headline: Dog bites dog!)" DBB, p. 133

But neither he nor Doollittle nor anyone else figured out how self-activation could
make part of the clotting cascade evolve in "small, Darwinian steps" until after
the publication of DBB.

And you go off on a Hemidactylus type tangent of minutiae that does Doolittle no favors:

> The study of trypsinogen was central to early study of biochemistry, especially those
> that did protein chemistry. And self-same behavior of the coagulation cascade proteins
> (in the chymotrypsin serine protease super family) was known by all, including of course
> those who studied those actual enzymes. Your assertion that they didn't understand
> is just you making ill-informed idle speculation.

Your polemical equivocation "they didn't understand" is worthless at best and
dishonest at worst without an object for the verb "understand."

Chez Watt material, featuring you hoist with your own petard.

> > "Unfortunately, the universe hasn't got time to wait." [p. 94]


> Using ill conceived and ignorant models of evolution does neither you or Behe any credit.

Committing the fallacy of Begging the Question in this way does you credit in your eyes and
in the eyes of jillery, Ron O, Mark Isaak, Zencycle, ...did I miss anyone?

Until you expose the flaw in the model Behe used, by showing how Doolittle can
beat the odds given by Behe using HIS explanation, WITHOUT the Miller/Robison
simplifying maneuver, you are guilty as charged.

> > [1] The Darwinian evolution from an unidentified irreducible core uses the auto-catalytic
> > nature of the enzymes involved, in an indispensable way. Kenneth Miller and/or Keith Robison
> > figured it out after DBB was published. An account by Robison can be found in the Talk.Origins Archive.

Your response to this illustrates how you are a polemicist first, a propagandist second,
and a reasoner an embarrassingly distant third:

> They took the time to make it clear to dilletantes like you and Behe.

You mean Doolittle, who made the stupid blunder of going after IC instead
of figuring out what you are giving the "hindsight is 20/20" treatment. He even prefaced
his blunder by sarcastically (so he thought) suggesting that when he first saw DBB,
it looked like his whole life's work had been in vain.

> That doesn't mean it wasn't know.

Tell that to the ghost of Doolittle on Halloween.

> > Hardly anyone reads it, because one sophomoric participant after has claimed over
> > the years that "gene duplication and subsequent divergence" is enough to explain clotting,
> > without any awareness of the crucial role "autocatalytic" plays in it. Just as you do below:

> Your assertion is empty windage.

You are in serious denial about your lack of awareness of that crucial role in what you
wrote in your whole post. If Mark Isaak weren't so deeply implicated in dishonest gaslighting,
he could *sincerely* tell you that you need counseling.

> > > I especially love how Doolittle was able to examine the protein domains of the multiple
> > > clotting enzymes and discover likely pathways of duplication with recombination
> > > involved in growing the cascade.
>
> > Given your track record, you will especially *hate* the way Behe exposed a howler

<snip digression to be dealt with later>

> > by Doolittle in his Dover 2005 testimony. Instead of taking the onerous path of trying
> > to bring his scenario within the time frame of our universe, he attacked Behe's claim
> > of irreducible complexity. In so doing, he hilariously misread an article about
> > genetically modified mice that lacked two of the factors Behe included.

Instead of addressing this, you go off on another digression:

> People often make arguments that are different from the arguments you imagine
> they should make instead.

Thanks for implicitly imagining that Doolittle could have given the argument he didn't make,
and building a castle against me on this cloud of yours. Also on the implied cloud
of his blunder being of no consequence because ... [YOU complete the sentence, if you can.]


CONTINUED on Monday, where your long digression about an utterly
different topic will be dealt with. I'm trying to postpone the devolution of this thread
into a mass of personal accusations having nothing to do with the topic of clotting.

Of course, I cannot avoid others devolving the thread that way over the weekend
(when I will be on my usual posting break) but that will be their doing, not mine.

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

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 9:45:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 12:25:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> > > > >
> > > > > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > > > > Enjoy!
> >
> > > Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:
> > Behe was talking about evolution in the video, including evolution of blood clotting.
>
> > Your assertion that I'm changing the subject is dishonest or stupid. You pick.
> As usual, you ignore the obvious: Glenn talked about IC, you changed the subject
> to evolution. Only someone with an incorrigible adversarial attitude towards
> me would call what I wrote in response to that either dishonest or stupid.

Parsing Glenn's sentence, the object of the sentence was "video". Irreducible complexity
exists in a clause modifying video. I was commenting about the video as is obvious in
the text you preempted. I leave it in below.

> The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
> and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
> or stupid. You pick.

Yet, in that very video, Behe presses that very point. He claims that blood coagulation could not
have evolved but must have been designed. Yes, despite your many many protestations that he
doesn't make that argument, he does via that video. Your Kung Fu and your rhetoric is weak.

[Glenn]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 5:25:07 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
> On 10/28/2022 6:21 PM, Glenn wrote:
> > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:30:06 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
> >> On 10/28/2022 12:15 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:
> >>>
> >>> __________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________
> >>>
> >>>> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
> >>>> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
> >>>>
> >>> Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
> >>> Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
> >>> enter the fray.
> >> The pathetic sniveling coward has returned to lie about the past.
> >>
> >> My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
> >> enclosed in a cell membrane.
> >
> > "The first groups of self replicators likely didn't use membranes."
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/iyMdrLWfIrA/m/KrA5pwgbAQAJ
> >
> > As if you know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the origin of life, let alone of anything else, like what "likely" means other than "I don't know".
> >
> Isn't that what I just told Nyikos?

Not quite. "Did not have to be" is not quite the same as "did not".

[Glenn]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 7:10:06 PM UTC-7, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 9:45:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 12:25:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > > > > > Enjoy!
> > >
> > > > Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:
> > > Behe was talking about evolution in the video, including evolution of blood clotting.
> >
> > > Your assertion that I'm changing the subject is dishonest or stupid. You pick.
> > As usual, you ignore the obvious: Glenn talked about IC, you changed the subject
> > to evolution. Only someone with an incorrigible adversarial attitude towards
> > me would call what I wrote in response to that either dishonest or stupid.
> Parsing Glenn's sentence, the object of the sentence was "video". Irreducible complexity
> exists in a clause modifying video. I was commenting about the video as is obvious in
> the text you preempted. I leave it in below.

You're a nut. The subject is clearly irreducible complexity, not a video. And you were not commenting on the video itself. I thought it was a very well done presentation, with cool animation.

> > The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
> > and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
> > or stupid. You pick.
> Yet, in that very video, Behe presses that very point. He claims that blood coagulation could not
> have evolved but must have been designed. Yes, despite your many many protestations that he
> doesn't make that argument, he does via that video. Your Kung Fu and your rhetoric is weak.

Behe does not claim coagulation alone is IC. The subject was the blood clotting cascade.
And he didn't say or argue that blood coagulation couldn't have evolved. And when he refers to "evolved" he usually means "unguided evolution".

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:21:13 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Most people I know use "likely" to mean "plausible". Apparently your
mileage varies.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:40:36 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:


>The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
>and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
>or stupid. You pick.

Not sure why PeeWee Peter blames everybody but Behe for "conflating"
IC with ID. It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's
Black Box, even after all this time. I leave as an exercise which
cause is stupid and which is dishonest.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 15:15:38 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

I agree that your cited EvolutionNews article is Chez Watt material.

>But the subject is interesting, and I wouldn't mind getting Behe's take on adaptations to high altitude. So why would adapting to high altitude be regarded as advantageous, and how and why did it originate?
>I suspect this is at best a case of devolution, that comes with a price. I have read that at low elevations, Sherpa with the mutations suffer from anemia, but more seriously, Sherpa cerebral blood flow is lower, which correlates to intelligence, in which lower oxygen saturation rate may also play a part. And Nepal has an average IQ of around 70.

There is no free lunch. All gains necessarily have costs, if not in
the same environment, then in environments with contrasting
requirements. This is one reason why Behe's Devolution is just
another willfully stupid PRATT.

[Glenn]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 11:00:08 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:21:13 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> wrote:
> >On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:30:06 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
> >> On 10/28/2022 12:15 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:
> >> >
> >> > __________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________
> >> >
> >> >> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
> >> >> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
> >> >>
> >> > Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
> >> > Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
> >> > enter the fray.
> >> The pathetic sniveling coward has returned to lie about the past.
> >>
> >> My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
> >> enclosed in a cell membrane.
> >
> >"The first groups of self replicators likely didn't use membranes."
> >
> >https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/iyMdrLWfIrA/m/KrA5pwgbAQAJ
> >
> >As if you know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the origin of life, let alone of anything else, like what "likely" means other than "I don't know".

Nothing there, silly person?

> Most people I know use "likely" to mean "plausible". Apparently your
> mileage varies.
> --

"My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
enclosed in a cell membrane. "

Do you see "likely" in that?

[RonO]

What a nut job. What is Nyikos' issue? You are just admitting that
Nyikos was wrong. Just read what his claim was. My claim was about the
first self replicators. These are the self replicating molecules or
composite molecules that origin of life researchers think formed on
mineral surfaces or within a clay matrix. They would not be the first
living cells.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Likely and plasible doesn't have much to do with what Nyikos is lying about.

QUOTE:

What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment that
the first living cells did not have cell membranes?

END QUOTE:

I never made the claim about the first living cells. My discussion was
about the first self replicators that origin of life researchers have
been claiming for decades would have been made on mineral surfaces or
within a clay matrix. In fact I have proposed that these self
replicators would precede lipid bilayer membranes, and that it would
have been self replicators with the secondary ability to produce lipids
that would have increased the lipid concentration around them enough to
form lipid bilayers. As long as these self replicators had a partial
hydrophobic affinity the lipid would associate with them, and they could
become part of that lipid bilayer. The lipid membrane could have been
unstable and it was likely good to have the self replicating portion of
the replicator on the inside or outside the lipid bubble so that it had
access to the materials that it needed to make more of themselves. The
lipid bilayer could have been mostly used to keep similar self
replicating molecules part of the same lipid bilayer when they first
formed. It would have concentrated self replicators just due to their
hydrophobic affinity. Keeping everything inside could have evolved over
time as more things were added to the membrane. The first self
replicators associated with lipid bilayers may not have cared much
whether their active parts were inside or outside of the bubble. They
may have preferred to be outside because inside they would be limited to
what ever got trapped inside with them as resources to make more of
themselves. Their "food" would be replenished as the membrane broke and
reformed, but my guess is that the active regions of such individual
self replicators would have been found on both sides of the membrane so
it didn't matter how the membrane flip-flopped over time. Some of them
would would exist on one side of the lipid bilayer and others would be
exposed on the other side. Modern membranes are not just lipid, and it
would have likely taken a while to evolve the membrane components to
stabilize the membranes enough for there to be an inside and outside.

Ron Okimoto

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

some

> origin of life researchers think formed on mineral surfaces or within a
> clay matrix. They would not be the first living cells.
>
> Ron Okimoto

--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 01:10:54 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

Since you asked, yes. There exist today self-replicating molecules
outside of cell membranes. This means it's likely that in the past
there also were self-replicating molecules outside of cell membranes.
Not sure why you even challenge the point. You're welcome.

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 08:38:25 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 10/29/2022 12:56 AM, jillery wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:21:13 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:30:06 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
>>>> On 10/28/2022 12:15 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> Ron O demonstrates something that his ardent ally Hemidactylus talked about on another thread:
>>>>>
>>>>> __________________________ Excerpt, with me going first _______________________________
>>>>>
>>>>>> What was the thread where Ron Okimoto made that sophomoric comment
>>>>>> that the first living cells did not have cell membranes?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yeah comments like that won’t lead into retaliatory escalation cascades.
>>>>> Not at all. Nor will bringing up third parties as a beacon for them to
>>>>> enter the fray.
>>>> The pathetic sniveling coward has returned to lie about the past.
>>>>
>>>> My claim was that the first self replicating molecules did not have be
>>>> enclosed in a cell membrane.
>>>
>>> "The first groups of self replicators likely didn't use membranes."
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/iyMdrLWfIrA/m/KrA5pwgbAQAJ
>>>
>>> As if you know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the origin of life, let alone of anything else, like what "likely" means other than "I don't know".
>>
>>
>> Most people I know use "likely" to mean "plausible". Apparently your
>> mileage varies.
>>
>
>Likely and plasible doesn't have much to do with what Nyikos is lying about.

My comments are a response to Glenn's comments. PeeWee Peter's
comments typically have nothing to do with the posts to which he
replies, and Glenn's comments almost never do. This means the above
is a Usenet version of Telephone.

Nevertheless, my comments above support your point below, that
self-replicating molecules are precursors to the first living cells.
PeeWee Peter and Glenn obfuscate first life with self-replicating
molecules.

[Glenn]

That you would think that is a point is really funny.

[Glenn]

Likely Ron will agree with your definition of life, and won't obfuscate all over the place.

[Glenn]

There exists today spam inside supermarkets. This means it is likely that spam existed outside supermarkets billions of years ago. You're welcome.

[Gary Hurd]

Got it!

I had to run their update.

Thanks

[RonO]

Glenn, when are you going to actually try to support any IDiotic
science? It has to get old being wrong all the time when you need to be
wrong, so why not try being wrong about something that matters to you?

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

You seem to think you can read minds, like jillery.

[RonO]

It isn't mind reading it is just observation of what you have done for
years. When do you think that you will try something honest and worth
doing?

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

Now that is projection. But the least of your problems.

[RonO]

What did you just do in the "Sleep Well" thread. Projecting your own
projection is really sad.

When do you think that you will try something honest and worth doing?

What about doing what Luskin suggests?

Still recommended on your favorite creationist news site:
https://evolutionnews.org/2021/12/what-is-intelligent-design-and-how-should-we-defend-it/

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 12:04:00 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

Even if so, that would make you hysterical, in every sense of the
word.

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 12:19:27 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

False equivalence. Spam is of human manufacture, while many
self-replicating molecules are not.

[Glenn]

Getting an early start on trick or treat, I see.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 11:55:06 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/27/22 10:56 AM, Bill wrote:
> > [...]
> > Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
> > mean that Creationism / ID is false?
> Behe is considered an authority because Creationists desperately want
> credibility, and Behe has a PhD and wrote a book. Behe's mistakes do
> not mean ID is false (it was false long before him), but they sure don't
> help his case.

Your two cents' worth, give or take a couple of cents, is duly noted.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 10:10:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 9:45:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 12:25:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:35:05 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > > > > https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/premiere-new-behe-video-explores-secrets-of-blood-clotting/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Excellent convincing video about irreducible complexity.
> > > > > > Enjoy!
> > >
> > > > Change of topic from IC to evolution noted:

> > > Behe was talking about evolution in the video, including evolution of blood clotting.
> >
> > > Your assertion that I'm changing the subject is dishonest or stupid. You pick.

> > As usual, you ignore the obvious: Glenn talked about IC, you changed the subject
> > to evolution. Only someone with an incorrigible adversarial attitude towards
> > me would call what I wrote in response to that either dishonest or stupid.

> Parsing Glenn's sentence, the object of the sentence was "video". Irreducible complexity
> exists in a clause modifying video. I was commenting about the video as is obvious in
> the text you preempted. I leave it in below.

"preempted"?

> > The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
> > and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
> > or stupid. You pick.


> Yet, in that very video, Behe presses that very point. He claims that blood coagulation could not
> have evolved but must have been designed.

False dichotomy: Behe believes that it evolved, AND that intelligent intervention took place
at one or more points to help the evolution along.

Besides, you forgot to add to that last sentence: "because it is IC." I've seen the video, and this is a place
where Behe left something unsaid [just like you!]. Namely, it is the enormous intricacy of the
fibrinogen-based clotting mechanism in *addition* to its being IC that makes (according to him) the probability
"drop precipitously" that it evolved every step of the way without intelligent intervention.


I've said, starting some time in 1997, that IC gives "more bang for the buck" than a redundant system, because
an "indirect route" that Behe admits might have happened in "gradual Darwinian fashion" adds more
steps to any already complicated direct "hopeful monster" route would take.

In the case of the said clotting mechanism, the video makes a case for it being a very big bang indeed.


I should add that it's been quite a while since I've seen the Miller/Robison simplifying maneuver,
so I'm not sure how much it improves the odds Behe estimated in DBB.

> Yes, despite your many many protestations that he
> doesn't make that argument, he does via that video.

"that argument" is ambiguous. You never spelled it out. If it is simply that IC implies ID,
that may have been carelessly claimed by Casey Luskin or others, but Behe never went that route.
Take a look at p. 40 in DBB to see what his position is like on that issue.

> Your Kung Fu and your rhetoric is weak.

Cute repartee noted. Some here think your rhetorical skills are better than mine;
but in science, reason rules; rhetoric only gives you a wider audience.

> > > > > A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.

Say again what? Behe's DBB came out in 1996, and while he formulated the IC concept several
years earlier, it certainly wasn't back in the 70's.

Besides, as I noted above, the issue isn't whether it evolved; it is whether it evolved without intelligent
intervention at any point.


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

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, October 29, 2022 at 2:00:08 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:40:36 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
> >and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
> >or stupid. You pick.

> Not sure why PeeWee Peter blames everybody but Behe for "conflating"
> IC with ID. It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's
> Black Box, even after all this time.

Either you are shamelessly lying, or else one person posting from the address
69jp...@gmail.com is totally oblivious to things the other has posted
many times over the years.

Take a look at my reply of about a quarter hour ago to Lawyer Daggett.
The main distinctions there will be intimately familiar to the jillery
who posted about p. 40 of DBB over half a dozen years ago,
and has referred to that page several times since.

> I leave as an exercise which
> cause is stupid and which is dishonest.

I leave it to readers to speculate on whether there is
a single pathologically dishonest person posting from 69jp...@gmail.com,
or whether more than one person uses that address, including a clueless troll
who seldom bothers to run what 'e posts by one of the knowledgeable
people using the same address.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, October 29, 2022 at 2:00:08 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:

So does the mileage of the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Definition of plausible
1: superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious
a plausible pretext
2: superficially pleasing or persuasive
a swindler … , then a quack, then a smooth, plausible gentleman
— R. W. Emerson
3: appearing worthy of belief
the argument was both powerful and plausible

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plausible


All three definitions talk about appearances, not probability,
to which "likely" is intimately related, and the first two even use "superficially."

Do Brits use the word differently? Unfortunately, the real OED
(not mere dictionaries with "Oxford" in the name)
was paywalled when last I looked.

Anyway, the connotations of "plausible" in all my reading and all my talking to others
are expressed by "Sounds good, but where's the evidence?"


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 8:55:06 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 10/28/22 10:15 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> [snip to one point]

> > The claim by Behe that the clotting system (along with a handful of other
> > carefully chosen systems) is IC have never been refuted.

> The claim that anyone should give a damn whether the clotting system (or
> others) is IC or not *has* been refuted.

Read my reply to Lawyer Daggett earlier today to get some idea of how clueless you are being.
He at least gives the impression that he is trying to back up his claims, which you almost never do.
Look at how badly you failed to back them up on another thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/TFK604jYAAAJ
Re: Is Common Descent evolution?

I will be giving another reply to Daggett later this evening. It will be relevant
to what I wrote in the post I've linked, especially near its end.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Disregarding one of your arbitrary whims, Daggett, I'm changing the thread
title to better reflect what is going on here. For the benefit of those reading this in Google Groups, it is:

Back to Kitzmiller v. Dover WAS: Re: Clot Watch

Right in the middle of a long post, you talk about something that has nothing
whatsoever to do with what this thread started to be all about.

Nevertheless, I will humor you below.

On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

> People often make arguments that are different from the arguments you imagine
> they should make instead.

"imagine" is wrong; "reason" is the right word here, as you will see.


I don't know why you aren't mentioning the name of the person you are talking about below;
the message of your one-sentence tirade below is:

"How DARE you argue with someone with the brilliant legal mind of [name withheld]?"

> For example, in your Judge Jones threads, you kept telling
> [name withheld] what you thin Jones should have written in his opinion,
> things about the rights of teachers to free speech --- ignoring the fact that teachers weren't part of
> the lawsuit, nobody in the trial tried to raise your arguments about free speech, that
> your arguments about free speech were wrong according to cited SCOTUS precidents,
> and that Judges are supposed to invent hypothetical arguments from hypothetical
> defendants but instead rule upon evidence presented by the parties in court on the case
> before them in court.

Did "[name withheld]" put you up to this pack of lies? I didn't ignore ANY of the above,
and here is some of what I wrote in rebuttal:

___________________________ excerpt, with words of [name withheld] coming first __________________________


>This was not about the rights of the teachers, it was
> about the right of the pupils, and it was not a freedom of speech case
> by an establishment clause case. The teachers are not party to the
> proceedings, at all.

But the memo of the teachers to the Board was quoted extensively
on pp. 127-128, and the quoted part makes no reference to
any violation of student rights, nor to religion at all. It begins with:

"You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion [the statement read to students at the beginning of the biology evolution unit] of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students."

Note the clause, "our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class."


> and also no, teacher (or professors, for that matter) do not have have
> the right to refuse teaching whatever their employer wants them to
> say/teach. So if this had been teachers complaining about the compelled
> statement, they'd probably lost.

Here is where you show your ignorance of the fact that freedom of speech
is taken more seriously by the public in general and the courts in particular
throughout the USA than in almost every country in the world.

For example, in stark contrast to the other "progressive" countries, including Canada,
"hate speech" laws have consistently been struck down by the US Supreme Court
as violations of the rulings that extend the First Amendment right to
all the states. And the State Board of Education was part of the purview of the
Pennsylvania state government.

In stunning contrast, one of the Le Pens [Marine's father, if memory serves]
was fined 40,000 Euros by a French court for "Holocaust denial."

>
> Just reposing from the last time I tried to correct you about the US
> constitution:
>
> "Second, the cases that were about teacher rights (the most important
> ones I documented below in my previous post,

Which post of yours are you quoting from? You give no reference to it below.


> including Scopes and
> Webster,) all ruled against the teachers - regardless of whether they
> claimed a right to teach evolution (Scopes) or ID (Webster)

[...]
Anyway, the Dover case was a violation of the First Amendment
in that it was *mandated* speech. And this is even more contrary to
the spirit of the Constitution, being also curtailed by the Fifth Amendment.

======================= end of excerpt =================

That Judge Jones (and counsel for the plaintiffs?) chose to cast it as
a violation of the establishment clause is irrelevant to what I said.
Basing it on freedom of speech would have made it
an open-and-shut case that would probably have been settled out of court.
If not, a speedy trial lasting no more than a few hours would have
been the natural outcome.

But then they wouldn't have had a settlement to the tune of a million dollars,
which resulted from the show trial the plaintiffs and Jones clearly wanted.


> and that Judges are supposed to invent hypothetical arguments from hypothetical
> defendants

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style on

Stop. Just stop. You are humiliating yourself

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style off

... but not in the eyes of jillery, Ron O, Mark Isaak, Zencycle, or "[name withheld]",
all of whom care far more about whose side someone is on than on truth or justice.

There was nothing hypothetical about the defendants, who lost big-time [see above],
your shameless lie notwithstanding.

Nor was the real grievance of the teachers hypothetical. NOWHERE
in the part Jones quotes from their impassioned complaint is there
any mention of religion or violation of student or parental rights, only about
the statement that they are forced to read.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to tomorrow.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 13:44:47 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

Valid dichotomy: Even if your description above of Behe's comments is
accurate, that would still necessarily means "it" could not have
evolved without intelligent intervention.

>Besides, you forgot to add to that last sentence: "because it is IC." I've seen the video, and this is a place
>where Behe left something unsaid [just like you!]. Namely, it is the enormous intricacy of the
>fibrinogen-based clotting mechanism in *addition* to its being IC that makes (according to him) the probability
>"drop precipitously" that it evolved every step of the way without intelligent intervention.

Your "enormous intricacy" is the "complexity" in Behe's Irreducible
Complexity. More to the point, Behe makes no effort, either in DBB or
since to the best of my knowledge, to distinguish those parts which
evolved and those parts which required intelligent intervention.
Finally, by Behe's expressed definitions, IC is an absolute; either a
part is necessary to the system or it's not.

>I've said, starting some time in 1997, that IC gives "more bang for the buck" than a redundant system, because
>an "indirect route" that Behe admits might have happened in "gradual Darwinian fashion" adds more
>steps to any already complicated direct "hopeful monster" route would take.
>
>In the case of the said clotting mechanism, the video makes a case for it being a very big bang indeed.

To the contrary, Behe in the video makes the same mistake as do most
cdesign proponentsists, to fail to acknowledge that parts of systems
can provide some functionality which then evolve additional
functionality. That's the difference between a sequence appearing all
at once, and appearing sequentially over time.

>I should add that it's been quite a while since I've seen the Miller/Robison simplifying maneuver,
>so I'm not sure how much it improves the odds Behe estimated in DBB.
>
>
>> Yes, despite your many many protestations that he
>> doesn't make that argument, he does via that video.
>
>"that argument" is ambiguous. You never spelled it out. If it is simply that IC implies ID,
>that may have been carelessly claimed by Casey Luskin or others, but Behe never went that route.
>Take a look at p. 40 in DBB to see what his position is like on that issue.

You should follow your own advice. Behe in DBB is explicit that the
existence of IC systems refutes evolution.

>> Your Kung Fu and your rhetoric is weak.
>
>Cute repartee noted. Some here think your rhetorical skills are better than mine;
>but in science, reason rules; rhetoric only gives you a wider audience.
>
>
>> > > > > A lovely example of an evolved system. I recall it as a marquee example from the 70s.
>
>Say again what? Behe's DBB came out in 1996, and while he formulated the IC concept several
>years earlier, it certainly wasn't back in the 70's.
>
>Besides, as I noted above, the issue isn't whether it evolved; it is whether it evolved without intelligent
>intervention at any point.

As I noted above, Behe's expressed argument doesn't allow IC systems
to evolve.

[jillery]

On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 14:08:03 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, October 29, 2022 at 2:00:08 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:40:36 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
>> >and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
>> >or stupid. You pick.
>
>> Not sure why PeeWee Peter blames everybody but Behe for "conflating"
>> IC with ID. It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's
>> Black Box, even after all this time.
>
>Either you are shamelessly lying, or else one person posting from the address
>69jp...@gmail.com is totally oblivious to things the other has posted
>many times over the years.

The above is yet another one of your transparent willfully stupid
obfuscating allusions. You make zero effort to explain how you
conclude anyone conflates IC with ID, and now you make zero effort to
explain how you conclude I am lying or are multiple personas. Bad
enough that your compulsions control you. Worse that you act as if
you're oblivious to them.

>Take a look at my reply of about a quarter hour ago to Lawyer Daggett.
>The main distinctions there will be intimately familiar to the jillery
>who posted about p. 40 of DBB over half a dozen years ago,
>and has referred to that page several times since.

The jillery to whom you refer above is the same person and persona who
replied to your previous post, and who replies to this post, and who
to the best of my knowledge authored all other posts in T.O. using
that nym. Worse, you don't even try to support your lies. You're a
willfully stupid troll who throws mindless crap on the walls for the
sake of it.

>> I leave as an exercise which
>> cause is stupid and which is dishonest.
>
>I leave it to readers to speculate on whether there is
>a single pathologically dishonest person posting from 69jp...@gmail.com,
>or whether more than one person uses that address, including a clueless troll
>who seldom bothers to run what 'e posts by one of the knowledgeable
>people using the same address.
>
>
>Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

It's remarkable how often PeeWee Peter spams his transparently
baseless opinions.

[jillery]

Since you mention it, I acknowledge there is a common meaning of
"plausible" as you describe, to imply deception. Do you acknowledge
most words have multiple common meanings?

There is another common meaning as I describe. The following are
common synonyms for "plausible":

conceivable
credible
logical
persuasive
possible
probable
tenable
valid
creditable
presumable
sound
supposable

<https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/plausible>

More to the point, the word Glenn took exception to is "likely":

1: having a high probability of occurring or being true : very
probable - rain is likely today
2: apparently qualified : SUITABLE - a likely place
3: RELIABLE, CREDIBLE - a likely enough story
4: PROMISING - a likely candidate
5: ATTRACTIVE - a likely child

likely adverb
in all probability : PROBABLY

<https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely>

which closely agrees with the synonyms for "plausible". More to the
point, none of the meanings for either word remotely comes close to
inferring Glenn's "I don't know". You're welcome.

[jillery]

On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 19:29:34 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style on
>
>Stop. Just stop. You are humiliating yourself
>
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style off
>
>... but not in the eyes of jillery, Ron O, Mark Isaak, Zencycle, or "[name withheld]",
>all of whom care far more about whose side someone is on than on truth or justice.

You can't read minds any better than Glenn does. Follow the lawyer's
advice.

[Burkhard]

a) that does not make the teachers party to he law suit
b) you, again, misread the sentence - it starts with "the students may
opt out", so yes, it is about student rights. The exercise of this right
is facilitated by the teachers, but the right to opt out is the students'.

>
> "You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion [the statement read to students at the beginning of the biology evolution unit] of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students."
>
> Note the clause, "our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class."

Note the clause "that students may opt out". This is about the way in
which teachers helped students to exercise their opt out right.

>
>
>> and also no, teacher (or professors, for that matter) do not have have
>> the right to refuse teaching whatever their employer wants them to
>> say/teach. So if this had been teachers complaining about the compelled
>> statement, they'd probably lost.
>
> Here is where you show your ignorance of the fact that freedom of speech
> is taken more seriously by the public in general and the courts in particular
> throughout the USA than in almost every country in the world.

Only that this is the constitution that you imagine it to be, not the
one you have in the US. I cited, three times now, three on-point cases
SCOTUS decisions (Freedom of speech in education) that flatly refute
your reading.

They are part of a well-established principle that employees, including
government employees, do not have free speech rights if the speech is
art of their public duties. So e.g. Walker v. Tex. Div., Sons of
Confederate Veterans, Inc., 576 U.S. 200, 207 (2015)
“When government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from
determining the content of what it says.”) And if the employer has
different ideas, they "may" do so privately, but it is their job to show
it was not part of their official duties, Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547
U.S. 410, 421 (2006): "The employee faces the “threshold burden”
to demonstrate that the relevant expressions “represented his own
private speech” as opposed to speech in discharge of his official
duties" More recently, Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist., 142 S. Ct. 2407,
2425 confirms this.

Relevant academic literature for more in depth analysis would include
e.g. Randy J. Kozel, Government employee speech and Forum analysis,
Journal of Free speech law 2022 Kotzel is a free speech maximalist, and
the paper is in particular about restrictions on speech that are not
part of their official duties. Choice quote;
"First, is the speech at issue a component of the employee’s
official duties? If so, the employer may limit, regulate, or impose
discipline based on the speech [...] without running afoul of the First
Amendment "

>
> For example, in stark contrast to the other "progressive" countries, including Canada,
> "hate speech" laws have consistently been struck down by the US Supreme Court
> as violations of the rulings that extend the First Amendment right to
> all the states. And the State Board of Education was part of the purview of the
> Pennsylvania state government.
>
> In stunning contrast, one of the Le Pens [Marine's father, if memory serves]
> was fined 40,000 Euros by a French court for "Holocaust denial."

and none of this has any bearing whatsoever on the legal principle that
government employees in their official duties. Your argument has the
form: Because the US grants more rights on one issue than France, it
therefore also grants more rights on a totally different issue.

Obviously incapable to support your position from the word go.

>
>>
>> Just reposing from the last time I tried to correct you about the US
>> constitution:
>>
>> "Second, the cases that were about teacher rights (the most important
>> ones I documented below in my previous post,
>
> Which post of yours are you quoting from? You give no reference to it below.

yes I did, in the part you now snipped. Edwards v. California, Garcetti
v.Ceballos, Webster and Scopes were among them

>
>
>> including Scopes and
>> Webster,) all ruled against the teachers - regardless of whether they
>> claimed a right to teach evolution (Scopes) or ID (Webster)
>
> [...]
> Anyway, the Dover case was a violation of the First Amendment
> in that it was *mandated* speech. And this is even more contrary to
> the spirit of the Constitution, being also curtailed by the Fifth Amendment.
>
> ======================= end of excerpt =================
>
> That Judge Jones (and counsel for the plaintiffs?) chose to cast it as
> a violation of the establishment clause is irrelevant to what I said.

For a given value of irrelevant: here, showing that you were just wrong
on it, from the word go. And Jones did not "chose" to cat it that way,
that is what the action was. If you sue your neighbor for breech of
contract, then the judge can't simply give them a traffic fine instead.
Judges adjudicate conflicts between the parties before them, you mistake
them for police and prosecutors who sua sponte identify a breach n the
law. That's not how it works.

> Basing it on freedom of speech would have made it
> an open-and-shut case

Indeed- just for the other side. There is no chance in hell that the
teachers would have won a free speech case, all the established
precedent says so. And a good thing too. If teachers had free speech
right for what they teach, a) we would not need a board of education
that sets the curriculum and b) they could teach your children in math
that 2+2=5; in geography that the earth is flat, in physics that stones
fall to the earth because they are tired etc etc etc. An obviously
untenable outcome.

that would probably have been settled out of court.
> If not, a speedy trial lasting no more than a few hours would have
> been the natural outcome.

Probably = something Peter N made up, And the outcome would have been,
without a shadow of a doubt, that they would have lost. The parents
already on grounds of standing, the teachers, had the joint the suit,
because clear established

>
> But then they wouldn't have had a settlement to the tune of a million dollars,
> which resulted from the show trial the plaintiffs and Jones clearly wanted.

It would have been illegal for Jones to alter the pleading by the
parties, so what he wants doesn't enter the equation at all, your weird
conspiracy mindset notwithstanding.

The parents would have been barred on procedural grounds already to
bring the type of free speech case that you fantasize about, they are
lacking standing for this.

The teachers could have brought independently a separate claim for a
free speech violation. That would have been a different case, with
different parties, on a different legal issue. It rather obviously would
have made it more expensive for the School board, not less so (dealing
with 2 cases rather then one, even if they had won the teacher's case
case)

The "settlement" was mainly the award of costs, that is the money the
plaintiff had to spend on their legal counsel. That would not have been
substantially lower in a Free Speech case. And they ended up out of
pocket for this, as they chose to waive some of their costs to not harm
the school district. They only asked for nominal damages, so the money
they got for this for themselves was trivial and merely symbolic.

>
>
>> and that Judges are supposed to invent hypothetical arguments from hypothetical
>> defendants
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style on
>
> Stop. Just stop. You are humiliating yourself
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Daggett posting style off
>
> ... but not in the eyes of jillery, Ron O, Mark Isaak, Zencycle, or "[name withheld]",
> all of whom care far more about whose side someone is on than on truth or justice.
>
> There was nothing hypothetical about the defendants, who lost big-time [see above],
> your shameless lie notwithstanding.

The "hypothetical argument" that Daggett refers to is you fantasizing
about a free speech claim on behalf of a non-party to the proceedings.
You essentially say the judge should have argued: If, hypothetically,
not you but the teachers had brought this case, and, hypothetically,
imagine they had claimed a violation of their free speech rights, then
I would have decided in their favour.

>
> Nor was the real grievance of the teachers hypothetical. NOWHERE
> in the part Jones quotes from their impassioned complaint is there
> any mention of religion or violation of student or parental rights, only about
> the statement that they are forced to read.

This is an astonishing misreading of the case, truly, astonishing, even
by tour standards. It has literally nothing to do with the decision that
happened in this world, it is all about the fantasy world you inhabit.

Right at the beginning of the decision, it states what the issue under
litigation is: "It is contended that the ID Policy
constitutes an establishment of religion prohibited by the First
Amendment to the United States Constitution"

The parties, that is the parents and their children are listed in the
next section. The case gets its shortened name "Kitzmiller": Tammy
Kitzmiller, resident of Dover, Pennsylvania is a parent of a child in
the ninth grade and a child in the eleventh grade at Dover High School.
That is it is parents that plead a violation of their children's rights.
Teachers are nowhere there, at all.

That it is about how the children, as listeners, perceive this rather
than an issue of teacher speech is discussed on page 17:

"The endorsement test is designed to ascertain the objective meaning of
the statement that the District’s conduct communicated in the community
by focusing on how “the members of the listening audience” perceived
the conduct" The listening audience", ie. the pupils, not, the speakers.

It continues with: First, we will consider “the message conveyed by the
disclaimer to the students who are its intended audience,” from the
perspective of an objective Dover Area High School student. At a
minimum, the pertinent inquiry is whether an “objective observer” in the
position of a student of the relevant age would “perceive official
school support” for the religious activity in question"

So contrary to your fantasy world, here the court deal directly with
"religion", and also the children as the party whose rights are violated.

Furthermore, the court also notices that: "This conclusion is based, in
part, upon the revelation at trial that a newsletter explaining the ID
Policy in detail was mailed by the Board to every household in the
District" So even if no teacher had been forced to read out that
statement at all, the Board mailing it to everyone is already sufficient
to constitute a violation of the establishment clause, this time with
the parents as readers as victims.

I think it is very clear that for years you opined about the decision
without ever having read it. When you were finally forced to have a look
at it, your inability to read for comprehension let to something that
has absolutely no connection to reality whatsoever. And that is the
kinder interpretation.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:47:57 +0000, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

>peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

[snip for focus]

>> But then they wouldn't have had a settlement to the tune of a million dollars,
>> which resulted from the show trial the plaintiffs and Jones clearly wanted.
>
>It would have been illegal for Jones to alter the pleading by the
>parties, so what he wants doesn't enter the equation at all, your weird
>conspiracy mindset notwithstanding.

Is memory serving me badly or were the ID people not originally
delighted with the appointment of Jones to the case as he was a Bush
appointed judge and they reckoned he would be sympathetic to their
cause?

[Burkhard]

They sure were. Bush appointee and staunch Lutheran. But that of course
does is not how the mindset of ideologues and conspiracy theorists works
the moment a decision goes against them, they come up with all sorts of
inane reasons why it was a set-up from the word go. Got death threats
afterwards and needed police protection.

[Mark Isaak]

On 10/31/22 7:29 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

[snipping]

>> and also no, teacher (or professors, for that matter) do not have have
>> the right to refuse teaching whatever their employer wants them to
>> say/teach. So if this had been teachers complaining about the compelled
>> statement, they'd probably lost.
>
> Here is where you show your ignorance of the fact that freedom of speech
> is taken more seriously by the public in general and the courts in particular
> throughout the USA than in almost every country in the world.
>
> For example, in stark contrast to the other "progressive" countries, including Canada,
> "hate speech" laws have consistently been struck down by the US Supreme Court
> as violations of the rulings that extend the First Amendment right to
> all the states. And the State Board of Education was part of the purview of the
> Pennsylvania state government.

If I understand your position correctly, you assert that, if grade
school teachers, with the support of the school administration and
several parents, openly proselytized for Satanism and against
Christianity because of Christians' "well-known" practice of eating
children, you argue that the teachers have the right to do so, and
parents of the students have no legal recourse until the next school
board election. Is that correct?

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 1:00:10 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:50:32 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 11:55:06 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 10/27/22 10:56 AM, Bill wrote:
> >> > [...]
> >> > Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
> >> > mean that Creationism / ID is false?
> >> Behe is considered an authority because Creationists desperately want
> >> credibility, and Behe has a PhD and wrote a book. Behe's mistakes do
> >> not mean ID is false (it was false long before him), but they sure don't
> >> help his case.
> >
> >Your two cents' worth, give or take a couple of cents, is duly noted.

> It's remarkable how often [Mark Isaak] spams his transparently
> baseless opinions.

Fixed it to make it truthful. My "two cents' worth..." comment was calling
attention to this fact, in its amended form.

I did more than that in reply to another post by Mark, on another thread yesterday,
where I laid bare his transparently baseless opinions over there:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/TFK604jYAAAJ
Re: Is Common Descent evolution?

Oct 31, 2022, 7:25:10 PM

Of course there came feeble counter-counter arguments in response to this,
but I learned within a month of posting to a similarly polemic-saturated Usenet "newsgroup"
in 1992 that counter-arguments, counter-counter arguments, and counter-counter-counter arguments
seldom establish much. It is in the counter-counter-counter-counter arguments and
counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-...arguments that a clear picture begins to emerge.

My long back and forth with Burkhard shows this pattern very clearly.
The "crow victory" specialist, Daggett, evidently was so spoiled rotten
before coming to talk.origins, and spoiled even more rotten right here,
that he has no understanding of this dynamic, and posted his own premature
victory crow as proxy for Burkhard, not realizing that I let on-topic threads
take priority temporarily over that long back and forth for the last three weeks.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 3:55:10 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> Martin Harran wrote:
> > On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:47:57 +0000, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > [snip for focus]
> >
> >>> But then they wouldn't have had a settlement to the tune of a million dollars,
> >>> which resulted from the show trial the plaintiffs and Jones clearly wanted.
> >>
> >> It would have been illegal for Jones to alter the pleading by the
> >> parties, so what he wants doesn't enter the equation at all, your weird
> >> conspiracy mindset notwithstanding.
> >
> > Is memory serving me badly or were the ID people not originally
> > delighted with the appointment of Jones to the case as he was a Bush
> > appointed judge and they reckoned he would be sympathetic to their
> > cause?
> >

> They sure were. The "ID people"? You need to show evidence, Burkhard. You've been getting failing grades for comprehension and objectivity for a long time. Time to step up to the bat here.

[Bill]

You and few others here seem more interested in who posts rather than what
is posted. For my part, I post here to make a point relevant to what has
been posted, without regard to who said what. I know who these people are
but it just doesn't matter.

In this case, my point was that Behe is a favorite bogyman, cited to prove
something everyone claims doesn't require proof. I see this as a strawman
for the sole purpose of dodging ideas that are unpopular. The issue of
Creationism / ID has religious implications and that is the primary
objection to the concept.

Bill

[Glenn]

"What is posted" can be better understood when you know the poster. It does matter.

>
> In this case, my point was that Behe is a favorite bogyman, cited to prove
> something everyone claims doesn't require proof. I see this as a strawman
> for the sole purpose of dodging ideas that are unpopular. The issue of
> Creationism / ID has religious implications and that is the primary
> objection to the concept.
>

Well, yea. And you see this because you are familiar with posters' history.

[jillery]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:29:38 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 1:00:10 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:50:32 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 11:55:06 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >> On 10/27/22 10:56 AM, Bill wrote:
>> >> > [...]
>> >> > Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
>> >> > mean that Creationism / ID is false?
>> >> Behe is considered an authority because Creationists desperately want
>> >> credibility, and Behe has a PhD and wrote a book. Behe's mistakes do
>> >> not mean ID is false (it was false long before him), but they sure don't
>> >> help his case.
>> >
>> >Your two cents' worth, give or take a couple of cents, is duly noted.
>
>> It's remarkable how often [Mark Isaak] spams his transparently
>> baseless opinions.
>
>Fixed it to make it truthful. My "two cents' worth..." comment was calling
>attention to this fact, in its amended form.

What you call fact is in fact nothing more than your opinion presented
without evidence aka blatantly baseless, which makes your comment
above a transparent lie.

<snip post-hoc rationalizations>

[peter2...@gmail.com]

You are insulting the intelligence of every participant here by
ignoring the FACT that Mark was posting unsupported
opinions about why Behe is considered an authority (on unspecified matters).
He only mentioned creationists, and gave an unsupported claim about
them being "desperate," and another unsupported claim about their alleged reasons.

As for your "without evidence," there is no need to provide
evidence of that plain FACT, which anyone can see for themselves.
BTW, I snipped NOTHING of what Mark posted.

Your "transparent lie" charge is a shameless libel.


To elaborate on what Glenn told "Freon" Bill: he needs to look at just how
deeply you've implicated yourself as a shameless promoter of Mark Isaak.
This includes the snip-n-deceive in which you indulged next:

> <snip post-hoc rationalizations>

They were reasonings, not rationalizations.
You snipped the evidence for that, putting the lie to what you wrote above.

[REPOST]:

I did more than that in reply to another post by Mark, on another thread yesterday,
where I laid bare his transparently baseless opinions over there:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/TFK604jYAAAJ
Re: Is Common Descent evolution?
Oct 31, 2022, 7:25:10 PM

[END OF REPOST]


Peter Nyikos

PS I did a highly on-topic reply to John Harshman in sci.bio.paleontology today,
the latest in a back-and-forth where we have been civil to each other for over two weeks now.
This was before turning to your off-topic personal attack here. It was on the subject
of birds that survived the K-T disaster, and their phylogeny.

Yesterday, I did a friendly reply to Trolidan7 on the "Human bipedalism" thread that you began over there.

I mention all these things because you also snipped some things I wrote about
Daggett's behavior that were in contrast to this kind of civil behavior. Daggett totally disregarded
my commitment to on-topic posting; you snipped what I wrote about that.
I hope "Freon Bill" is reading this.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On the other t.o. thread where I've been active this week, Mark Isaak made matters a lot worse for himself
and for his ardent fan jillery by making wild derogatory claims that were not just unsupported, but demonstrably false:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/ieSW1AUjAQAJ

Re: Is Common Descent evolution?

However, since Mark was demonstrating his loyalty to Burkhard by his actions, it appears that
Burkhard didn't care what form that loyalty took, because he contented himself with a few lines
of a broken record routine on the same thread.


Despite all this, I will be discussing with Burkhard what he wrote below on its own merits.

On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 4:50:10 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Disregarding one of your arbitrary whims, Daggett, I'm changing the thread
> > title to better reflect what is going on here. For the benefit of those reading this in Google Groups, it is:
> >
> > Back to Kitzmiller v. Dover WAS: Re: Clot Watch
> >
> > Right in the middle of a long post, you talk about something that has nothing
> > whatsoever to do with what this thread started to be all about.
> >
> > Nevertheless, I will humor you below.
> >
> >
> > On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 3:15:06 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> >
> >> People often make arguments that are different from the arguments you imagine
> >> they should make instead.
> >
> > "imagine" is wrong; "reason" is the right word here, as you will see.
> >
> >
> > I don't know why you aren't mentioning the name of the person you are talking about below;
> > the message of your one-sentence tirade below is:
> >
> > "How DARE you argue with someone with the brilliant legal mind of [name withheld]?"
> >
> > > For example, in your Judge Jones threads, you kept telling
> >> [name withheld] what you thin Jones should have written in his opinion,
> >> things about the rights of teachers to free speech --- ignoring the fact that teachers weren't part of
> >> the lawsuit, nobody in the trial tried to raise your arguments about free speech, that
> >> your arguments about free speech were wrong according to cited SCOTUS precidents,
> >> and that Judges are supposed to invent hypothetical arguments from hypothetical
> >> defendants but instead rule upon evidence presented by the parties in court on the case
> >> before them in court.
> >
> > Did "[name withheld]" put you up to this pack of lies?

Looks like you weren't concerned about the form this show of loyalty to you took, Burk.

> > I didn't ignore ANY of the above,
> > and here is some of what I wrote in rebuttal:
> >
> > ___________________________ excerpt, with words of [name withheld] coming first __________________________
> >
> >
> >> This was not about the rights of the teachers, it was
> >> about the right of the pupils, and it was not a freedom of speech case

> >> [but] an establishment clause case. The teachers are not party to the

> >> proceedings, at all.
> >
> > But the memo of the teachers to the Board was quoted extensively
> > on pp. 127-128, and the quoted part makes no reference to
> > any violation of student rights, nor to religion at all. It begins with:

> a) that does not make the teachers party to he law suit

This was one of the shortcomings of the whole Dover trial:
the very people who MOST OBVIOUSLY had standing to sue (see below)
were not party to the lawsuit.

> b) you, again, misread the sentence - it starts with "the students may
> opt out",

You are being illogical: there was NO misreading involved, and what you say
next has no bearing on that allegation. As for your "again," you are referring to alleged
behavior not in evidence.

> so yes, it is about student rights. The exercise of this right
> is facilitated by the teachers, but the right to opt out is the students'.

And so, there is no violation of student rights involved, just as I wrote.
It would thus seem that, neither they nor their parents had standing to sue [1].
The students were no more inconvenienced by opting out than
they were by periodic fire drills.

More to the point: It's been well known for decades that students have
the right to opt out of daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance
to the Flag, but it would be silly to sue a school district for the
continuation of this practice.

[1] If I am right about this, who DID have standing to sue, and why?
Besides the teachers, of course, as emphasized below.

> >
> > "You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion [the statement read to students at the beginning of the biology evolution unit] of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students."
> >
> > Note the clause, "our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class."

Despite their pointing this right out, the school board did NOT rescind its unconstitutional
mandate to have the teachers read the offensive statement.
Hence they kept on having standing to sue.

> Note the clause "that students may opt out". This is about the way in
> which teachers helped students to exercise their opt out right.

Irrelevant broken record routine noted.

> >
> >
> >> and also no, teacher (or professors, for that matter) do not have have
> >> the right to refuse teaching whatever their employer wants them to
> >> say/teach. So if this had been teachers complaining about the compelled
> >> statement, they'd probably lost.
> >
> > Here is where you show your ignorance of the fact that freedom of speech
> > is taken more seriously by the public in general and the courts in particular
> > throughout the USA than in almost every country in the world.

> Only that this is the constitution that you imagine it to be, not the
> one you have in the US. I cited, three times now, three on-point cases
> SCOTUS decisions (Freedom of speech in education) that flatly refute
> your reading.

No they do not, because none of these cases *mandated* statements
that were not part of the curriculum and were highly offensive to
the teachers involved. You are completely ignoring this distinction.


<snip of things that will be dealt with in separate posts>

> >> including Scopes and
> >> Webster,) all ruled against the teachers - regardless of whether they
> >> claimed a right to teach evolution (Scopes) or ID (Webster)

See, these were alleged rights to teach something that was not in
the curriculum. How could a "legal eagle" like you overlook this distinction?

> > [...]
> > Anyway, the Dover case was a violation of the First Amendment
> > in that it was *mandated* speech. And this is even more contrary to
> > the spirit of the Constitution, being also curtailed by the Fifth Amendment.
> >
> > ======================= end of excerpt =================

See, I had already made this point weeks ago, and yet, above,
you are acting as though I had never made it.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. This will probably the last post I do until mid-afternoon tomorrow.
And then, and for the rest of this week, posts both here and in sci.bio.paleontology
will be few and far between.

I am facing a number of deadlines having to do with my mathematical work this week.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 17:28:18 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> compulsively spammed:

>On the other t.o. thread where I've been active this week, Mark Isaak made matters a lot worse for himself
>and for his ardent fan jillery by making wild derogatory claims that were not just unsupported, but demonstrably false:

The "other T.O. thread" to which you refer does not inform this
thread. However, the fact that you made no effort to demonstrate that
Isaak's claims were either wild or derogatory or false, does inform
this thread. It's what puts the PeeWee in PeeWee Peter.

<snip spam which doesn't inform the above>

[jillery]

On Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:30:51 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:


No reply so far. Let's see how long PeeWee Peter ignores this post.

[jillery]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 14:18:12 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> compulsively spammed:

>On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 3:10:10 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:29:38 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 1:00:10 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:50:32 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >On Friday, October 28, 2022 at 11:55:06 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >> >> On 10/27/22 10:56 AM, Bill wrote:
>> >> >> > [...]
>> >> >> > Why is Behe considered the authority on Creationism / ID? Do his mistakes
>> >> >> > mean that Creationism / ID is false?
>
>> >> >> Behe is considered an authority because Creationists desperately want
>> >> >> credibility, and Behe has a PhD and wrote a book. Behe's mistakes do
>> >> >> not mean ID is false (it was false long before him), but they sure don't
>> >> >> help his case.
>> >> >
>> >> >Your two cents' worth, give or take a couple of cents, is duly noted.
>> >
>> >> It's remarkable how often [Mark Isaak] spams his transparently
>> >> baseless opinions.
>> >
>> >Fixed it to make it truthful. My "two cents' worth..." comment was calling
>> >attention to this fact, in its amended form.
>
>> What you call fact is in fact nothing more than your opinion presented
>> without evidence aka blatantly baseless, which makes your comment
>> above a transparent lie.
>
>You are insulting the intelligence of every participant here

To the contrary, it's your transparent compulsive spamming which
repeatedly insults the group.

>by
>ignoring the FACT that Mark was posting unsupported
>opinions about why Behe is considered an authority (on unspecified matters).

The fact is, your repeated claim that your unsupported opinion is a
FACT, is in fact factually incorrect. More to the point, Isaak's
comment to Freon Bill's non-sequitur is factually more substantive
than your transparently mindless one-liner to Isaak. Finally, you
have no good reason to believe that your unsupported opinions are
facts, which makes your FACT a lie by your own expressed definition of
lie.

>He only mentioned creationists, and gave an unsupported claim about
>them being "desperate," and another unsupported claim about their alleged reasons.
>
>As for your "without evidence," there is no need to provide
>evidence of that plain FACT, which anyone can see for themselves.

So you willfully refuse to even try to back up your unsupported
opinion. You sound proud of yourself.

>BTW, I snipped NOTHING of what Mark posted.

Your comment above is yet more of your transparent obfuscation. Nobody
even suggested you snipped anything.

>Your "transparent lie" charge is a shameless libel.

Your comment above is what puts the PeeWee in PeeWee Peter.

>> <snip post-hoc rationalizations>
>
>They were reasonings, not rationalizations.

You just said you had no reason. Make up your mind.

>You snipped the evidence for that, putting the lie to what you wrote above.

Liar. As the quoted text above shows, your initial post didn't
support your claim that Isaak didn't support his claim. To support
your claim post-hoc, first acknowledge your prior failure and withdraw
your lies of Isaak and of me. Failure to do so shows your comments
are no more reasons than your unsupported opinions are facts.

<snip your spamming rationalizations>

[Burkhard]

no, why would I?

>
>>> I didn't ignore ANY of the above,
>>> and here is some of what I wrote in rebuttal:
>>>
>>> ___________________________ excerpt, with words of [name withheld] coming first __________________________
>>>
>>>
>>>> This was not about the rights of the teachers, it was
>>>> about the right of the pupils, and it was not a freedom of speech case
>>>> [but] an establishment clause case. The teachers are not party to the
>>>> proceedings, at all.
>>>
>>> But the memo of the teachers to the Board was quoted extensively
>>> on pp. 127-128, and the quoted part makes no reference to
>>> any violation of student rights, nor to religion at all. It begins with:
>
>> a) that does not make the teachers party to he law suit
>
> This was one of the shortcomings of the whole Dover trial:
> the very people who MOST OBVIOUSLY had standing to sue (see below)
> were not party to the lawsuit.

The teachers might have standing, but no case, as the precedents and
academic literature I cited amply shows. (on the "might" more below)

>
>> b) you, again, misread the sentence - it starts with "the students may
>> opt out",
>
> You are being illogical: there was NO misreading involved,

You claim, and I quote "the quoted part makes no reference to
any violation of student rights" and yet it starts with the statement
that this is about student rights.

and what you say
> next has no bearing on that allegation. As for your "again," you are referring to alleged
> behavior not in evidence.

Yes, I corrected you several times on this - if your memory fails these
days, it's all in the thread.

>
>> so yes, it is about student rights. The exercise of this right
>> is facilitated by the teachers, but the right to opt out is the students'.
>
> And so, there is no violation of student rights involved, just as I wrote.
> It would thus seem that, neither they nor their parents had standing to sue [1].

Of course the parents had standing to sue, and they did successfully. On
the establishment clause, both because of the speech to their children,
and separately on the grounds of the letters they received from the
School Board in both cases the school board, so the allegation, endorsed
towards them a partisan religious position. If they had not had
standing, the Dover trial would not have taken place.

They did not have standing to bring a compelled speech on behalf of the
teachers though

> The students were no more inconvenienced by opting out than
> they were by periodic fire drills.

No idea what you mean with this. The issue is that the school endorsed a
partisan religious position, being allowed to opt out to hearing it does
not change that fact. Now, if Scalia and Thomas have their way, that
reading of the establishment clause could change in the future, and
Thomas in particular would deny individuals an standing in such a case,
but the law in 2005 was clear in that point (and is so for now)

>
> More to the point: It's been well known for decades that students have
> the right to opt out of daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance
> to the Flag, but it would be silly to sue a school district for the
> continuation of this practice.

That's a Free Speech case, not an establishment clause case. Here the
children would otherwise be compelled to endorse a government position.
Note: the children. Different rules apply even there for teachers, and
while some states allow teachers to opt out, others don't.

Massachusetts for instance provides: "Failure for a period of two
consecutive weeks by a teacher to salute the flag and recite said pledge
as aforesaid, or to cause the pupils under his charge so to do, shall be
punished for every such period by a fine of not more than five dollars"

And Iowa is just now proposing an even more punitive law:
https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/pledge-of-allegiance-proposed-iowa-law-teachers-stand-or-be-fired/

That one could give rise to a constitutional challenge, but the question
would be if reciting the pledge in such a case is attributable to the
government (in which case the law would stand) or whether it would be
interpreted as the personal belief of the speaker, in which case it just
might fail. None of this applies in Dover, as the substantive part of
teaching is clearly the official duty of a teacher, not their personal
speech.

As Eugene Volokh puts it: "The government also doubtless had broad
power to compel speech by its employees, see, for example, Slocum v.
Fire & Police Comm'n of E. Peoria, 290 N.E.2d 28, 33 (Ill. App. Ct.
1972) (holding that a Police Department's requirement that its officers
wear an American flag emblem on their uniform did not violate their
First Amendment rights) (Eugene Volokh, The Law of Compelled Speech, 97
TEX. L. REV. 355 (2018).)

>
> [1] If I am right about this, who DID have standing to sue, and why?
> Besides the teachers, of course, as emphasized below.

Not sure what you mean with that. The parents had standing to sue on
establishment clause grounds, as they did, and won. The only people who
would have standing to sue for an alleged violation of the teacher's
free speech rights would have been the teachers, obviously. But see
below, I doubt that they had standing, at least at that point in time.

>
>>>
>>> "You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion [the statement read to students at the beginning of the biology evolution unit] of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students."
>>>
>>> Note the clause, "our right to ‘opt-out’ of the statement portion of the class."
>
> Despite their pointing this right out, the school board did NOT rescind its unconstitutional
> mandate to have the teachers read the offensive statement.
> Hence they kept on having standing to sue.

Possibly standing to sue (doubtful on ripeness grounds), but definitely
no case to sue.

And the rest of your analysis of this passage is as flawed as the rest
of your analysis of the decision:

First, the teachers were not, in fact, forced to read out the statement.
The next sentence of the court decision makes this clear:

"Administrators were thus compelled to read the statement to ninth
graders at Dover High School in January 2005 because of the refusal by
the teachers to do so."

As long as they were not sanctioned for this refusal, their case would
not be "ripe" and hence they would lack standing, at least for now. But
this is all irrelevant, as the opt out only affects free speech
analysis, and the case is an establishment clause case.

And contrary to what you say, the teachers in their letter do not
claim a first amendment right. Rather, they claim it as a right from
their contract of employment. That is they argue that teaching their
pupils this ID crap would be a violation of the Code of Professional
Practice and Conduct for Educators. This means they could be disciplined
by their professional body. And as being in good standing with the
professional body is a condition of employment, the school board is in
fact asking them to breach their contractual duties.

It's an interesting theory, of course never tested by a court, I have my
doubts that it would succeed on substantive grounds, but they definitely
would not have standing at this point anyway, again a ripeness issue.

But nothing in their letter has anything to do with a constitutional
right of free speech unlike you they understand the Constitution well
enough to know that this could never fly.

>
>
>> Note the clause "that students may opt out". This is about the way in
>> which teachers helped students to exercise their opt out right.
>
> Irrelevant broken record routine noted.

Well, I will repeat the correction to your false statements every time
you make them, that's true.

>
>>>
>>>
>>>> and also no, teacher (or professors, for that matter) do not have have
>>>> the right to refuse teaching whatever their employer wants them to
>>>> say/teach. So if this had been teachers complaining about the compelled
>>>> statement, they'd probably lost.
>>>
>>> Here is where you show your ignorance of the fact that freedom of speech
>>> is taken more seriously by the public in general and the courts in particular
>>> throughout the USA than in almost every country in the world.
>
>> Only that this is the constitution that you imagine it to be, not the
>> one you have in the US. I cited, three times now, three on-point cases
>> SCOTUS decisions (Freedom of speech in education) that flatly refute
>> your reading.
>
> No they do not, because none of these cases *mandated* statements
> that were not part of the curriculum and were highly offensive to
> the teachers involved. You are completely ignoring this distinction.

Because it is a distinction without a difference. For Free Speech
purposes, there is hardly any difference between forced speech and
censored speech, they are two sides of the same coin (cf e.g. Wooley v.
Maynard (1977), and on the applicability of the government speech
doctrine for compelled speed Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association
(2005) Either teachers (and with that every other state employee) have
Fee Speech rights in their official capacity or not. If they have them,
then that means they can't be compelled to say something they don't
want, nor prevented from saying something they do want to say.

There is a reason for this near symmetry, they typically go together -
that us, when someone is forced to say X, they then can't say Y. Under
your interpretation, teachers could e.g. refuse to use any of the state
approved textbooks from teaching, or any other book their school wants
them to use - as this would be compelled speech. The flip side would of
course be that that they can then teach whatever they want, 2=2=5 etc,,
so by compelling them to use approved textbooks, the state also censors
them from saying what they want. If your interpretation were true,
maintaining and enforcing any education standards would be impossible,
just for starters. Good thing then that the government speech doctrine
means that government employees have next to no free speech rights for
their official speech - they barter that away for their salaries.

>
>
> <snip of things that will be dealt with in separate posts>
>
>
>>>> including Scopes and
>>>> Webster,) all ruled against the teachers - regardless of whether they
>>>> claimed a right to teach evolution (Scopes) or ID (Webster)
>
> See, these were alleged rights to teach something that was not in
> the curriculum. How could a "legal eagle" like you overlook this distinction?

as above, a distinction without a difference, the same rules apply to
compelled speech as to censoring speech - if anything, the compelled
speech prohibition is more limited - from a case that you should
particularly like, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v.
Casey held the government can compel abortion providers to provide a
list of facts to the patient e.g. And of course several positions in the
US government/state employees require taking of an oath, from the
President down to Private Perk. Clearly "compelled speech", yet deemed
unproblematic on free speech grounds, as long as they can opt out of
religious affirmation - which again is not free speech, but the
establishment issue.

>
>>> [...]
>>> Anyway, the Dover case was a violation of the First Amendment
>>> in that it was *mandated* speech. And this is even more contrary to
>>> the spirit of the Constitution, being also curtailed by the Fifth Amendment.
>>>
>>> ======================= end of excerpt =================
>
> See, I had already made this point weeks ago, and yet, above,
> you are acting as though I had never made it.

On the contrary, I gave you ample citations to the relevant case law and
academic literature that flat out refuses your interpretation of the
Constitution. and no, the fifth amendment, which is about due process,
does not come into this at all. The right to silence on the fifth is
primarily a protection against adverse inferences from a person's
silence, something that does not apply to free speech at all. And it is
limited to trial proceedings anyway, so no idea why you think it has any
bearing on the case.

[Burkhard]

In some ways worse. A police officer could refuse to give Miranda
warnings as this forces him to say certain words, a judge could on the
same grounds refuse to convict a person to prison even if the law is
clear on the crime, and a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech
distinction just does not work)

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 5:50:11 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
> infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
> which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech

> distinction just does not work).

There is an enormous difference between refusing to teach A
by being silent about it, and teaching the opposite statement B.
Yet you claim they amount to the same thing.

Are you really a lawyer, or just someone showing off the effect of
being someone with decades of avid study of certain aspects of law?

If the answer to the first is Yes, are you a solicitor or a barrister?


Peter Nyikos

[Lawyer Daggett]

Is that like a question about the difference between a researcher and a scholar?
I do believe that Burkhard has made it clear that he is not a lawyer, at least he
didn't used to be, fairly recently.

I also note that you have avoided his best illustration of his argument. Funny that.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 3:55:11 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:30:51 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> No reply so far. Let's see how long PeeWee Peter ignores this post.

This is the jillery's latest ploy to get me to spend time on posts from
69jp...@gmail.com that are full of mendacity and chicanery,
like the one to which I am replying now.

But I won't always be rushed: at some point I will begin to apply what I call
the Koltanowski Sanction, which consists of waiting from a week to a whole month
before replying to a post.

Explanation of the name "Koltanowski Sanction" on request.

> >On Mon, 31 Oct 2022 14:08:03 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> ><peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>On Saturday, October 29, 2022 at 2:00:08 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >>> On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:40:36 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> >>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> >The conflating IC with ID (which talks about evolution) has permeated the blogosphere in general
> >>> >and talk.origins in particular ever since DBB was published. THAT is either dishonest
> >>> >or stupid. You pick.
> >>
> >>> Not sure why PeeWee Peter blames everybody but Behe for "conflating"
> >>> IC with ID. It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's
> >>> Black Box, even after all this time.
> >>
> >>Either you are shamelessly lying, or else one person posting from the address
> >>69jp...@gmail.com is totally oblivious to things the other has posted
> >>many times over the years.
> >
> >
> >The above is yet another one of your transparent willfully stupid
> >obfuscating allusions.

With the above hate-driven falsehood, jillery is taking cynical
advantage of the fact that Behe's making of major distinctions
on page 40 of DBB isn't set out on this page. If I knew of a place
where a copy of that page is posted online, I would have included a copy,
but I can't spare the time to type it out now. I still have to go carefully
over the webpages of the people running for our local school board
in tomorrow's election.

> > You make zero effort to explain how you
> >conclude anyone conflates IC with ID,

The jillery cannot deny that conflating IC with ID is rampant
in talk.origins, so the above is a red herring.

And below comes an out and out lie, followed by completing
another example of GIGO.

> and now you make zero effort to
> >explain how you conclude I am lying or are multiple personas. Bad
> >enough that your compulsions control you. Worse that you act as if
> >you're oblivious to them.
> >

By posting the above deceitful lines, the jillery insults the intelligence
of everyone who can see that I made an intense, pinpoint
effort to show how valid the horns of the jillery's dilemma are:

> >>Take a look at my reply of about a quarter hour ago to Lawyer Daggett.
> >>The main distinctions there will be intimately familiar to the jillery
> >>who posted about p. 40 of DBB over half a dozen years ago,
> >>and has referred to that page several times since.
> >
> >
> >The jillery to whom you refer above is the same person and persona who
> >replied to your previous post, and who replies to this post, and who
> >to the best of my knowledge authored all other posts in T.O. using
> >that nym.

It might be interesting to find out in what percentage of the posts
emanating from 69jp...@gmail.com the author actually
uses the nym "jillery".


Now the jillery indulges in shameless libel:

> Worse, you don't even try to support your lies.

The support focused on that p.40, and on the pathologically dishonest words:

"It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's Black Box, even after all this time."

[quoted from very early in this post, by the selfsame jillery]

>> You're a
> >willfully stupid troll who throws mindless crap on the walls for the
> >sake of it.

I'm sure Burkhard, Daggett, Mark Isaak, and about half a dozen other regulars
I could name, will admire this superlative exhibit of shameless chutzpah by
the jillery, and "support" the jillery all the more avidly for it.

I've talked about such "support" on another thread today:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/jGXo0lYeFQAJ

Re: Is Common Descent evolution?

And on the same [as treated by Google Groups] thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/SPsN6_kfFQAJ
Re: Chez Watt (was R)e: Is Common Descent evolution?

> >
> >>> I leave as an exercise which
> >>> cause is stupid and which is dishonest.
> >>
> >>I leave it to readers to speculate on whether there is
> >>a single pathologically dishonest person posting from 69jp...@gmail.com,
> >>or whether more than one person uses that address, including a clueless troll
> >>who seldom bothers to run what 'e posts by one of the knowledgeable
> >>people using the same address.

In light of the copious, demonstrable chicanery in which the jillery indulged above, one cannot be sure
that the second alternative here is false. Of course, the first alternative is also seriously
damaging, except in the eyes of ethical nihilists. I have not ruled out the possibility
that the three people I named above (and the half dozen I didn't) are in this category.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Monday, November 7, 2022 at 6:10:05 PM UTC-5, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Monday, November 7, 2022 at 5:55:05 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 5:50:11 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >
> > > a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
> > > infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
> > > which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech
> > > distinction just does not work).
> >
> > There is an enormous difference between refusing to teach A
> > by being silent about it, and teaching the opposite statement B.
> > Yet you claim they amount to the same thing.
> >
> > Are you really a lawyer, or just someone showing off the effect of
> > being someone with decades of avid study of certain aspects of law?
> >
> > If the answer to the first is Yes, are you a solicitor or a barrister?
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos

> Is that like a question about the difference between a researcher and a scholar?

Say! that's a pretty good analogy! I'll have to think about it some.

I assume you saw the somewhat different comparison I made in sci.bio.paleonotology between research and
scholarship in the same person. The two examples I gave Harshman in s.b.p. were
Isaac Asimov (whose scholarship was superlative but whose research was sparse)
and Stephen Jay Gould (whose scholarship ranged over a narrower range, but who was
also an excellent researcher).

> I do believe that Burkhard has made it clear that he is not a lawyer, at least he
> didn't used to be, fairly recently.

I thought so. The above fallacy is what really made me suspicious, but he's
been acting rather strange for a lawyer lately.

> I also note that you have avoided his best illustration of his argument. Funny that.

You avoid saying anything, negative or otherwise, about Burkhard's fallacy. Absolutely typical of you.

However, the other arguments used much weaker analogies than yours above.
They were what I call One Shade of Gray Meltdowns, which seize on a few
common features of disparate things in an effort to make them look very similar or the same.
Care to argue otherwise?

If so, I hope you begin by saying which of the other two analogies you consider to be the "best."


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 5:50:11 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>
> > a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
>> infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
>> which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech
>> distinction just does not work).
>
> There is an enormous difference between refusing to teach A
> by being silent about it, and teaching the opposite statement B.
> Yet you claim they amount to the same thing.

For the purpose of 1. Amendment analysis, yes. And I cited the relevant
precedent cases, plus one of the key academic papers, in the part that
you snipped without indicating it. What's the neologism you coined fr
this? Snip and deceive, if I remember correctly.

[jillery]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 16:52:27 -0800 (PST), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> continues to compulsively post willfully
stupid trolls:

>On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 3:55:11 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:30:51 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> No reply so far. Let's see how long PeeWee Peter ignores this post.
>
>This is the jillery's latest ploy to get me to spend time on posts from
>69jp...@gmail.com that are full of mendacity and chicanery,
>like the one to which I am replying now.
>
>But I won't always be rushed: at some point I will begin to apply what I call
>the Koltanowski Sanction, which consists of waiting from a week to a whole month
>before replying to a post.

Only PeeWee Peter would act as if threatening to do what he already
does is some kind of Thing (c).

Not sure how even PeeWee Peter *still* can't figure out that since he
gets his knappies in a twist for being "rushed", he would have oodles
and oodles more time if only he stopped compulsively trolling his
willfully stupid spam. They say old dogs have trouble learning, but
PeeWee Peter acts as if he's a zombie bitch.

>Explanation of the name "Koltanowski Sanction" on request.

Oh please, Brer Peter, don't throw me in the Koltanowski Sanction
patch.

And PeeWee Peter *still* makes no effort to explain how he concludes
anyone conflates IC with ID.

>And below comes an out and out lie, followed by completing
>another example of GIGO.
>
>> >and now you make zero effort to
>> >explain how you conclude I am lying or are multiple personas. Bad
>> >enough that your compulsions control you. Worse that you act as if
>> >you're oblivious to them.
>> >
>
>By posting the above deceitful lines, the jillery insults the intelligence
>of everyone who can see that I made an intense, pinpoint
>effort to show how valid the horns of the jillery's dilemma are:

jillery might suppose PeeWee Peter's transparent baseless allusions
below are an "intense, pinpoint effort" for him personally, but they
don't even begin to explain anything he baselessly asserts above. It's
as if he has posted so much transparent obfuscating noise for so long,
that he doesn't even know how to compose a coherent argument based on
evidence and reason.

>> >>Take a look at my reply of about a quarter hour ago to Lawyer Daggett.
>> >>The main distinctions there will be intimately familiar to the jillery
>> >>who posted about p. 40 of DBB over half a dozen years ago,
>> >>and has referred to that page several times since.
>> >
>> >
>> >The jillery to whom you refer above is the same person and persona who
>> >replied to your previous post, and who replies to this post, and who
>> >to the best of my knowledge authored all other posts in T.O. using
>> >that nym.
>
>It might be interesting to find out in what percentage of the posts
>emanating from 69jp...@gmail.com the author actually
>uses the nym "jillery".

It might be interesting to watch PeeWee Peter figure out how to do
that. jillery might suppose one of his strange bedfellows could give
him a helping hand.

>Now the jillery indulges in shameless libel:
>
>> Worse, you don't even try to support your lies.
>
>The support focused on that p.40, and on the pathologically dishonest words:
>
>"It's as if he never read or can't comprehend Darwin's Black Box, even after all this time."
>[quoted from very early in this post, by the selfsame jillery]

And PeeWee Peter *still* makes no effort to support his lies. It's as
if his posts are composed by some defective AI stuck in an infinite
loop.

>>> You're a
>> >willfully stupid troll who throws mindless crap on the walls for the
>> >sake of it.
>
>I'm sure Burkhard, Daggett, Mark Isaak, and about half a dozen other regulars
>I could name, will admire this superlative exhibit of shameless chutzpah by
>the jillery, and "support" the jillery all the more avidly for it.
>

>I've [stupidly spammed] about such "support" on another thread today:


<PeeWee Peter troll mode on>

fixed it for you.

<PeeWee Peter troll mode off>

>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/jGXo0lYeFQAJ
>Re: Is Common Descent evolution?
>
>And on the same [as treated by Google Groups] thread:
>
>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/vfM-Eor38jA/m/SPsN6_kfFQAJ
>Re: Chez Watt (was R)e: Is Common Descent evolution?
>
>> >
>> >>> I leave as an exercise which
>> >>> cause is stupid and which is dishonest.
>> >>
>> >>I leave it to readers to speculate on whether there is
>> >>a single pathologically dishonest person posting from 69jp...@gmail.com,
>> >>or whether more than one person uses that address, including a clueless troll
>> >>who seldom bothers to run what 'e posts by one of the knowledgeable
>> >>people using the same address.
>
>In light of the copious, demonstrable chicanery in which the jillery indulged above, one cannot be sure
>that the second alternative here is false. Of course, the first alternative is also seriously
>damaging, except in the eyes of ethical nihilists. I have not ruled out the possibility
>that the three people I named above (and the half dozen I didn't) are in this category.

All of PeeWee Peter's comments above are what put the "PeeWee" in
PeeWee Peter.

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 14:50:34 -0800 (PST), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 5:50:11 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>
> > a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
>> infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
>> which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech
>> distinction just does not work).
>
>There is an enormous difference between refusing to teach A
>by being silent about it, and teaching the opposite statement B.
>Yet you claim they amount to the same thing.

Do you think it would be acceptable for a teacher of mathematics to
simply not teach their students that there are infinite many natural
numbers?

[Martin Harran]

According to his CV [1], Nyikos has spent all his working life in
academia except for a couple of years in a military project which was
shut down due to its unacceptable treatment of subjects. Here he's
trying to have a go at Burkhard for "only" being an academic. Fairly
typical Nyikosian logic.

https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/vita.pdf

[Mark Isaak]

I ask Peter again: Is that correct?

[Burkhard]

Don't have barristers in Scotland, here they are called advocates. And
no, I'm not practicing in Scotland, though I am certified legal
technologist with the Law Society of Scotland (the regulatory body for
solicitors).

And if you mean with "decades of study of certain aspects of law"
something like "teaching for 25 years at one of the world's top 25 Law
Schools everything from contract law to comparative legal procedure to
IT law and legal theory, while publishing in these fields and advising
various governments and regulatory bodies", then yes.


>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, November 8, 2022 at 6:35:06 AM UTC-5, martin...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 15:07:20 -0800 (PST), Lawyer Daggett
> <j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, November 7, 2022 at 5:55:05 PM UTC-5, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 5:50:11 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>
> >> > a teacher could refuse to teach that there are
> >> > infinite many natural numbers (and teach there is a largest one instead,
> >> > which amounts to the same thing - the compelled vs censored speech
> >> > distinction just does not work).
> >>
> >> There is an enormous difference between refusing to teach A
> >> by being silent about it, and teaching the opposite statement B.
> >> Yet you claim they amount to the same thing.

> >> Are you really a lawyer, or just someone showing off the effect of
> >> being someone with decades of avid study of certain aspects of law?
> >>
> >> If the answer to the first is Yes, are you a solicitor or a barrister?
> >>
> >>
> >> Peter Nyikos
> >
> >Is that like a question about the difference between a researcher and a scholar?
> >I do believe that Burkhard has made it clear that he is not a lawyer, at least he
> >didn't used to be, fairly recently.

> >I also note that you have avoided his best illustration of his argument. Funny that.

There were two other illustrations, and Daggett hasn't responded to the
question of which one he considered to be "his best."


The following description by you, Martin, is utterly clueless.

> According to his CV [1], Nyikos has spent all his working life in
> academia except for a couple of years in a military project which was
> shut down due to its unacceptable treatment of subjects.

I worked at the Biomedical Laboratory in Edgewood, Maryland. I was disgusted by its inhumane treatment of
some animal subjects. The project where this happened should indeed have been "shut down",
but I would not have any part in it.


OTOH there was no reason for the life-saving work that I had a part in to be shut down.

We had a collaboration with the Shock Trauma Unit in the University of Maryland Hospital,
which dealt with seriously injured patients. They gave us all the measurements they made, several times a day, on their
patients, to see what kind of factors made a big difference between survival and death.

As the information on hundreds of patients accumulated, one thing stood out:
if a patient went into acute kidney failure, his/her odds of surviving plummeted from 90%
to about 20%. The telltale measurements were three: creatinine, BUN, and serum osmolality.

Serum osmolality could also give high readings with plenty of alcohol in the blood,
so until that was disposed of by the body, the other two readings were the ones to watch.

We reported our findings in the following paper, in one of the world's three most prestigious journals:

(H. Champion, W. Sacco, W. Long, H. Smith, P. Nyikos, R. A. Cowley, W.Gill) “Indications for early haemodialysis in multiple trauma”, The Lancet 7867
(June 8, 1974) 1125–7.

We had originally given it the prosaic academic title, "A renal index for multiple trauma,"
but the editors gave it the title you see. We had threshold values for the three factors,
after which hemodialysis was urgently indicated. The one for creatinine that the
hospital had been using was SEVERAL TIMES higher than the one the data indicated.

This was because the hospital had been using guidelines for chronic kidney disease.
Of course, this is a very different debility than acute kidney failure, but there was
quite a lot of resistance by the senior medical faculty to using our threshold.

Once they accepted it, however, the survival rate of patients improved tremendously,
and now kidney function is one of the first things scrutinized, and prompt action
is taken at the first sign of acute kidney failure.

> Here he's trying to have a go at Burkhard for "only" being an academic.

I didn't even know he is an academic. He is very secretive about such things
until his credentials come into question. Come to think of it, so are you.


Anyway, it is for barristers (those qualified to serve as attorneys for defense or prosecution in court)
that the rubber meets the road.

Lawyer Daggett's analogy [preserved near the top of this post] is quite apt. The real test of the depth of one's understanding
of a mathematical subject is the ability to come up with intricate proofs that withstand scrutiny,
and to scrutinize research of others in refereeing their papers for journal acceptance or rejection.

For lawyers, it is the understanding that comes from experiencing
which objections of one's own are overruled and which ones are sustained.


>Fairly typical Nyikosian logic.

Typically clueless jumping to conclusions by Martin Harran.

[Unlike Martin Harran, I leave all hint of relatives of guilty parties out of the picture.]

>
> https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/vita.pdf


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Of course not. Freedom of speech isn't as absolute a thing as
you seem to think it is. Besides the famous statement by
Oliver Wendell Holmes that it does not extend to shouting "Fire!"
in a crowded theater, it also does not extend to pornography
"without redeeming social value" nor to exposing children to
graphic displays of violence in the classroom.

I'll say one thing for you, though: you had the decency to ask
a question, unlike Martin Harran, who defamed me in a way
that went far beyond mere guilt by association, no questions asked.
See my reply to him less than half an hour ago, on this same thread.


Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

So your decision of whether it is legal to present religious ideas in a
classroom depends on whether you approve of those ideas. That's about
what I expected.

[Burkhard]

Mark doesn't argue free speech is absolute, he asks if your position
leads to speech absolutism. And nothing you say below would work as a
limitation, once you adopt the position that even official speech by
state employees is covered by the 1. Amendment free speech clause

Besides the famous statement by
> Oliver Wendell Holmes that it does not extend to shouting "Fire!"
> in a crowded theater,

2 problems with that - even in Schenk, it was only ever an obiter (and
Holmes later changed his own view on it later), and second, it was
largely overturned/limited by Brandenburg v Ohio

it also does not extend to pornography
> "without redeeming social value" nor to exposing children to
> graphic displays of violence in the classroom.

So which of the recognized limitations of free speech rights (other than
the official speech doctrine of course) do you think allow you to give
teachers a right to refuse to teach creationism, but not a right to to
teach Satanism, if the school board demanded this?

[Martin Harran]

>(June 8, 1974) 1125-7.

>
>We had originally given it the prosaic academic title, "A renal index for multiple trauma,"
>but the editors gave it the title you see. We had threshold values for the three factors,
>after which hemodialysis was urgently indicated. The one for creatinine that the
>hospital had been using was SEVERAL TIMES higher than the one the data indicated.
>
>This was because the hospital had been using guidelines for chronic kidney disease.
>Of course, this is a very different debility than acute kidney failure, but there was
>quite a lot of resistance by the senior medical faculty to using our threshold.
>
>Once they accepted it, however, the survival rate of patients improved tremendously,
>and now kidney function is one of the first things scrutinized, and prompt action
>is taken at the first sign of acute kidney failure.

Fifth in the list of authors doesn't generally indicate any
significant contribution but whatever your contribution was, it
doesn't change the fact that your time there was the only time you
have worked outside academia yet you try to attack Burkhard for not
being a practising solicitor or barrister.

>
>
>> Here he's trying to have a go at Burkhard for "only" being an academic.
>
>I didn't even know he is an academic.

You must be the only regular here who didn't know that. It also shows
your mediocre approach to debate. Before trying to challenge Burkhard
on legal issues, you didn't even bother to check what qualifications
he might have - his name is not that common and a simple Google search
for "Burkhard law" gives all the information you need.

>He is very secretive about such things
>until his credentials come into question.

Like you, he uses his real name and email. Unlike you, his email is
his academic one. He has also several times mentioned specific legal
matters that he was involved in, some of that was in replies to you.
Where do you get secrecy out of that?

> Come to think of it, so are you.
>

Back to your made-up bullshit approach - let's see you identify any
issue on which I have been secretive.

>
>Anyway, it is for barristers (those qualified to serve as attorneys for defense or prosecution in court)
>that the rubber meets the road.

Only when they disagree with you apparently.

>
>Lawyer Daggett's analogy [preserved near the top of this post] is quite apt. The real test of the depth of one's understanding
>of a mathematical subject is the ability to come up with intricate proofs that withstand scrutiny,
>and to scrutinize research of others in refereeing their papers for journal acceptance or rejection.
>
> For lawyers, it is the understanding that comes from experiencing
>which objections of one's own are overruled and which ones are sustained.
>
>
>>Fairly typical Nyikosian logic.
>
>Typically clueless jumping to conclusions by Martin Harran.
>
>[Unlike Martin Harran, I leave all hint of relatives of guilty parties out of the picture.]

What on earth are you talking about?

>
>>
>> https://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/vita.pdf
>
>
>Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Yes, that is a really strange one. While I feel neither need nor desire
to tout my credentials all the time, I did announce my promotion to
Chair here on TO, and once linked to a video of my inaugural. I also
directed Peter once to a paper on my website, after he asked about it,
and he found at least the Edinburgh Uni page, even though he struggled
with the download. And not so recently we talked about some of the
projects on which I'm co-investigator, when he had expressed some
strange ideas about the merits of interdisciplinary research.

There have been times when I seriously doubted if the person posting
under the Peter Nyikos name could really be who he claims to be - there
were things he seem not to know which I found difficult to reconcile
with being a senior academic. From saying that a paper was behind a
paywall when even as outsider of the institution it took me less than a
minute to check that his university has an electronic subscription, to
apparent ignorance how an appointment panel works, or how a large
research grant is administered. But these were always one -offs, and
balanced by his posting pattern over decades. Still I wonder if maybe he
has given access to other people to post under his name, which would
also explain other incongruities in his posts

[Martin Harran]

On Sun, 13 Nov 2022 20:36:12 +0000, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

I think it's just his erratic thinking which you can see within posts,
not just between posts, where he responds to comments nested multiple
levels deep, brings in irrelevant things from not just other threads
but from other newsgroups, his belief that everyone who disagrees with
him is engaged in some sort of conspiracy against him. In some ways,
he reminds me of the stereotypical absent-minded professor - very
capable within his own area of expertise but totally incapable in
other areas and thinks the problem is with everyone else, not himself.

[jillery]

On Sun, 13 Nov 2022 20:36:12 +0000, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Since you mention it, you might have noticed how PeeWee Peter
semi-regularly accuses me of doing something similar, which is as
factually correct and has as much basis as Trump-toadys' claims of
stolen elections. If your conjecture is correct, it would be yet
another example of him accusing others of doing what he does even as
he does it. This is what puts the PeeWee in PeeWee Peter.

[Mark Isaak]

On 11/13/22 12:36 PM, Burkhard wrote:
> [...]

> There have been times when I seriously doubted if the person posting
> under the Peter Nyikos name could really be who he claims to be - there
> were things he seem not to know which I found difficult to reconcile
> with being a senior academic. From saying that a paper was behind a
> paywall when even as outsider of the institution it took me less than a
> minute to check that his university has an electronic subscription, to
> apparent ignorance how an appointment panel works, or how a large
> research grant is administered. But these were always one -offs, and
> balanced by his posting pattern over decades. Still I wonder if maybe he
> has given access to other people to post under his name, which would
> also explain other incongruities in his posts

My impression is that Nyikos epitomizes Kahneman's main thesis of
_Thinking Fast and Slow_. When he posts, he usually uses fast thinking,
as his interlinear commenting style indicates. And fast thinking is
emotion-driven and uses no reasoning. But he is capable of slow,
reasoned thinking too; we just never see it here. Well, almost never.
And when we do, he (like most people, I think) follows the pattern of
reasoning something like, "Here's the conclusion I want to reach. What
steps will lead me to it?"