Howard Hershey, Openminded Guy
Julie Thomas
Someone who apparently lurks quite a bit e-mailed this to
me and asked if I would post it. So I say, "Why not?"
and here it is. I'll add a few of my own comments at the
end.
********************************************************************
Howard Hershey, Openminded Guy
Or: How to Beg the Question Without Seeming to,
Or: How Never to Take ID Seriously, Whatever the Evidence.
In a recent post, Howard Hershey wrote:
>[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
>the effect (e.g. hominids).
These requirements seem modest, indeed, the very picture of dispassionate
open-mindedness to the possibility of intelligent design. Actually however
they represent a spectacular instance of petitio principii.
To wit:
1. The independence requirement
Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or some
transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence the first
organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard thinks that although
transcendent intelligent design IS possible, it is NOT true. As David Hume
famously observed a couple of centuries ago, however, whatever can be false
might also have been true. It's an elementary logical point.
[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
But Howard is actually too subtle a fellow to allow the ID kids to make their
case strictly with the available biological evidence. Unlike Charles Darwin,
who gave the creation theories of his time something of a fighting chance
(at least Darwin [1859, p. 6] thought that such theories could turn out to be
false), Howard carefully places the gold ring on the scientific carousel JUST
out of reach, where the ID kiddies, try as they might, will never reach it.
Seems like a classic carnie trick, doesn't it? "Come on, try your luck"
[but you'll never win, you poor ID sap].
Intelligent design by a transcendent cause turns out to be a hypothesis which,
while possibly true, can never show itself to be true. Why not? The
transcendent
Designer must first present his divine credentials to Howard, who presumably
will
then determine whether this is really God Almighty, or the demiurge of the
Timaeus,
or Aristotle's First Cause, or whatever. A handful of miracles may also be
required; maybe water into wine, or maybe simply (as Woody Allen wanted)
several
million dollars created ex nihilo, and deposited in a numbered Swiss account.
If you were God, however, would YOU appear in Bloomington, Indiana, and put on
a show for Howard Hershey?
[Apropos of that, how many of you reading this have ever seen Howard in the
flesh?
A show of hands, please? Now, Howard assures us that he really DOES exist,
and
draws a paycheck from the folks at IU, shovels his driveway, etc. – but
really:
all we actually know about Howard are the messages which show up here on t.o.
Seems like a flimsy basis for inferring his existence.]
Enough. Let's have the bottom line for this first point. Howard writes
to Julie:
>And as for independent evidence of a designer capable of producing such
>features, I think even you would agree that there is none, zero, nil,
>nada, squat.
OK, Howard -- an easy question:
Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
Let's take the options:
"Yes, it is possible."
Then it must also be possible for science to consider the hypothesis without
requiring independent evidence of the designer. In other words, the
independence
requirement is not methodologically necessary. In fact, the independence
requirement may be little more than Howard's personally convenient
God-stopper, jammed into place to keep Howard from having sleepless nights
about bacterial motors and the like.
Option two:
"No, it is not possible."
Then the independence requirement is superfluous, indeed, nonsensical. Even
if God showed up for Howard's office hours and made a fine Cabernet from the
Bloomington tap water, Howard already knows that a transcendent Designer
cannot
exist and act, even in principle. Howard's requests for "more evidence" are
nothing but empty dodges. No evidence would possibly suffice.
One last comment, before seguing to requirement 2. If you were a SETI
researcher,
Howard's independence requirement would be the absolute death-knell for your
investigations. If ever a true signal is received by the SETI computers,
it will be the *signal itself* that will constitute all the evidence we
have for other non-human intelligences. There is no logical difference
between Julie's arguments about bacterial motors and the SETI program's view
of signal detection. None whatsoever.
Actually, Howard's independence requirement would shut down much of
archaeology,
but again I digress. [Think about finding an artifact in a location where
humans are thought not to have lived. A strict application of Howard's
independence requirement would make hash of any reasonable inference from the
evidence, but then no one, least of all Howard, would apply the requirement
there. It is contrived only to keep the ID kiddies in line.]
2. Proving the impossibility of all natural mechanisms.
Howard writes:
>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>produce flint flakes) [...]
Can Howard tell us how he, or anyone else, showed that NO natural mechanism
can produce flint flakes, to use his example? Nope, didn't think so.
Sorry for using all caps, friends, but IT IS LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO
DEMONSTRATE THAT ALL POSSIBLE NATURAL MECHANISMS ARE INSUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
AN EFFECT. This requirement cannot be satisfied, in principle, no matter
how long one lived or how many researchers were on the job, simply because
there could always be n + 1 unknown natural mechanisms waiting to be tested.
Now, this logical impossibility is usually taken as a problem with design
inferences: "Hey, ya didn't rule out everything natural, so how can be sure
that there isn't an unknown natural cause which will explain this effect?"
In fact, however, humans ordinarily infer intelligent causation WITHOUT
excluding every possible natural mechanism, yet no one worries that the
inferences are unsound. Given that we CAN and DO infer intelligent
causes all the time, the logical impossibility of ruling out all
possible natural causes should be stood on its head, as really
representing a serious misconception of the structure of design reasoning.
In short, requirement (2) is never satisfied, by anyone, and thus should
be set aside as fundamentally mistaken. People still go to jail for
crimes no one saw them commit, and we know that Stonhenge didn't tumble
into place naturally. Design inferences work.
Let's face it: Howard himself thinks that stone tools can only be explained
by an intelligent cause, and he hasn't ruled out every possible natural
cause for the phenomenon. No one has. If Howard were confronted with the
possibility of plagiarism in one of his IU classes, I don't think he
would give the student under suspicion an open-ended research opportunity
to discover the unknown natural mechanisms explaining high similarity in
texts. Rather he would turn report the student to the dean.
So requirement (2) also fails. Every time Howard or someone else infers
intelligent causation, they violate the requirement.
Yet Howard would stick the ID kiddies with (2). Looks like another
specially contrived philosophical obstacle, jammed into place to keep ID
theorists well away from the sphere of science.
What happens if we suspend requirements (1) and (2)? Howard and others
would have to consider Julie's ID proposals on their merits, without the
usual question-begging and obstacle construction. And that, it seems to
Joe Lurker, is the very last thing they want to do.
Joe Lurker
*************************************************************************
As for my comments.....
Howard writes:
>[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
>the effect (e.g. hominids).
Of course, these are bogus criteria. Howard's first criterion
is his "prove the impossible" demand. That is, unless a proponent
of ID can show that a natural process cannot account for some
feature, ID is to be rejected. And the only way to satisfy this
demand is to have complete knowledge of all possible natural
mechanisms such that there is no such thing as an "unknown mechanism."
And from there, one would have to demonstrate that all these
mechanisms cannot account for the feature (which originate in
the ancient past), or in other words, it is impossible for the
feature to arise via these mechanisms. Anytime someone expects
their opponent to "prove the impossible," they are trying to erect
a smokescreen around the weakness of their position(that's how
I see it).
Howard's second criterion is also bogus because Howard has yet
to explain why we SHOULD be able to find such evidence. That is,
if a designer created something 3.5 billion years ago, there is
no good reason to expect any evidence for that designer's existence
apart from the artifact that is designed. It's a ridiculous
criterion.
Howard's criteria are simply this: either prove natural mechanisms
are impossible or find the evidence for ID we wouldn't expect to find
if ID was true. As Peter might say, GIGO.
Howard claims that with these criteria, science would detect design.
But if it is impossible for natural mechanisms to account for something,
Howard is saying that science can detect the non-natural. Apparently,
like Matt and Andy, Howard doesn't think methodological naturalism is
part of the ground rules of science. Go figure.
--
"Intolerance does not arise when I think I have found the truth.
Rather, it comes about only when I think that, because I have found it,
everyone else should agree with me." - Mike Behe [DBB, p. 250]
Wade Hines
>Someone who apparently lurks quite a bit e-mailed this to
>me and asked if I would post it. So I say, "Why not?"
>and here it is. I'll add a few of my own comments at the
>end.
>********************************************************************
>Howard Hershey, Openminded Guy
>Or: How to Beg the Question Without Seeming to,
>Or: How Never to Take ID Seriously, Whatever the Evidence.
>In a recent post, Howard Hershey wrote:
>>[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
>>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>>produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
>>the effect (e.g. hominids).
>These requirements seem modest, indeed, the very picture of dispassionate
>open-mindedness to the possibility of intelligent design. Actually however
>they represent a spectacular instance of petitio principii.
Funny, he had me fooled. But you have to note that it's more
like strong evidence of designed because the evidence of
designers who can reasonably be shown to be capable of making
wingnutsits doesn't have to be coupled with no alternative
routes to make wingnutsits, it just makes for more definative
results.
>To wit:
>1. The independence requirement
>Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or some
>transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence the first
>organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard thinks that although
>transcendent intelligent design IS possible, it is NOT true. As David Hume
>famously observed a couple of centuries ago, however, whatever can be false
>might also have been true. It's an elementary logical point.
A false point, as well as elementary, and a complete non sequitur
as far as I can tell.
>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
>Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
>scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
Next time you digress, put dates with your half-wits so we can
place them in the proper context to any sort of understanding
of biochemistry.
>But Howard is actually too subtle a fellow to allow the ID kids to make their
>case strictly with the available biological evidence. Unlike Charles Darwin,
>who gave the creation theories of his time something of a fighting chance
>(at least Darwin [1859, p. 6] thought that such theories could turn out to be
>false), Howard carefully places the gold ring on the scientific carousel JUST
>out of reach, where the ID kiddies, try as they might, will never reach it.
>Seems like a classic carnie trick, doesn't it? "Come on, try your luck"
>[but you'll never win, you poor ID sap].
Lots of posturing but I don't see an actual analysis of the
points Howard made. You seem not to like his conclusion, this
is obvious enough. You have disparaged it but haven't done
much about the very simple and clear logic he presented to
reach it.
>Intelligent design by a transcendent cause turns out to be a hypothesis which,
>while possibly true, can never show itself to be true. Why not? The
>transcendent
>Designer must first present his divine credentials to Howard, who presumably
>will
>then determine whether this is really God Almighty, or the demiurge of the
>Timaeus,
>or Aristotle's First Cause, or whatever. A handful of miracles may also be
>required; maybe water into wine, or maybe simply (as Woody Allen wanted)
>several
>million dollars created ex nihilo, and deposited in a numbered Swiss account.
Ummm, the context was ID within science. Did you miss the part about
"within science"? I don't believe that Howard presented this as
some sort of proof that ID must therefore be historically false.
Do you have a special problem with things that don't fit within
the framework of science? Does that seem like a relegation to
the bowels of astrology and voodoo?
>If you were God, however, would YOU appear in Bloomington, Indiana, and put on
>a show for Howard Hershey?
You are ranting.
>[Apropos of that, how many of you reading this have ever seen Howard in the
>flesh?
>A show of hands, please? Now, Howard assures us that he really DOES exist,
>and
>draws a paycheck from the folks at IU, shovels his driveway, etc. – but
>really:
>all we actually know about Howard are the messages which show up here on t.o.
>Seems like a flimsy basis for inferring his existence.]
I'm waiting for the attack on Howard's logic. When you mentioned
digressing earlier, I thought it was going to be a brief one, not
a whole post.
>Enough. Let's have the bottom line for this first point. Howard writes
>to Julie:
>>And as for independent evidence of a designer capable of producing such
>>features, I think even you would agree that there is none, zero, nil,
>>nada, squat.
>OK, Howard -- an easy question:
> Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
He has clearly said yes before but as you may have read from
Julie, the question is more one of evidence and on that front
where is the independent evidence for your intelligent agent.
>Let's take the options:
> "Yes, it is possible."
>Then it must also be possible for science to consider the hypothesis without
>requiring independent evidence of the designer. In other words, the
>independence
>requirement is not methodologically necessary. In fact, the independence
>requirement may be little more than Howard's personally convenient
>God-stopper, jammed into place to keep Howard from having sleepless nights
>about bacterial motors and the like.
Why submit the interpolation about sleepless nights?
So you first attempt at an actual logical analysis says that
you don't think _science_ needs to be contrained to independent
evidence for the existence of the designing entity you
intend to postulate. Are there any contraints on this
postulation? Think some about why independence is being
called for. It isn't just to spoil but party, but to prevent
the invokation of something for which the lack of evidence
will bury later work with unrecoverable uncertainty.
>Option two:
> "No, it is not possible."
[already choose option one]
>Actually, Howard's independence requirement would shut down much of
>archaeology,
>but again I digress. [Think about finding an artifact in a location where
>humans are thought not to have lived. A strict application of Howard's
It is easy enough to further investigate whatever presumptions
went into "a location where humans are thought not to have lived".
Clovis points: discuss. Science understands degrees of uncertainty
over such points. 100,000 years ago in the Americas may be a
point of debate but hominids in the Americas 30 million years
ago is out of the question. These calls are based on evidence
which may be subject to reinterpretation. Present your evidence
for your designer and the interpretation will be the point.
>independence requirement would make hash of any reasonable inference from the
>evidence, but then no one, least of all Howard, would apply the requirement
>there. It is contrived only to keep the ID kiddies in line.]
I don't think you have much of a grasp of practical science. If
you do, you seem to have left it at the door. I say this for
what you reveal in the archaeology example where you don't
seem to understand levels of uncertainty and interpretations
of evidence based on your belief that you have made some compelling
point.
>2. Proving the impossibility of all natural mechanisms.
>Howard writes:
>>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>>produce flint flakes) [...]
>Can Howard tell us how he, or anyone else, showed that NO natural mechanism
>can produce flint flakes, to use his example? Nope, didn't think so.
>Sorry for using all caps, friends, but IT IS LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO
>DEMONSTRATE THAT ALL POSSIBLE NATURAL MECHANISMS ARE INSUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
>AN EFFECT. This requirement cannot be satisfied, in principle, no matter
>how long one lived or how many researchers were on the job, simply because
>there could always be n + 1 unknown natural mechanisms waiting to be tested.
I agree with you. But with some slight modifications I would
agree with Howard. It's more qualatative probabilities. Yes, a
series of wacks by some hammer (rock stuck in a root of an
uprooted tree being driven by a windblown branch --- just so ---)
but that isn't as good an explaination as some hunter did it.
Given a hunter, the scalloped edge is no big deal. Without
the hunter, it becomes much harder to say. Seems that those
harder to say cases are much rarer too. What do you think
that means?
>Now, this logical impossibility is usually taken as a problem with design
>inferences: "Hey, ya didn't rule out everything natural, so how can be sure
>that there isn't an unknown natural cause which will explain this effect?"
>In fact, however, humans ordinarily infer intelligent causation WITHOUT
>excluding every possible natural mechanism, yet no one worries that the
>inferences are unsound. Given that we CAN and DO infer intelligent
But they do this when independent evidence of designers and
the design process is to be had.
>causes all the time, the logical impossibility of ruling out all
>possible natural causes should be stood on its head, as really
>representing a serious misconception of the structure of design reasoning.
Mostly true. Don't know is don't know, nothing more or less.
It isn't evidence against design --- or for it.
>In short, requirement (2) is never satisfied, by anyone, and thus should
>be set aside as fundamentally mistaken. People still go to jail for
>crimes no one saw them commit, and we know that Stonhenge didn't tumble
>into place naturally. Design inferences work.
We know people lived there, we know people like to build things.
Don't always know exactly how they lifted, trasported, quarried
big stones but we have precedence and some mechanisms, just like
Howard's model of ID.
>Let's face it: Howard himself thinks that stone tools can only be explained
>by an intelligent cause, and he hasn't ruled out every possible natural
>cause for the phenomenon. No one has. If Howard were confronted with the
>possibility of plagiarism in one of his IU classes, I don't think he
>would give the student under suspicion an open-ended research opportunity
>to discover the unknown natural mechanisms explaining high similarity in
>texts. Rather he would turn report the student to the dean.
>So requirement (2) also fails. Every time Howard or someone else infers
>intelligent causation, they violate the requirement.
In it's narrow interpretation yes. In a broader one there are shades
of "impossible" which are more correctly called highly improbable
with the understood caveot of "according to known mechanisms".
>Yet Howard would stick the ID kiddies with (2). Looks like another
>specially contrived philosophical obstacle, jammed into place to keep ID
>theorists well away from the sphere of science.
Why do they want to be in the sphere of science? Science envy?
>What happens if we suspend requirements (1) and (2)? Howard and others
You have design whereever you want it.
The lack of contraints fits nicely to the lack of value.
>Joe Lurker
>*************************************************************************
>As for my comments.....
>Howard writes:
Misguided. Howard has not claimed that science should be able
to detect design events. Nobody says that science can always
reconstruct history. Lacking evidence does omit scientfic
inquiry.
>if a designer created something 3.5 billion years ago, there is
>no good reason to expect any evidence for that designer's existence
>apart from the artifact that is designed. It's a ridiculous
>criterion.
No it isn't. It's rigour of the sort that science is restricted
to. It may be there there is a fertilization fairy that sits
around until it's time to pop a soul into a conceptus, for
humans only, but such is outside of science.
Why are people so compelled to have their TRUTH be verified
by science? I think it is science envy.
PZ Myers
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
Whoa, time out. I thought Julie Thomas was being very careful to avoid any
commitment to any particular concept of a designer. Now it's all about a
"transcendent intelligence" AKA god? I wish you guys could be consistent.
For a long time, Thomas tries to be rational and cautious in her claims,
but when an argument gets awkward she still has the option to whip out
an all powerful magical being from her closet (or in this case, from an
anonymous "lurker") who has the power to overcome any objection with a
whim.
>
>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
>Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
>scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
Hmmm. So those "dimbulbs" never had any ideas that were eventually shown
to be wrong? If you want to make posts accusing others of logical fallacies,
it's a good idea to avoid making blatant fallacies of your own, like this
patently irrelevant argument from authority.
>
>But Howard is actually too subtle a fellow to allow the ID kids to make their
>case strictly with the available biological evidence. Unlike Charles Darwin,
>who gave the creation theories of his time something of a fighting chance
>(at least Darwin [1859, p. 6] thought that such theories could turn out to be
>false), Howard carefully places the gold ring on the scientific carousel JUST
>out of reach, where the ID kiddies, try as they might, will never reach it.
>Seems like a classic carnie trick, doesn't it? "Come on, try your luck"
>[but you'll never win, you poor ID sap].
I think you are overstating Howard's position (well, to be honest, I think
Howard overstated his position as well, in the short quote you've chosen to
focus on).
>
>Intelligent design by a transcendent cause turns out to be a hypothesis which,
>while possibly true, can never show itself to be true. Why not? The
>transcendent
>Designer must first present his divine credentials to Howard, who presumably
>will
>then determine whether this is really God Almighty, or the demiurge of the
>Timaeus,
>or Aristotle's First Cause, or whatever. A handful of miracles may also be
>required; maybe water into wine, or maybe simply (as Woody Allen wanted)
>several
>million dollars created ex nihilo, and deposited in a numbered Swiss account.
>
>If you were God, however, would YOU appear in Bloomington, Indiana, and put on
>a show for Howard Hershey?
Again, you've made a ridiculous argument by taking a general statement and
turning it into a specific claim carried to extremes. There is no demand for
a deity to personally show up in front of Howard. There is no demand for a
deity, period. There is, I think, a reasonable demand for multiple lines of
evidence converging on a common hypothesis, especially when that hypothesis
is as elaborate as your "transcendent intelligence".
Look at his flint example. He isn't making outrageous demands, such as that
the caveman who knapped that rock must show up at his door and make a trip to
the local notary public to sign a confession. We need a number of pieces of
indirect evidence: that humans can make flint tools, that tools made that way
show a different distribution of shapes than flint broken randomly in the
environment, that humans lived in the area at the appropriate time, that
we are talking about more than one flint with that particular shape, etc.
>
>[Apropos of that, how many of you reading this have ever seen Howard in the
>flesh?
>A show of hands, please? Now, Howard assures us that he really DOES exist,
>and
>draws a paycheck from the folks at IU, shovels his driveway, etc. – but
>really:
>all we actually know about Howard are the messages which show up here on t.o.
>Seems like a flimsy basis for inferring his existence.]
For a lurker, you sure have missed something obvious. This is such an
old, pointless canard made by a certain individual of low repute that it
has become a long-running joke here on TO.
It also undercuts *your* point. We accept the existence of Howard Hershey
as a real person on relatively scant evidence; so why are you claiming that
we argue he has to show up in the flesh before we will believe he exists?
Why are you claiming we make unreasonable demands for evidence when it is
obvious that our demands aren't really that exorbitant in this case?
>
>Enough. Let's have the bottom line for this first point. Howard writes
>to Julie:
>
>>And as for independent evidence of a designer capable of producing such
>>features, I think even you would agree that there is none, zero, nil,
>>nada, squat.
>
>OK, Howard -- an easy question:
>
> Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
How can something be "empirically possible"?
>
>Let's take the options:
>
> "Yes, it is possible."
>
>Then it must also be possible for science to consider the hypothesis without
>requiring independent evidence of the designer. In other words, the
>independence
>requirement is not methodologically necessary. In fact, the independence
>requirement may be little more than Howard's personally convenient
>God-stopper, jammed into place to keep Howard from having sleepless nights
>about bacterial motors and the like.
Yes. It is possible to CONSIDER the hypothesis. Briefly. There really isn't
all that much to consider about it, is there?
"Hmmm. Maybe an Invisible Pink Unicorn created life on earth with a toss of
his magic horn!"
"Yep, maybe."
"OK, now let's move on to more productive and likely hypotheses."
On the other hand, if we had other, independent evidence that invisible
pink unicorns strode the earth 4 billion years ago, or evidence that
IPU horns spontaneously generate bacteria out of dirt, then maybe we
would have to pursue that otherwise facetious idea a little more
diligently.
>
>Option two:
>
> "No, it is not possible."
>
>Then the independence requirement is superfluous, indeed, nonsensical. Even
>if God showed up for Howard's office hours and made a fine Cabernet from the
>Bloomington tap water, Howard already knows that a transcendent Designer
>cannot
>exist and act, even in principle. Howard's requests for "more evidence" are
>nothing but empty dodges. No evidence would possibly suffice.
This option isn't even considered, as far as I know. Unless you are playing
rhetorical games with your bizarre request for theorizing about "empirically
possible" stuff.
>
>One last comment, before seguing to requirement 2. If you were a SETI
>researcher,
>Howard's independence requirement would be the absolute death-knell for your
>investigations. If ever a true signal is received by the SETI computers,
>it will be the *signal itself* that will constitute all the evidence we
>have for other non-human intelligences. There is no logical difference
>between Julie's arguments about bacterial motors and the SETI program's view
>of signal detection. None whatsoever.
Yes, there is.
With SETI, people are looking all the time at many 'signals'. The search is
for signals that differ radically from generic, incoming noise. If such a
signal *is* found, the first, useful assumption is NOT that it comes from
space aliens, but that it has some other natural source. The search will be
on for natural mechanisms to account for the signal before it will be
accepted, provisionally, as a potentially interesting communication. Wasn't
there something similar that happened for real, with an expectation that
rhythmic signals would be generated by intelligence feeding an initial
surmise that pulsars were signals from aliens?
In this case, we are also looking at many 'signals' -- lots of different
proteins. The ID proponents are searching that array for some radically
different signature that would be the watermark of a designer. But then
the analogy begins to break down. Julie and Behe don't seem to want to
look for natural mechanisms -- the Designer idea is sufficiently potent
that we ought to just use that, apparently. They pluck out 'signals' that
are more than a little fuzzy (not yet fully understood) and try to read
details into them that are unwarranted, and rationalize them as evidence
for a favored hypothesis. Behe basically says that we shouldn't even bother
comparing the signals he claims are designed with all the other noise --
sequence analysis is useless.
It's rather as if a SETI proponent were to pick out some isolated sample
from some old recordings, and dissect it in a post-hoc analysis to PROVE
it was a signal from outer space. That does happen (the Face on Mars is
a great example of people trying to impose designed order on random
junk), but we tend to call such people kooks.
>
>Actually, Howard's independence requirement would shut down much of
>archaeology,
>but again I digress. [Think about finding an artifact in a location where
>humans are thought not to have lived. A strict application of Howard's
>independence requirement would make hash of any reasonable inference from the
>evidence, but then no one, least of all Howard, would apply the requirement
>there. It is contrived only to keep the ID kiddies in line.]
But that is what archaeologists do! If one found a single broken flint in
a time and place that was not thought to be inhabited by humans, one wouldn't
immediately assume that all the other evidence suggesting that the place
was uninhabited is wrong. You'd think the flint was an accident, or placed
there by later passers-by, or something. If you found many flints, bones
with scoring marks from butchering, remains of a hearth, or human bones, etc.,
THEN you start arguing that the old ideas were wrong. It takes more than
one odd observation to change the idea. In particular, it takes an awful
lot more than armchair theorizing to upset an idea.
>
>2. Proving the impossibility of all natural mechanisms.
>
>Howard writes:
>
>>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
>>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
>>produce flint flakes) [...]
>
>Can Howard tell us how he, or anyone else, showed that NO natural mechanism
>can produce flint flakes, to use his example? Nope, didn't think so.
>Sorry for using all caps, friends, but IT IS LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO
>DEMONSTRATE THAT ALL POSSIBLE NATURAL MECHANISMS ARE INSUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
>AN EFFECT. This requirement cannot be satisfied, in principle, no matter
>how long one lived or how many researchers were on the job, simply because
>there could always be n + 1 unknown natural mechanisms waiting to be tested.
>
>Now, this logical impossibility is usually taken as a problem with design
>inferences: "Hey, ya didn't rule out everything natural, so how can be sure
>that there isn't an unknown natural cause which will explain this effect?"
This is an instance where you can argue that Howard overstated the case.
I agree that there is no way to demonstrate the impossibility of natural
mechanisms replicating the effect. I don't think that is what he intended
to imply, though -- the example he uses indicates that. Do you really think
he believes there is no way for rocks to get chipped except by human
intervention?
>
>In fact, however, humans ordinarily infer intelligent causation WITHOUT
>excluding every possible natural mechanism, yet no one worries that the
>inferences are unsound. Given that we CAN and DO infer intelligent
>causes all the time, the logical impossibility of ruling out all
>possible natural causes should be stood on its head, as really
>representing a serious misconception of the structure of design reasoning.
>In short, requirement (2) is never satisfied, by anyone, and thus should
>be set aside as fundamentally mistaken. People still go to jail for
>crimes no one saw them commit, and we know that Stonhenge didn't tumble
>into place naturally. Design inferences work.
Yes, when there is design to be inferred. In particular, when we have
very good evidence that the designer (in these examples, people) exists.
People exist. People have been seen to commit crimes. A crime was committed.
It is a plausible inference that a person might have committed that crime.
Try to put your ideas into that framework:
"Transcendent Intelligences" (OK, gods for short) exist. Gods design life.
Life on earth was designed.
Every sentence is an unjustified claim with absolutely no evidence behind it!
It just doesn't follow that you can now legitimately claim that you've got
evidence for the next step, that a "transcendent intelligence" designed some
aspect of earthly biology.
>
>Let's face it: Howard himself thinks that stone tools can only be explained
>by an intelligent cause, and he hasn't ruled out every possible natural
>cause for the phenomenon. No one has. If Howard were confronted with the
>possibility of plagiarism in one of his IU classes, I don't think he
>would give the student under suspicion an open-ended research opportunity
>to discover the unknown natural mechanisms explaining high similarity in
>texts. Rather he would turn report the student to the dean.
>
>So requirement (2) also fails. Every time Howard or someone else infers
>intelligent causation, they violate the requirement.
>
>Yet Howard would stick the ID kiddies with (2). Looks like another
>specially contrived philosophical obstacle, jammed into place to keep ID
>theorists well away from the sphere of science.
>
>What happens if we suspend requirements (1) and (2)? Howard and others
>would have to consider Julie's ID proposals on their merits, without the
>usual question-begging and obstacle construction. And that, it seems to
>Joe Lurker, is the very last thing they want to do.
Nope. As I said above, we CAN and DO consider the hypothesis. It's just
that without any corroborating evidence and no consequences that can be
pursued, it is not a particularly compelling hypothesis.
>
>Joe Lurker
I presume you are the same Joe Lurker who had Julie post a similarly
superficial criticism of Howard Hershey last year. Is there a reason
you lurk but are unwilling to post for yourself? Are you embarrassed
to hold the views you state above, or do you prefer to have all the
criticism go through Julie Thomas rather than take it directly, yourself?
--
PZ Myers
howard hershey
>
> iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) writes:
>
> >Someone who apparently lurks quite a bit e-mailed this to
> >me and asked if I would post it. So I say, "Why not?"
> >and here it is. I'll add a few of my own comments at the
> >end.
> >********************************************************************
>
> >Howard Hershey, Openminded Guy
> >Or: How to Beg the Question Without Seeming to,
> >Or: How Never to Take ID Seriously, Whatever the Evidence.
>
> >In a recent post, Howard Hershey wrote:
>
> >>[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
> >>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
> >>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
> >>produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
> >>the effect (e.g. hominids).
>
> >These requirements seem modest, indeed, the very picture of dispassionate
> >open-mindedness to the possibility of intelligent design. Actually however
> >they represent a spectacular instance of petitio principii.
Let me clarify what I mean by "no natural mechanism that can or has ever
been observed to produce the same effect", since this is a point on
which the more serious comments of 'my secret lurker' hinge. If one
knows that an event or object *can* be produced by a *known* natural
mechanism, one does not automatically ascribe their production to some
*unknown* natural or supernatural mechanism. For example, flints can be
chipped in nature by, say, falling off a cliff face, but do not produce
the same kinds of angles as flints chipped by humans to produce tools.
If I find a bunch of flints with chips at an angle congruent with
falling off a cliff face, I ascribe those flints, tentatively, to such a
natural mechanism rather than to the idea that humans or gods took
flints and dropped them from a height, thereby producing chipped flints
with these angles. The latter explanations (both the natural and
supernatural one) is not impossible (well, whether the gods could do it
depends somewhat on whether the gods one imagines actually exist), but
there is currently no evidence for this more complex scenario. In
science, ole br'er Occam shows his sharp weapon. Those who wish to
claim that these flints that certainly *could* be produced by a *known*
natural mechanism were *instead* produced by a different mechanism
(being tossed off a cliff by a natural or supernatural agent) need to
produce *some* evidence that explicitly allows one to distinguish
between these hypotheses. In this particular case, it would be quite
difficult to do so, even though one can perfectly reasonably think that
humans might toss rocks off a cliff. Merely finding the rocks in the
presence of human (or god) societies is not enough (since humans also
use found objects and who knows what kind of rocks gods like to keep
handy). There needs to be some way of distinguishing between rocks that
fall from cliffs and those that are dropped or the fall-back position in
science must be the simpler *known* natural explanation.
To further qualify what I meant, let's look at it from the other
perspective, because I think you may be reading too extreme a viewpoint
into what I say. Let's say that a single flint piece that 'looks like'
it was designed by a human (because it was chipped at the right angles
and such chips are *almost* never seen except as part of human cultures
of toolmaking) is seen. In this case it is not automatic that the flint
will be ascribed to human design *merely* because it 'looks like' a
piece that a human might have made. Caution is required. If it is the
sole piece found, if there is no evidence of hominids, if there are
*known*, but rare, natural mechanisms that *could* produce it, one will
probably tentatively ascribe this pieces to *natural* non-human
processes. If, OTOH, it is part of many such pieces, if there is plenty
of independent evidence of humans (real entities *known* to produce such
objects, this represents a *known* designer mechanism, not a HYPE
designer mechanism) in association with these pieces, and if the natural
(keep in mind that both the human-designed and non-human-designed
mechanisms are natural *known* mechanisms, so I am being sloppy by
calling only the non-human mechanism 'natural') mechanisms that could
produce such a product are rare and unusual events, the human designer
mechanism will be tentatively favored. Cases with less or no evidence
(a flint is found to be chipped at an angle incompatible with either
*known* human, rare natural, or common naturally produced angles - i.e.,
no *known*, with emphasis on the *known*, mechanism can produce it;
brought in by someone who can't remember where exactly he found it,
removing any possible chance that this object could be linked to a
material design agent) are possible. One does not automatically say
that such a flint must have been designed by an invisible alien from a
UFO (or a god) just because you do not have a *known* natural
explanation. "Insufficient evidence" is a valid scientific response.
There can be intermediate possibilities that are more ambiguous wrt to
whether an object was produced by a designer or not (flints in places
where they should not be by standard understanding, for example, might
in some cases be resolved one way and in others another *when more
evidence is gathered*). My viewpoint may come across as implying that I
make it impossible to show design of biochemical systems by a designer.
But that is only because the only thing presented so far as *evidence*
for an unspecified, unevidenced, hypothetical designer (the presence of
certain kinds of complex systems) do have a *known* natural mechanism
(similar biochemical and morphological complex systems can evolve either
directly or indirectly) and the design hypothesis has no *known* or even
specified mechanism. The cases that design advocates claim are the best
are precisely those with the least evidence that would allow one to make
a discrimination between the design mechanism and the *known* natural
one.
>
> Funny, he had me fooled. But you have to note that it's more
> like strong evidence of designed because the evidence of
> designers who can reasonably be shown to be capable of making
> wingnutsits doesn't have to be coupled with no alternative
> routes to make wingnutsits, it just makes for more definative
> results.
>
> >To wit:
>
> >1. The independence requirement
>
> >Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or some
> >transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence the first
> >organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard thinks that although
> >transcendent intelligent design IS possible, it is NOT true. As David Hume
> >famously observed a couple of centuries ago, however, whatever can be false
> >might also have been true. It's an elementary logical point.
A transcendant intelligence unwilling to grub around and leave material
evidence of his/her/its existence is beyond science's power to see.
Hypothetical agents able to do precisely what you want them to do, and
that includes HYPEs of all sorts, from the omnipotent to the barely
potent, are excluded from scientific understanding whether they exist or
not. Call me when you have material evidence of a designer that allows
one to distinguish such a creature from wishful thinking.
Hell, Howard, who is very coy about such things, might even believe in a
transcendant being and might even believe that science does not cover or
explain all aspects of the universe.
>
> Do you have a special problem with things that don't fit within
> the framework of science? Does that seem like a relegation to
> the bowels of astrology and voodoo?
>
> >If you were God, however, would YOU appear in Bloomington, Indiana, and put on
> >a show for Howard Hershey?
>
> You are ranting.
But the image brought to mind is amusing. In Bloomington, the way for
God to be immediately recognized would be to look like Bobby Knight. :-)
>
> >[Apropos of that, how many of you reading this have ever seen Howard in the
> >flesh?
> >A show of hands, please? Now, Howard assures us that he really DOES exist,
> >and
> >draws a paycheck from the folks at IU, shovels his driveway, etc. – but
> >really:
> >all we actually know about Howard are the messages which show up here on t.o.
> >Seems like a flimsy basis for inferring his existence.]
>
> I'm waiting for the attack on Howard's logic. When you mentioned
> digressing earlier, I thought it was going to be a brief one, not
> a whole post.
>
> >Enough. Let's have the bottom line for this first point. Howard writes
> >to Julie:
>
> >>And as for independent evidence of a designer capable of producing such
> >>features, I think even you would agree that there is none, zero, nil,
> >>nada, squat.
>
> >OK, Howard -- an easy question:
>
> > Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
As a gedanken experiment, yes. But as long as the agent chooses to be
transcendant, how can you tell?
>
> He has clearly said yes before but as you may have read from
> Julie, the question is more one of evidence and on that front
> where is the independent evidence for your intelligent agent.
>
> >Let's take the options:
>
> > "Yes, it is possible."
>
> >Then it must also be possible for science to consider the hypothesis without
> >requiring independent evidence of the designer. In other words, the
> >independence
> >requirement is not methodologically necessary.
Well, the lack of independent evidence for a designer puts an awfully
big burden on the other way one can show that something was designed,
the absence of any reasonable way to produce the result *without* having
a designer. The problem is that there *is* a reasonable and supported
by evidence blind-process way (compatible with the way living organisms
work) to produce complexity and even IC complexity of biochemical and
morphological systems without the necessity of invoking a designer.
Perhaps if we could distinguish between the mechanism by which a
designer would produce the object and the way that the object would
appear without a designer? But there has been no design mechanism
presented, much less evidence that that mechanism is the way some (any?)
relevant biological system was constructed. I am not responsible for
the failure of design theorists to present the relevant evidence.
> > In fact, the independence
> >requirement may be little more than Howard's personally convenient
> >God-stopper, jammed into place to keep Howard from having sleepless nights
> >about bacterial motors and the like.
>
> Why submit the interpolation about sleepless nights?
What makes you think that the requirement that *science* has for
material evidence for *its* explanations is a God-stopper (whatever that
is)? Do you really think that science can show the existence (or
non-existence) of God?
I hope I have made my point clearer earlier in this post. I don't ask
for the impossible and should have qualified the NO mechanism to allow
for rare and common, but not universal, events. However, the problem
with design is that they never produce any idea of the mechanism they
propose in such a way that it can be compared with alternative
explanations on the basis of evidence. Their 'mechanisms' always occur
off-stage and invisible to any examination. All they have is end
results, which, miracle of miracle, *always* looks exactly like whatever
exists.
>
> >Now, this logical impossibility is usually taken as a problem with design
> >inferences: "Hey, ya didn't rule out everything natural, so how can be sure
> >that there isn't an unknown natural cause which will explain this effect?"
>
> >In fact, however, humans ordinarily infer intelligent causation WITHOUT
> >excluding every possible natural mechanism, yet no one worries that the
> >inferences are unsound. Given that we CAN and DO infer intelligent
>
> But they do this when independent evidence of designers and
> the design process is to be had.
Like I said, either type of evidence is better than none. And design
has none.
>
> >causes all the time, the logical impossibility of ruling out all
> >possible natural causes should be stood on its head, as really
> >representing a serious misconception of the structure of design reasoning.
But, hell, you haven't even made the claim that this or that system
could not have evolved by known mechanisms and *requires* us to appeal
to *unknown* mechanisms. If you had an alternative mechanism, I
wouldn't be demanding that you convincingly show that all possible
*known* mechanisms be exhausted first. I would ask you to find evidence
for places where your proposed mechanism works better.
> Mostly true. Don't know is don't know, nothing more or less.
> It isn't evidence against design --- or for it.
>
> >In short, requirement (2) is never satisfied, by anyone, and thus should
> >be set aside as fundamentally mistaken. People still go to jail for
> >crimes no one saw them commit, and we know that Stonhenge didn't tumble
> >into place naturally. Design inferences work.
Did the criminals not leave material fingerprints of some sort? If not,
then they may have been falsely accused. Can Stonehenge reasonably form
naturally by any known mechanism? Do humans exist in the area?
>
> We know people lived there, we know people like to build things.
> Don't always know exactly how they lifted, trasported, quarried
> big stones but we have precedence and some mechanisms, just like
> Howard's model of ID.
>
> >Let's face it: Howard himself thinks that stone tools can only be explained
> >by an intelligent cause, and he hasn't ruled out every possible natural
> >cause for the phenomenon. No one has. If Howard were confronted with the
> >possibility of plagiarism in one of his IU classes, I don't think he
> >would give the student under suspicion an open-ended research opportunity
> >to discover the unknown natural mechanisms explaining high similarity in
> >texts. Rather he would turn report the student to the dean.
I always consider the possibility that two texts are similar because
they were studying common material. I require more than simple
similarity. It has to pass a higher than expected level of similarity
by a reasonable degree depending upon the nature of the material. This
is easier to do with an essay than a short answer. In essence, I first
rule out other reasonable explanations rather than leap to the
conclusion of collusion. Things people write, of course, *must* be the
product of some level of intelligence (although there are answers where
one wonders; I'll let you decide if this is one of those times).
>
> >So requirement (2) also fails. Every time Howard or someone else infers
> >intelligent causation, they violate the requirement.
>
> In it's narrow interpretation yes. In a broader one there are shades
> of "impossible" which are more correctly called highly improbable
> with the understood caveot of "according to known mechanisms".
>
> >Yet Howard would stick the ID kiddies with (2). Looks like another
> >specially contrived philosophical obstacle, jammed into place to keep ID
> >theorists well away from the sphere of science.
>
> Why do they want to be in the sphere of science? Science envy?
>
> >What happens if we suspend requirements (1) and (2)? Howard and others
>
> You have design whereever you want it.
> The lack of contraints fits nicely to the lack of value.
Well said.
>
> >would have to consider Julie's ID proposals on their merits, without the
> >usual question-begging and obstacle construction. And that, it seems to
> >Joe Lurker, is the very last thing they want to do.
>
> >Joe Lurker
> >*************************************************************************
>
> >As for my comments.....
>
> >Howard writes:
>
> >>[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
> >>All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
> >>that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
> >>produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
> >>the effect (e.g. hominids).
>
> >Of course, these are bogus criteria. Howard's first criterion
> >is his "prove the impossible" demand.
I am perfectly willing to soften that all to a high degree of
probability for all known mechanisms. That really doesn't help design
very much.
> >That is, unless a proponent
> >of ID can show that a natural process cannot account for some
> >feature, ID is to be rejected. And the only way to satisfy this
> >demand is to have complete knowledge of all possible natural
> >mechanisms such that there is no such thing as an "unknown mechanism."
> >And from there, one would have to demonstrate that all these
> >mechanisms cannot account for the feature (which originate in
> >the ancient past), or in other words, it is impossible for the
> >feature to arise via these mechanisms. Anytime someone expects
> >their opponent to "prove the impossible," they are trying to erect
> >a smokescreen around the weakness of their position(that's how
> >I see it).
>
> >Howard's second criterion is also bogus because Howard has yet
> >to explain why we SHOULD be able to find such evidence. That is,
>
> Misguided. Howard has not claimed that science should be able
> to detect design events. Nobody says that science can always
> reconstruct history. Lacking evidence does omit scientfic
> inquiry.
Some events may be completely indecipherable. But positing an
unevidenced HYPE to perform events by unknown mechanisms is not
particularly useful as science.
>
> >if a designer created something 3.5 billion years ago, there is
> >no good reason to expect any evidence for that designer's existence
> >apart from the artifact that is designed. It's a ridiculous
> >criterion.
>
> No it isn't. It's rigour of the sort that science is restricted
> to. It may be there there is a fertilization fairy that sits
> around until it's time to pop a soul into a conceptus, for
> humans only, but such is outside of science.
>
> Why are people so compelled to have their TRUTH be verified
> by science? I think it is science envy.
>
> >Howard's criteria are simply this: either prove natural mechanisms
> >are impossible or find the evidence for ID we wouldn't expect to find
> >if ID was true. As Peter might say, GIGO.
Very convenient ID, to be just at the right time and place to leave no
fingerprints.
>
> >Howard claims that with these criteria, science would detect design.
> >But if it is impossible for natural mechanisms to account for something,
That was *known* natural mechanisms. Science obviously recognizes
currently *unknown* natural mechanisms. It also recognizes *natural*
mechanisms that currently do not explain things well, but which might
explain those events other mechanisms can't.
Loren King
> Someone who apparently lurks quite a bit e-mailed this to
> me and asked if I would post it. So I say, "Why not?"
> and here it is. ....
>
> If you were a SETI researcher, Howard's independence requirement
> would be the absolute death-knell for your investigations. If
> ever a true signal is received by the SETI computers, it will be
> the *signal itself* that will constitute all the evidence we
> have for other non-human intelligences.
Well, the reason the signal itself will be sufficient is because the
intelligent designers would in all likelihood have designed the signal
to be interpretable to as wide a range of possible intelligences as they
could imagine. If the signals weren't designed as such (i.e. maybe
they're extraterrestrial sitcoms finally reaching us here), we may be
able to recognize them if they're similar enough to signals we know are
designed and meaningful (i.e. our own). But the more dissimilar they
are to our own designs, the more independent knowledge we'll need to
have to make any sense at all of them.
> There is no logical difference between Julie's arguments about
> bacterial motors and the SETI program's view of signal detection.
> None whatsoever.
Actually, there is one critical difference (aside from the fact that
SETI has never actually deciphered an extraterrestrial signal designed
by an alien intelligence). The difference is that Julie's analogy
between human designs (outboard motors) and the flagellum is vague and
imprecise as the basis of a design inference, in a way that SETI's
assumptions (i.e. that alien signal designers will want to be discovered
and understood) are not. In the case of an alien signal, we start with
the reasonable assumption that the signals we'll be able to interpret
from alien senders will be such that the designers will want them to be
discovered and understood ... what's the analogous assumption underlying
Julie's research program?
Julie infers the intentions of a conjectured-but-unobserved designer
simply on the basis of her being able to identify some function that an
IC system (or its component parts or subsystems) performs. What she
hasn't done is argue about why function should be conflated with purpose
in this way, nor why the evidence should be interpreted in the way she
suggests.
> Actually, Howard's independence requirement would shut down much of
> archaeology, but again I digress.
No it wouldn't. In fact, if design theorists were serious about doing
science, they'd start thinking seriously about how archeologists and
anthropologists approach designed artifacts ... and I dare say that
these design theorists would realize how difficult it is to infer design
reliably in the absence of background knowledge about (a) designers,
their methods, interests and intentions, or (b) closely analogous
systems for which we do have extensive knowledge about (a).
> In fact, however, humans ordinarily infer intelligent causation
> WITHOUT excluding every possible natural mechanism, yet no one
> worries that the inferences are unsound.
Well, our degree of worry tends to depend on the degree to which the
person inferring intelligent design does so with background information
of the sorts (a) and (b) above. When there's no such background
information, then we'd probably find the appeal to design to be about as
uninformative and uninteresting as simply acknowledging that we don't
understand how the object in question came to be.
> Given that we CAN and DO infer intelligent causes all the time, ...
Yes, but we do so in cases where we have a lot of background information
about similar outcomes for which we know that intelligent design is the
cause. Can you seriously say the same thing about functional complexity
in nature?
Loren
--------------------------------------
Loren King lk...@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/lking/www/home.html
Jonathan Stone
>
>
> Someone who apparently lurks quite a bit e-mailed this to
> me and asked if I would post it. So I say, "Why not?"
> and here it is. I'll add a few of my own comments at the
> end.
> ********************************************************************
>
> Howard Hershey, Openminded Guy
> Or: How to Beg the Question Without Seeming to,
> Or: How Never to Take ID Seriously, Whatever the Evidence.
>
> [Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
> laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
> Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
> scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
Look how many of those luminaries lived *before* a scientifically-admissible
explanation for the variety of Life on Earth with*out* such a Creator;
and how many lived *after*. Cause and effect, perhaps?
Perhaps the moral of the story is: dont try and make shabby rhetorical
points when you're dumber than your audience.
Julie Thomas
Joe Lurker e-mailed me and asked if I would post another
reply. Since it's a good'n, I sau "sure!"
Of course, I'd again like to append a few comments of my
own at the end. I'll then follow this with Joe Lurker's
last reply (to Paul).
*******************************************************************
Wade Hines wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
>>1. The independence requirement
>>
>>Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or
>>some transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence
>>the first organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard
>>thinks that although transcendent intelligent design IS possible,
>>it is NOT true. As David Hume famously observed a couple of
>>centuries ago, however, whatever can be false might also have been
>>true. It's an elementary logical point.
>
>A false point, as well as elementary, and a complete non sequitur
>as far as I can tell.
Come on, Wade – get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
"A statement is contingent if and only if it is neither tautologous
nor contradictory, or if its most detailed form is a contingency"
(V. Klenk, _Understanding Symbolic Logic_, Prentice Hall, 1983, p.
108). Under a truth table, the propositions ordinarily represented
in design theories all turn out to be run-of-the-mill contingent
statements: meaning they *might* be true (i.e., are truth-functionally
contingent), and thus "could either be true or false" (Nolt and
Rohatyn, _Logic_, McGraw-Hill, 1988, p. 81). It all depends on
what is case empirically.
A proposition that is contingently false in this sense might also
have been true, depending on the state of the evidence. Like I
said: elementary logic. Howard and you too, Wade, believe
intelligent design to be contingently false, entailing that (given
relevant evidence), it might also be contingently true.
>>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo,
>>Ray, Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim
>>bulbs of scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
>
>Next time you digress, put dates with your half-wits so we can
>place them in the proper context to any sort of understanding
>of biochemistry.
Do you really think that Linneaus would change his views about
the divine authorship of the world if he saw a bacterial motor?
I think he'd start asking people indignantly why most 20th century
biologists pretend not to notice the plain implications of the evidence
right in front of them. Your "understanding of biochemistry" assumes
that these guys would agree with you. I think it is vastly more likely
that they would say, "How on earth did this numbskull view of
naturalism come to dominate the sciences we founded?"
[snip]
>>Then it must also be possible for science to consider the
>>hypothesis without requiring independent evidence of the designer.
>>In other words, the independence requirement is not methodologically
>>necessary. In fact, the independence requirement may be little more
>>than Howard's personally convenient God-stopper, jammed into place to
>>keep Howard from having sleepless nights about bacterial motors and
>>the like.
>
>Why submit the interpolation about sleepless nights?
To get under Howard's skin and make him mad, so he'll think hard
instead of deploying specially-contrived philosophical obstacles.
But Howard is a big boy, and he can tell us if he's having
sleepless nights or not. Tell me, Wade: how are YOU sleeping
lately? Got a clear conscience about playing fair with the
biological evidence?
>So you first attempt at an actual logical analysis says that
>you don't think _science_ needs to be contrained to independent
>evidence for the existence of the designing entity you
>intend to postulate. Are there any contraints on this
>postulation? Think some about why independence is being
>called for. It isn't just to spoil but party, but to prevent
>the invokation of something for which the lack of evidence
>will bury later work with unrecoverable uncertainty.
Julie wants to use design reasoning as a predictive tool. Other
folks on t.o. say, "Hang on, sweetheart – if you do that, you might
DISCOVER something! Whoa, nelly!! Young ladies shouldn't play with
theories or they might predict something novel that turned out to
be true, and then where would we be? Far better to make Julie produce
God or E.T. first ['cause we all know she can't do THAT! –
(Howard, are you listening?)], and that philosophical snipe hunt
we've sent her on will keep her busy and away from the biological
data."
Of course design reasoning must be constrained. But it can satisfy
that requirement by delivering detailed and testable predictions about
the biological evidence itself (not whether God has a beard or if
He prefers the Falcons over the Broncos). I don't think the t.o.
regulars are especially interested in hearing design predictions
about the evidence, however.
Mostly, they don't want to have to infer a designer, and put
obstacles in the way of others who try.
Big snip on the rest.
Wade, from my lofty perch on the lurker's ledge, an old crow
overlooking the t.o. landscape, I see Julie working mightily to
get design reasoning off the ground as a genuinely scientific
tool. She is surrounded however by people who are worried,
deeply worried, that she might succeed. And that would be Bad
News Indeed for the widely-held t.o. view that intelligent design
is necessarily scientifically fruitless.
Now, the t.o. regulars flatter themselves on their liberality
and openmindedness (and in fact some truly are, although they
tend to be scared away by the vitriol dished out by the more
mean-spirited howler monkeys). Not wishing to be seen as
automatic nay-sayers, the t.o. regulars therefore attach what
they see as reasonable evidential demands on Julie.
Such as, say, produce God for our inspection.
Well, from an old crow's perspective that looks like classic
question-begging. Julie wants to ask "What if... and most of
the rest of you shriek, "Don't go there, don't say the 'd'
word, and don't expect us to follow you in any case because
it's way scary over there."
Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
Do some Medlines searches yourself (and I don't mean you,
Wade: I mean the folks who get their biology lessons from t.o.).
Much better to let the t.o. crew read old articles by Dickerson
or Futuyma, or the t.o. FAQs on the topic, nearly all of which
are hopelessly out of date or just plain wrong.]
Work to do. Happy trails, Wade. Just keep repeating,
"Design can't be science, design can't be science…"
Science envy. Hm. I like that. It's in the Philosophical
Pathology textbook, right next to "Designer Phobia, Severe."
Joe Lurker
****************************************************************
Let me add a few comments....
"Joe" writes:
>Julie wants to use design reasoning as a predictive tool.
Indeed. But it is not just a matter of "want." I *have*
used design reasoning in just this way. Just read my
articles on IC systems.
>Other folks on t.o. say, "Hang on, sweetheart if you do that, you might
>DISCOVER something! Whoa, nelly!! Young ladies shouldn't play with
>theories or they might predict something novel that turned out to
>be true, and then where would we be?
Actually, it's more like "Hang on, sweetheart, if you do that,
you WILL fail." You gotta remember my critics on t.o. are
closed-minded. The verdict is in - these systems evolved
(antibiotic resistance in bacteria demonstrates this).
We need only dot some i's and cross some t's. But what I
can't figure out is how a crowd of naysayers, who have
never seriously tried to apply design reasoning as a predictive
tool, think they have the experience to offer me their "advise."
For some reason, their personal rationalizations for not
applying design reasoning is magically supposed to be convincing.
And it is even more outrageous when you consider I am not even
asking them to apply design reasoning! Their's is the One True
Way and I'm just too stupid to realize this.
>Far better to make Julie produce
>God or E.T. first ['cause we all know she can't do THAT!
>(Howard, are you listening?)], and that philosophical snipe hunt
>we've sent her on will keep her busy and away from the biological
>data."
Well stated! But can you blame them? What is their alternative
explanation for these systems? 1. I don't know; 2. The evidence
was "lost in history"; and 3. An unknown mechanism may be at work.
If you had to use these three explanations, you would be trying
to draw attention away from the data too! ;)
>Wade, from my lofty perch on the lurker's ledge, an old crow
>overlooking the t.o. landscape, I see Julie working mightily to
>get design reasoning off the ground as a genuinely scientific
>tool. She is surrounded however by people who are worried,
>deeply worried, that she might succeed.
It's not that they are worried I might succeed, it's that they
are convinced I cannot succeed. And it is their self-appointed
duty to make me see their light.
>And that would be Bad
>News Indeed for the widely-held t.o. view that intelligent design
>is necessarily scientifically fruitless.
Well, the Bad News has been in for over a year. I have demonstrated
that intelligent design can be a fruitful guide for scientific
inquiry. But when this happens, the goal-posts get moved. The
"design is fruitless" claim becomes "the design is not needed"
claim. But who ever said the only reason to employ design
reasoning is when it is "needed?" Such thinking is born
of the "prove the impossible" mindset. Besides,
what they fail to realize is that when design is no
longer fruitless, their anti-design views are not needed.
The goal posts are always moving around here. When I first started
posting, the problem with IC was that it failed to account for
things like gene duplication and recruitment, along with redundancy
and alternative activities. Remember? Well, guess what? Yours truly took
this rebuttal seriously and incorporated into a design approach.
Since I am interested in a testable, investigative approach,
I outlined the criteria for relevancy of such considerations.
It was pretty standard stuff. When did these similar activites
originate? Where are they found? Are they biologically relevant?
The response? Those who preach about constraints say, "It doesn't
matter." Y'see, anything goes in Just So Land. The "constraint"
is how well it makes for a good story. But now that I have
incorporated their complaints about IC with my systems, the
problem is that "we don't know", "that evidence was lost in
history," and "there might be an unknown mechanism at work."
And, of course, these "explanations" happen to be very safe
insulation against a design inference. All that fuss
about similar activities was apparently nothing more than
a smokescreen to hide these explanations born of an open-mind.
Oh well.
I could also go on and on about the ubiquituous double standards
that are employed on this board. But instead, I'll add one
final comment.
>Now, the t.o. regulars flatter themselves on their liberality
>and openmindedness (and in fact some truly are, although they
>tend to be scared away by the vitriol dished out by the more
>mean-spirited howler monkeys).
Yeah, but as far as my critics go, I see not a shred of
evidence of any liberality and openmindedness. Only lots
of extremism and bias (don't forget how stereotype flourishes
in their midsts).
>Not wishing to be seen as
>automatic nay-sayers, the t.o. regulars therefore attach what
>they see as reasonable evidential demands on Julie.
Yeah, what's reasonable to them is that I am supposedly obligated
to prove the impossible and find the type of evidence that there
is no reason to expect we can find. Their role as automatic
nay-sayers is plain for anyone without an axe to grind to see.
The bottom line: Not only have I shown how design can be used
to explore the world in a testable fashion, for all the pages
and pages of naysaying, no naysayer has come up with a better
explanation (IMO) for the origin of the systems I have discussed.
It's time to move on and build upon a quite encouraging
foundation.
As for Joe Lurker's last reply...
********************************************************************
PZ Myers wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
>>Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or some
>>transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence the first
>>organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard thinks that although
>>transcendent intelligent design IS possible, it is NOT true. As David Hume
>>famously observed a couple of centuries ago, however, whatever can be false
>>might also have been true. It's an elementary logical point.
>
>Whoa, time out. I thought Julie Thomas was being very careful to avoid any
>commitment to any particular concept of a designer. Now it's all about a
>"transcendent intelligence" AKA god? I wish you guys could be consistent.
>For a long time, Thomas tries to be rational and cautious in her claims,
>but when an argument gets awkward she still has the option to whip out
>an all powerful magical being from her closet (or in this case, from an
>anonymous "lurker") who has the power to overcome any objection with a
>whim.
Oh, come on. Forget about Julie; she posts these screeds for me as
a favor. No howler monkey would care two jerks about any of this
if they weren't seriously worried about Theism Being True On the
Basis of Evidence. Hence the regular, specially-contrived deployment
of God-Stoppers.
>>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
>>Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
>>scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
>
>Hmmm. So those "dimbulbs" never had any ideas that were eventually shown
>to be wrong? If you want to make posts accusing others of logical fallacies,
>it's a good idea to avoid making blatant fallacies of your own, like this
>patently irrelevant argument from authority.
Ah, but it's not an argument from authority at all. The howler monkeys
simply need to be reminded from time to time not to be so historically
and philosophically parochial (see below). Supposedly any clever person
can see that intelligent design cannot be true. Baloney.
[snip]
>>OK, Howard -- an easy question:
>>
>> Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
>
>How can something be "empirically possible"?
See my reply to Wade Hines, re contingent propositions.
[more snips]
>On the other hand, if we had other, independent evidence that invisible
>pink unicorns strode the earth 4 billion years ago, or evidence that
>IPU horns spontaneously generate bacteria out of dirt, then maybe we
>would have to pursue that otherwise facetious idea a little more
>diligently.
You're being tendentious, PZ. The hypothesis of intelligent design
by a transcendent being has a historical pedigree extending at least
to Plato, running back to the present via such dim bulbs as the founders
of Western science previously mentioned, Louis Agassiz, Darwin's teachers
at Cambridge, Darwin himself at early stages of his career, etc.
Please give me the corresponding history for the IPU hypothesis.
The hypothesis of intelligent design might be false (or true),
but it has been proposed with all sobriety by otherwise sane
(and in many cases world-class brilliant) philosophers and
scientists, on the basis of what they take to be compelling
evidence. There is no similar historical record for IPUs and the
other mock design hypotheses offered here on t.o. as parallels.
Which only demonstrates, of course, that the IPU business is little
more than another slovenly debating trick, meant to divert attention.
Snip to the rest for lack of time. I will comment on this,
however:
>I presume you are the same Joe Lurker who had Julie post a similarly
>superficial criticism of Howard Hershey last year. Is there a reason
>you lurk but are unwilling to post for yourself? Are you embarrassed
>to hold the views you state above, or do you prefer to have all the
>criticism go through Julie Thomas rather than take it directly, yourself?
Have Mark Isaak, Matt Silberstein, maff91, Thomas Paine, and most
of the other t.o. regulars look in a mirror.
Then have them ask:
"Would I want to spend time discussing interesting problems and ideas
in natural science and philosophy with the kind, patient,
scientifically knowledgeable, friendly person I see in the mirror
-- and moreover, use my real name, so that other such kind, patient,
knowledgeable people will add their comments in a spirit of
respectful open inquiry?"
"Or does the person I see in mirror enjoy stepping on other people's
ideas, speculative or tentative as they may be, for the feel-good
and surge of self-important pride that he gets?"
And now you know why I sign myself
Joe Lurker
***********************************************************************
I'd like to add a few of my own comments.
Paul wrote:
>Whoa, time out. I thought Julie Thomas was being very careful to avoid any
>commitment to any particular concept of a designer. Now it's all about a
>"transcendent intelligence" AKA god? I wish you guys could be consistent.
As I said before, it is understandable how a pack member would
be confused by independent thinking. Yes, I do indeed avoid
any commitment to any particular concept of a designer (and
this frustrates and upsets the pack). But this doesn't mean
another person is obligated to approach the world as I do.
If someone wants to think of the designer as God, a DemiUrge,
or ETI matters not to me.
>For a long time, Thomas tries to be rational and cautious in her claims,
>but when an argument gets awkward she still has the option to whip out
>an all powerful magical being from her closet (or in this case, from an
>anonymous "lurker") who has the power to overcome any objection with a
>whim.
Do I whip out an "all powerful magical being from my closet?"
Nope. Once again, Paul's assertions have no basis in reality.
As for objections to my claims, 100 lame objections born of
closedminded extremism amounts to lots of lame objections
from closededminded extremism. Yawn. You go your way, I'll
go mine. Oh...but I forgot...that really bothers you, doesn't
it? Yeppers, that *would* bother the Crusaders For The One And Only
True Way.
PZ Myers
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>Joe Lurker e-mailed me and asked if I would post another
>reply. Since it's a good'n, I sau "sure!"
>Of course, I'd again like to append a few comments of my
>own at the end. I'll then follow this with Joe Lurker's
>last reply (to Paul).
>
>*******************************************************************
>
>Wade Hines wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
>
[snip]
>
>>>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>>>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo,
>>>Ray, Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim
>>>bulbs of scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
>>
>>Next time you digress, put dates with your half-wits so we can
>>place them in the proper context to any sort of understanding
>>of biochemistry.
>
>Do you really think that Linneaus would change his views about
>the divine authorship of the world if he saw a bacterial motor?
>
>I think he'd start asking people indignantly why most 20th century
>biologists pretend not to notice the plain implications of the evidence
>right in front of them. Your "understanding of biochemistry" assumes
>that these guys would agree with you. I think it is vastly more likely
>that they would say, "How on earth did this numbskull view of
>naturalism come to dominate the sciences we founded?"
Probably. But not because they are better or more knowledgeable thinkers --
it would be because that is their prejudice.
Again, this is an argument from authority, and worse, an argument from
the plainly uninformed opinions of antique authorities. Aren't there any
smart guys in the field of biology today? Why did you leave out Darwin,
who by any measure stands out as one of the giants of past science?
No, nobody is afraid Julie is going to "discover" something with her
approach. It is a commendable tool for self-education, and she definitely
has a handle on more data than most people in this newsgroup...but it
is not a method that is going to lead anywhere. She has her own philosophical
snipe hunt. She's trying to read between the lines of the biological data
for evidence of design, but she's unwilling to tell us what she's looking
for. She'll know it when she finds it, I guess.
>
>Of course design reasoning must be constrained. But it can satisfy
>that requirement by delivering detailed and testable predictions about
>the biological evidence itself (not whether God has a beard or if
>He prefers the Falcons over the Broncos). I don't think the t.o.
>regulars are especially interested in hearing design predictions
>about the evidence, however.
>
>Mostly, they don't want to have to infer a designer, and put
>obstacles in the way of others who try.
You entirely miss the point.
Nobody cares if god has a beard -- those aren't the kind of attributes
we are probing for.
I would like to know what the features of the designer are *that affect
the design hypothesis*. She's going to make "detailed and testable
predictions", you say -- but how? She's going to make claims of what a
designer had done, without saying anything at all about the designer?
That seems improbable. And, as I commented before, by being sufficiently
vague she leaves the door wide open to answer any failures of her theory
by having some clown pop out of a box and say "God did it".
>
>Big snip on the rest.
>
>Wade, from my lofty perch on the lurker's ledge, an old crow
>overlooking the t.o. landscape, I see Julie working mightily to
>get design reasoning off the ground as a genuinely scientific
>tool. She is surrounded however by people who are worried,
>deeply worried, that she might succeed. And that would be Bad
>News Indeed for the widely-held t.o. view that intelligent design
>is necessarily scientifically fruitless.
>
>Now, the t.o. regulars flatter themselves on their liberality
>and openmindedness (and in fact some truly are, although they
>tend to be scared away by the vitriol dished out by the more
>mean-spirited howler monkeys). Not wishing to be seen as
>automatic nay-sayers, the t.o. regulars therefore attach what
>they see as reasonable evidential demands on Julie.
>
>Such as, say, produce God for our inspection.
Did somebody say that? I know I haven't.
>
>Well, from an old crow's perspective that looks like classic
>question-begging. Julie wants to ask "What if... and most of
>the rest of you shriek, "Don't go there, don't say the 'd'
>word, and don't expect us to follow you in any case because
>it's way scary over there."
Scary? Where do you get this nonsense? There is nothing scary about
design theory. At its worst, it is an irritating facade for true
believers to drape over their old-time religion. At its best, it
is a vague and so far unprovable assertion that has a heap of inferences
that proponents refuse to consider.
>
>Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
>up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
>sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
>views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
>Do some Medlines searches yourself (and I don't mean you,
>Wade: I mean the folks who get their biology lessons from t.o.).
>Much better to let the t.o. crew read old articles by Dickerson
>or Futuyma, or the t.o. FAQs on the topic, nearly all of which
>are hopelessly out of date or just plain wrong.]
You don't give details. Hmmm. OK. You make a sweeping statement
about the state of science (a wrong statement, by the way), but
you won't name one example, one author, one paper. The reason is
obvious: you don't know the work, you are parroting some twit who
doesn't know the work, or you know that if you gave details you
could be more easily shown to be wrong.
>
>Work to do. Happy trails, Wade. Just keep repeating,
>"Design can't be science, design can't be science…"
>
>Science envy. Hm. I like that. It's in the Philosophical
>Pathology textbook, right next to "Designer Phobia, Severe."
"Designer Phobia" doesn't exist. The big fans of Design Theory
get asked lots of questions, and get criticized heavily, in this
public newsgroup. That doesn't sound like fear to me.
"Science envy" is demonstrated by every creationist here. For a
great example, look at posts by ttrainor -- he's trying hard to
find scientific justifications for his genesis myth, and not doing
too good a job.
>
>Joe Lurker
>****************************************************************
>
>Let me add a few comments....
>
>
>"Joe" writes:
>
>>Julie wants to use design reasoning as a predictive tool.
>
>Indeed. But it is not just a matter of "want." I *have*
>used design reasoning in just this way. Just read my
>articles on IC systems.
And your specific, *useful* predictions are...?
>
>>Other folks on t.o. say, "Hang on, sweetheart if you do that, you might
>>DISCOVER something! Whoa, nelly!! Young ladies shouldn't play with
>>theories or they might predict something novel that turned out to
>>be true, and then where would we be?
>
>Actually, it's more like "Hang on, sweetheart, if you do that,
>you WILL fail." You gotta remember my critics on t.o. are
>closed-minded. The verdict is in - these systems evolved
>(antibiotic resistance in bacteria demonstrates this).
>We need only dot some i's and cross some t's. But what I
>can't figure out is how a crowd of naysayers, who have
>never seriously tried to apply design reasoning as a predictive
>tool, think they have the experience to offer me their "advise."
>For some reason, their personal rationalizations for not
>applying design reasoning is magically supposed to be convincing.
>And it is even more outrageous when you consider I am not even
>asking them to apply design reasoning! Their's is the One True
>Way and I'm just too stupid to realize this.
No. I don't know that the flagellum evolved. I suspect it did,
because that's the way things seem to have worked on this planet,
but I don't have any specific evidence for that particular structure.
You say it was plopped into bacteria by a designer, but I haven't
seen any evidence for that, either, except that you say the dearth
of evidence for more conventional natural mechanisms is evidence for
your hypothesis...which is not good logic. You also say that your
approach is a predictive tool. But what do you predict? That evidence
for evolution of the flagellum will not be found? That isn't very
interesting.
>
>>Far better to make Julie produce
>>God or E.T. first ['cause we all know she can't do THAT!
>>(Howard, are you listening?)], and that philosophical snipe hunt
>>we've sent her on will keep her busy and away from the biological
>>data."
>
>Well stated! But can you blame them? What is their alternative
>explanation for these systems? 1. I don't know; 2. The evidence
>was "lost in history"; and 3. An unknown mechanism may be at work.
>If you had to use these three explanations, you would be trying
>to draw attention away from the data too! ;)
Now I am mystified. *Your* answer is #3: an unknown mechanism may
be at work. You've called that mechanism a "designer", but your
specification of the designer is so broad and vague we might as
well just call it unknown.
>
>>Wade, from my lofty perch on the lurker's ledge, an old crow
>>overlooking the t.o. landscape, I see Julie working mightily to
>>get design reasoning off the ground as a genuinely scientific
>>tool. She is surrounded however by people who are worried,
>>deeply worried, that she might succeed.
>
>It's not that they are worried I might succeed, it's that they
>are convinced I cannot succeed. And it is their self-appointed
>duty to make me see their light.
Don't get stupid on us, Julie.
We don't agree with you. We don't find your ideas persuasive. You
post them here, you get criticism, and then you dismiss it by claiming
we feel some duty to make you see our light. We could say the the
same thing about you: you have set yourself the self-appointed duty to
make US see the light. Why else would you post here?
>
>>And that would be Bad
>>News Indeed for the widely-held t.o. view that intelligent design
>>is necessarily scientifically fruitless.
>
>Well, the Bad News has been in for over a year. I have demonstrated
>that intelligent design can be a fruitful guide for scientific
>inquiry.
I missed it. What post specified the fruitful products of this inquiry?
>But when this happens, the goal-posts get moved. The
>"design is fruitless" claim becomes "the design is not needed"
>claim. But who ever said the only reason to employ design
>reasoning is when it is "needed?" Such thinking is born
>of the "prove the impossible" mindset. Besides,
>what they fail to realize is that when design is no
>longer fruitless, their anti-design views are not needed.
Yes. I fail to realize that design is no longer fruitless. Enlighten
me, or at least tell me where I can find the Truth on DejaNews.
Right. People disagree with you, so that must be bias. It can't
possibly be on the basis of the information you've given, or failed
to give.
>
>>Not wishing to be seen as
>>automatic nay-sayers, the t.o. regulars therefore attach what
>>they see as reasonable evidential demands on Julie.
>
>Yeah, what's reasonable to them is that I am supposedly obligated
>to prove the impossible and find the type of evidence that there
>is no reason to expect we can find. Their role as automatic
>nay-sayers is plain for anyone without an axe to grind to see.
>The bottom line: Not only have I shown how design can be used
>to explore the world in a testable fashion, for all the pages
>and pages of naysaying, no naysayer has come up with a better
>explanation (IMO) for the origin of the systems I have discussed.
>It's time to move on and build upon a quite encouraging
>foundation.
Like I said, I missed those posts where you showed design can be used
to explore the world in a testable fashion. Examples?
>
>As for Joe Lurker's last reply...
>
>********************************************************************
>
>PZ Myers wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
>
>>>Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or some
>>>transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence the first
>>>organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard thinks that although
>>>transcendent intelligent design IS possible, it is NOT true. As David Hume
>>>famously observed a couple of centuries ago, however, whatever can be false
>>>might also have been true. It's an elementary logical point.
>>
>>Whoa, time out. I thought Julie Thomas was being very careful to avoid any
>>commitment to any particular concept of a designer. Now it's all about a
>>"transcendent intelligence" AKA god? I wish you guys could be consistent.
>>For a long time, Thomas tries to be rational and cautious in her claims,
>>but when an argument gets awkward she still has the option to whip out
>>an all powerful magical being from her closet (or in this case, from an
>>anonymous "lurker") who has the power to overcome any objection with a
>>whim.
>
>Oh, come on. Forget about Julie; she posts these screeds for me as
>a favor. No howler monkey would care two jerks about any of this
>if they weren't seriously worried about Theism Being True On the
>Basis of Evidence. Hence the regular, specially-contrived deployment
>of God-Stoppers.
No. If somebody were quite specific and said X was the product of
a non-supernatural agent, aliens from another planet, they would get
criticized just as thoroughly. And for precisely the same reason.
However, we have here a case where the somebody is being very, very
vague about the nature of the designer. If the hypothesis is so broad
that it permits something as unprovable and untestable as an
omnipotent designer, then I don't see how she can claim that her
ideas guide predictions.
>
>>>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
>>>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo, Ray,
>>>Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim bulbs of
>>>scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
>>
>>Hmmm. So those "dimbulbs" never had any ideas that were eventually shown
>>to be wrong? If you want to make posts accusing others of logical fallacies,
>>it's a good idea to avoid making blatant fallacies of your own, like this
>>patently irrelevant argument from authority.
>
>Ah, but it's not an argument from authority at all. The howler monkeys
>simply need to be reminded from time to time not to be so historically
>and philosophically parochial (see below). Supposedly any clever person
>can see that intelligent design cannot be true. Baloney.
Not an argument from authority? Logic is not your strong suit, I see.
Of course it is. Saying, "Newton would agree with me!" is making a false
argument from authority. It's irrelevant, too.
>
>[snip]
>
>>>OK, Howard -- an easy question:
>>>
>>> Is design by a transcendent intelligence empirically possible?
>>
>>How can something be "empirically possible"?
>
>See my reply to Wade Hines, re contingent propositions.
That doesn't answer me. "Empirical" means that the conclusion was made
on the basis of observation, but you are asking for a theoretical
speculation in the absence of data. It doesn't make sense.
>
>[more snips]
>
>>On the other hand, if we had other, independent evidence that invisible
>>pink unicorns strode the earth 4 billion years ago, or evidence that
>>IPU horns spontaneously generate bacteria out of dirt, then maybe we
>>would have to pursue that otherwise facetious idea a little more
>>diligently.
>
>You're being tendentious, PZ. The hypothesis of intelligent design
>by a transcendent being has a historical pedigree extending at least
>to Plato, running back to the present via such dim bulbs as the founders
>of Western science previously mentioned, Louis Agassiz, Darwin's teachers
>at Cambridge, Darwin himself at early stages of his career, etc.
>
>Please give me the corresponding history for the IPU hypothesis.
You just did.
"IPU" is simply a placeholder for "Designer". Try it. Replace every
instance of "IPU" with "Designer", and the phrases still work.
Astrology and alchemy also have a wonderful historical pedigree.
Does that mean we ought to consider those ideas a little more
seriously? Newton dabbled in both, so maybe we ought to resurrect
them in the university curriculum.
>
>The hypothesis of intelligent design might be false (or true),
>but it has been proposed with all sobriety by otherwise sane
>(and in many cases world-class brilliant) philosophers and
>scientists, on the basis of what they take to be compelling
>evidence. There is no similar historical record for IPUs and the
>other mock design hypotheses offered here on t.o. as parallels.
>
>Which only demonstrates, of course, that the IPU business is little
>more than another slovenly debating trick, meant to divert attention.
Not at all. It points out the sloppiness of your definitions. Julie says
it is perfectly OK for a theist to nestle under the blankets of Design
Theory; why can't an IPUist? The designer can be *anything* in the
current model.
>
>Snip to the rest for lack of time. I will comment on this,
>however:
>
>>I presume you are the same Joe Lurker who had Julie post a similarly
>>superficial criticism of Howard Hershey last year. Is there a reason
>>you lurk but are unwilling to post for yourself? Are you embarrassed
>>to hold the views you state above, or do you prefer to have all the
>>criticism go through Julie Thomas rather than take it directly, yourself?
>
>Have Mark Isaak, Matt Silberstein, maff91, Thomas Paine, and most
>of the other t.o. regulars look in a mirror.
>
>Then have them ask:
>
>"Would I want to spend time discussing interesting problems and ideas
>in natural science and philosophy with the kind, patient,
>scientifically knowledgeable, friendly person I see in the mirror
>-- and moreover, use my real name, so that other such kind, patient,
>knowledgeable people will add their comments in a spirit of
>respectful open inquiry?"
>
>"Or does the person I see in mirror enjoy stepping on other people's
>ideas, speculative or tentative as they may be, for the feel-good
>and surge of self-important pride that he gets?"
You've got it all wrong. Science ain't nice, it ain't pretty, and it
isn't about fluffing timid people's egos. It's about criticism, and
critical evaluation. Sometimes it is in a polite package, but even then
it is all knives and needles beneath the bows.
This *is* open inquiry. You say your piece, I rip it apart. I say my bit,
you gnaw on it. Mollycoddling isn't part of the recipe, and I know we've
got a weak and vulnerable prey item when they whine and demand respect.
What next? Are you going to join Don Keyes and whimper about how you
have a "right" to your opinion?
>
>And now you know why I sign myself
>
>Joe Lurker
I see. You looked in the mirror, and asked yourself:
"Is the person in the mirror a patronizing coward who would rather see
someone else take the flak for his sloppy thinking and arrogant pretensions?"
And you said "Yes!"
>***********************************************************************
>
>I'd like to add a few of my own comments.
>
>Paul wrote:
>
>>Whoa, time out. I thought Julie Thomas was being very careful to avoid any
>>commitment to any particular concept of a designer. Now it's all about a
>>"transcendent intelligence" AKA god? I wish you guys could be consistent.
>
>As I said before, it is understandable how a pack member would
>be confused by independent thinking. Yes, I do indeed avoid
>any commitment to any particular concept of a designer (and
>this frustrates and upsets the pack). But this doesn't mean
>another person is obligated to approach the world as I do.
>If someone wants to think of the designer as God, a DemiUrge,
>or ETI matters not to me.
Or IPU?
And yes, it is frustrating. You claim to be able to make testable
predictions on the basis of Design Theory, but you've got a designer
that is so nebulously defined that it can be an omnipotent,
omniscient being who can do anything he wants. Without some constraint
somewhere, ANY observation can be accommodated by design...so I
don't see how you can make any predictions. Or rather, you can make
predictions, but it seems they will all automatically be true.
>
>>For a long time, Thomas tries to be rational and cautious in her claims,
>>but when an argument gets awkward she still has the option to whip out
>>an all powerful magical being from her closet (or in this case, from an
>>anonymous "lurker") who has the power to overcome any objection with a
>>whim.
>
>Do I whip out an "all powerful magical being from my closet?"
>Nope. Once again, Paul's assertions have no basis in reality.
But from my perspective, you did. We have this anonymous "Lurker"
fellow, who obviously sees Design as a theory that covers a "transcendent
intelligence" that created life on earth. You didn't object.
>
>As for objections to my claims, 100 lame objections born of
>closedminded extremism amounts to lots of lame objections
>from closededminded extremism. Yawn. You go your way, I'll
>go mine. Oh...but I forgot...that really bothers you, doesn't
>it? Yeppers, that *would* bother the Crusaders For The One And Only
>True Way.
There you go again, playing stupid.
What do you want when you post here? Adulation? Do you think you ought
to be able to say outre things and not get criticism? Then don't dismiss
people who criticize you as close-minded bigots. We have different views.
Your description is more easily fit to you, you know. You are the extremist
with the extravagant claims, who is crusading here on TO for what she
thinks is the One and Only True Way. Is this the approach I ought to take
from now on in addressing your ideas?
--
PZ Myers
Wade Hines
>
> Joe Lurker e-mailed me and asked if I would post another
> reply. Since it's a good'n, I sau "sure!"
> Of course, I'd again like to append a few comments of my
> own at the end. I'll then follow this with Joe Lurker's
> last reply (to Paul).
Actually, Joe Lurker makes lots of wild assertions about
the motivations of me and others. I happen to know that
they are wrong with respect to me and don't think they
apply unilaterally to everyone else. There are bit and
bots that apply to some but mostly it's a load of bull.
> *******************************************************************
> Wade Hines wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
>
> >>1. The independence requirement
> >>Suppose an immaterial being, aka God or a Platonic demiurge or
> >>some transcendent intelligence, designed and brought into existence
> >>the first organisms. This is entirely possible. In fact, Howard
> >>thinks that although transcendent intelligent design IS possible,
> >>it is NOT true. As David Hume famously observed a couple of
> >>centuries ago, however, whatever can be false might also have been
> >>true. It's an elementary logical point.
> >A false point, as well as elementary, and a complete non sequitur
> >as far as I can tell.
> Come on, Wade – get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
Come on Joe Lurker, get the context correct. Your commentary has
no sense of a priori and a posteri. Sometimes true is simply
true and false is simply false. Attempting to use formal logic
without the constraints of formal logic leads to babble.
But you are also confused and mixing logical arguments with
your assertions on people beliefs. It matters not what anyone
believes, deal with the logic. You apparently can't do that
and instead pile on garbage about peoples beliefs.
> "A statement is contingent if and only if it is neither tautologous
> nor contradictory, or if its most detailed form is a contingency"
> (V. Klenk, _Understanding Symbolic Logic_, Prentice Hall, 1983, p.
> 108). Under a truth table, the propositions ordinarily represented
> in design theories all turn out to be run-of-the-mill contingent
> statements: meaning they *might* be true (i.e., are truth-functionally
> contingent), and thus "could either be true or false" (Nolt and
> Rohatyn, _Logic_, McGraw-Hill, 1988, p. 81). It all depends on
> what is case empirically.
> A proposition that is contingently false in this sense might also
> have been true, depending on the state of the evidence. Like I
> said: elementary logic. Howard and you too, Wade, believe
> intelligent design to be contingently false, entailing that (given
> relevant evidence), it might also be contingently true.
Whether or not I believe in intelligent design is independent of
the logic which you wish to attack.
The assertion is that for intelligent design to be used in a
scientific context you need firstly (1) independent evidence of
a designer capable of said design and (2) a lack of reason to
believe in other routes. Much was made over Howard's poorly
worded (2). All seem to agree that making (2) "impossible
by other routes" is scientifically meaningless as proving
the impossible is rather anti-tautologous.
You seem to think that (1) is in place for fraudulent reasons.
You have completely ignored my argument against you and it seems
that Julie likes that. Shall I take your silence as meaning you
have no counter?
> >>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
> >>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo,
> >>Ray, Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim
> >>bulbs of scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
> >Next time you digress, put dates with your half-wits so we can
> >place them in the proper context to any sort of understanding
> >of biochemistry.
> Do you really think that Linneaus would change his views about
> the divine authorship of the world if he saw a bacterial motor?
Is Linneaus god-like as opposed to the litany of biochemists we
could list off today who don't think flagella are evidence of
divine authorship? There's a term for the particular logical
fallacy you are trying to sell. Do you know the name of it?
> I think he'd start asking people indignantly why most 20th century
> biologists pretend not to notice the plain implications of the evidence
> right in front of them. Your "understanding of biochemistry" assumes
> that these guys would agree with you. I think it is vastly more likely
> that they would say, "How on earth did this numbskull view of
> naturalism come to dominate the sciences we founded?"
Egads, you've trumped your own argument from authority with another.
I bow to your fundamentally superior grasp of logic sir.
> [snip]
> >>Then it must also be possible for science to consider the
> >>hypothesis without requiring independent evidence of the designer.
> >>In other words, the independence requirement is not methodologically
> >>necessary. In fact, the independence requirement may be little more
> >>than Howard's personally convenient God-stopper, jammed into place to
> >>keep Howard from having sleepless nights about bacterial motors and
> >>the like.
> >Why submit the interpolation about sleepless nights?
> To get under Howard's skin and make him mad, so he'll think hard
> instead of deploying specially-contrived philosophical obstacles.
> But Howard is a big boy, and he can tell us if he's having
> sleepless nights or not. Tell me, Wade: how are YOU sleeping
> lately? Got a clear conscience about playing fair with the
> biological evidence?
When I have trouble sleeping, I'm afraid it isn't for worries
about design or designers. Nice of you to ask. And my conscience
is certainly clear, again, nice of you to ask.
> >So you first attempt at an actual logical analysis says that
> >you don't think _science_ needs to be contrained to independent
> >evidence for the existence of the designing entity you
> >intend to postulate. Are there any contraints on this
> >postulation? Think some about why independence is being
> >called for. It isn't just to spoil but party, but to prevent
> >the invokation of something for which the lack of evidence
> >will bury later work with unrecoverable uncertainty.
> Julie wants to use design reasoning as a predictive tool. Other
> folks on t.o. say, "Hang on, sweetheart – if you do that, you might
> DISCOVER something!
Nice unfounded assertion. I bet you even have some fans.
Is it something special about designology that likes to
work without an evidenciary framework?
> Whoa, nelly!! Young ladies shouldn't play with
> theories or they might predict something novel that turned out to
> be true, and then where would we be? Far better to make Julie produce
> God or E.T. first ['cause we all know she can't do THAT! –
> (Howard, are you listening?)], and that philosophical snipe hunt
> we've sent her on will keep her busy and away from the biological
> data."
I see you fall for the whole designology bit, hook line and sinker.
Julie has worked far harder than Behe to find gaps in evolutionary
explainations. Her gaps are interesting but not overwhelmingly
convincing. I don't think she has claim they are but instead
claims that they present problems for evolution. I don't believe
she has said that she is confident that evolutionary mechanisms will
not be able to explain them. You on the other hand seem to think
that they are the signature of God written in a John Hancock font.
Maybe you know more biochemistry than me or Julie. That must be it.
I think Julie's cases are not all that strong but they are strong
in the context of what one person has been able to craft. Maybe if
she had a team of folks working with her she could get something
more convincing with fewer holes. Maybe she wouldn't need to dampen
her theory with "thematic IC" to patch the leaks.
Still, she seems to have fan in one "Joe Lurker" and I guess that
is part of what she wants. She has said numerous times that she
isn't trying to change my mind. Behe seems to have convinced a
number of young earth creationists that he's got something hot.
Do you think they were primed to believe?
But now I digress, the point at one point was about the logic
of Howard's (1) and (2).
> Of course design reasoning must be constrained. But it can satisfy
> that requirement by delivering detailed and testable predictions about
> the biological evidence itself (not whether God has a beard or if
> He prefers the Falcons over the Broncos). I don't think the t.o.
> regulars are especially interested in hearing design predictions
> about the evidence, however.
I note that you twist it out of context again. Design reasoning
isn't constrained, design science is.
You can reason like this. Hmmm, flat dead people in the room.
Let us postulate an elephant. Elephant sits, people flat and dead.
Now if you look up from the dead folks and see an elephant, you
are home. Good detective work.
Behe has a similar story only he talks about how those silly
detectives (scientists) never think to look up and see the
elephant. Behe and you sure think scientists are stupid people
to miss an elephant.
But now Howard has the audacity to say that one should have
evidence of an elephant before one can introduce it as part
of the scientific explaination for how those people got
squished. Funny thing is, it looks like Behe thinks so too
because he says there's an elephant in the room. You can
think it first and find the independent evidence for it later
if you like.
Show me the (1) elephant that did the (2) squishing before you present
the elephant squish theory as part of science.
> Mostly, they don't want to have to infer a designer, and put
> obstacles in the way of others who try.
Mostly they are saying that infering Y from the lack of evidence
for X presumes a dicotomy. In this case, it looks to me like a
false dicotomy. Look that one up in your logic book.
<<< snip ramble >>>
howard hershey
>
[snip Poor Joe Lurker's ephemeral comments in favor of Julie's more
on-point comments]
>
> Howard writes:
>
> >[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
> >All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
> >that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
> >produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
> >the effect (e.g. hominids).
>
> Of course, these are bogus criteria. Howard's first criterion
> is his "prove the impossible" demand. That is, unless a proponent
> of ID can show that a natural process cannot account for some
> feature, ID is to be rejected.
I think Julie is misunderstanding what I mean by "mechanism" and
confuses that with a detailed hypothesis for generating this or that
specific feature of nature. My demand is not a "prove the impossible"
demand, but a demand that before one chooses the explanation *unknown
mechanism* one must point out why all *known mechanisms* are inadequate,
in principle, to explain this feature of nature. That is the standard
scientific process. In essence, there are a number of *known*
mechanisms by which evolution is thought to construct and modify
features of living organisms. They are *known* mechanisms because they
explain many specific features where there is a lot of evidence; they
have evidentiary support, are consistent with the known mechanisms of
genetics and make predictions and retrodictions that can be confirmed.
The reason why there are *several* evolutionary mechanisms rather than
one is because features of nature arose that *could not be well
explained* by any of the previously known mechanisms *in principle*.
The choice with the evolution of molecular structures is between any and
all *known* evolutionary mechanisms and a claim that an *unknown*
mechanism is *required* because none of the *known* mechanisms can, in
principle, explain the results. I, of course, regard the ID explanation
as simply an appeal to *unknown* mechanism, because it involves an
unevidenced HYPE acting in an unspecified manner. If one were to
propose a specific testable alternative *mechanism* with properties,
consequences, and/or observable necessary conditions that differ from
all *known* mechanisms, it could be tested like any other explanation.
But that is not what I see. I see it as a fall-back position when one
is unable to explain the details of a process because of the lack of
evidence; it is operationally equivalent to saying that the process
occurred by unknown mechanisms.
In essence, the examples the Behe gives are examples of particularly
complex IC systems that currently exist in organisms. One possible
evolutionary *mechanism* to explain such systems is by a slow, step-wise
process for the current function starting from some primitive single
gene that performed the function. I think this is what some people call
"Darwinian evolution" and is the only mechanism that Behe considers
seriously. I think it is quite possible to show that, *in principle*,
that it is highly unlikely that such a 'strawdarwinian' process can
explain the complex systems of, say, the flagella. No single protein
could perform the function of motility. An initial complex is unlikely
to work well enough to produce enough motility for selection to work on
*for that function*. *IF* this were the only evolutionary explanation,
one could indeed say that, *in principle*, this mechanism is so unlikely
as to be excluded and we need some *unknown* mechanism to explain these
systems. *BUT* it is not the only evolutionary mechanism. Other
'indirect' evolutionary mechanisms (to use Behe's phrase) are considered
(some proposed by Darwin himself) precisely because the simplistic
Darwinian mechanism described above will not work in every case.
What is needed is to determine which evolutionary mechansisms can be
excluded *in principle* for any given case and which mechanisms cannot
be excluded *in principle* for any given case. For example, evolution
can involve the co-integration of complex systems or subsytems
(symbiosis and mitochondria are perfect examples). Evolution can
involve duplication and divergence (proteins often have more than one
function, and the separate functions can become specialized once the
orginal gene is duplicated). And a number of others. Before one can
say that one *must* propose an *unknown* and currently *untestable*
mechanism, one has to convincingly show that *all* the known and
testable mechanisms are unlikely *in principle* because the conditions,
properties, and/or observable consequences of that mechanism are not
met. In many specific cases, we will have inadequate evidence to rule
out the known mechanisms. That does not mean that known mechanisms are
impossible and is the area where research needs to be concentrated. In
cases with inadequate evidence to rule out the known mechanisms in
principle, however, science does not leap to the conclusion that an
unknown mechanism is needed. That is what I see ID theorists doing.
Leaping from the existence of systems with inadequate evidence to either
rule out or rule in *some* of the known evolutionary mechanisms to the
conclusion that their particular unknown mechanism is the answer.
> And the only way to satisfy this
> demand is to have complete knowledge of all possible natural
> mechanisms such that there is no such thing as an "unknown mechanism."
When I am talking about *mechanism*, I am not talking about the detailed
"protein x arose by duplication from protein y because of selective
pressure z". I do not think the cases you have chosen present
sufficient evidence to allow one to do that (you don't do that either,
because you have no testable mechanism). I am talking about whether in
this case one can specifically rule out, say, the assembly of protein
transport subsystem and a pilin subsystem into a combined system which
might evolve into a motility function from another useful function *in
principle*. Assembly of subsystems is a *known* mechanism. Change of
function (emergent properties, multiple functionality) are *known*
mechanisms. Is there something that rules out these known mechanisms
and thus *requires* us to fall back to *unknown* unspecified unevidenced
mechanism?
> And from there, one would have to demonstrate that all these
> mechanisms cannot account for the feature (which originate in
> the ancient past), or in other words, it is impossible for the
> feature to arise via these mechanisms. Anytime someone expects
> their opponent to "prove the impossible," they are trying to erect
> a smokescreen around the weakness of their position(that's how
> I see it).
Science proceeds stepwise through all known mechanisms before it resorts
to proposing that this or that system *requires* an unknown mechanisms.
That is why it went through the detour of the 'aether' in physics. I
think that a good case can be made that some of the systems examined
cannot evolve by some of the available evolutionary mechanisms *in
principle*. But I do not think that all the *known* mechanisms can yet
be rejected *in principle*.
Of course, if you were to actually present a mechanism of design that
were specific enough to have observable consequences more detailed and
specific than "whatever you see was the design" it could be directly
compared to the evidence and either accepted or rejected (assuming there
were sufficient evidence). But a mechaism that involves an unevidenced
HYPE acting by unspecified mechanisms leaving no traces that are
distinguishable from what evolution would also produce just doesn't hack
it as a scientific theory - it is equivalent to and indistinguishable
from *unknown mechanism*.
>
[snip]
Rich Daniel
> ...Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
> up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
> sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
> views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
> Do some Medlines searches yourself...]
What keywords do you suggest I search for?
I'm only aware of a handful of anomolous results:
"Allosteric Regulation of Crocodilian Haemoglobin", Perutz et al,
Nature 291:682, June 25, 1981. Chickens were closer to humans in their
amino acid sequences of alpha hemoglobin than they were to crocodiles.
The closest living relatives of whales (according to DNA analysis) are
hippos, but -- going from memory here -- artiodactyls appear in the fossil
record after or about the same time as mesonychids, which are thought to
be ancestral to whales. This would mean that whales should be equally
close to all living artiodactyls. Sorry, I don't have a reference handy.
Then there was the recent discussion on t.o about turtles, in which it
was noted that the fossil evidence was always considered ambiguous.
See also _Molecules and Morphology in Evolution: conflict or compromise?_,
ed. Colin Patterson (1987).
Questions for Julie: Do you agree with Joe Lurker's assessment of the
DNA evidence as "massively disconfirming received views about phylogeny?"
And even if this were true, how does it support your hypothesis that a
few design events occurred billions of years ago? Do you think the
designer continued to intervene throughout the course of evolution?
When was the last intervention?
Rich Daniel rwda...@dnaco.net http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/
howard hershey
>
> In article <7891i3$ojt$1...@alexander.INS.CWRU.Edu>,
> iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>
> >Wade Hines wrote, responding to Joe Lurker:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> >>>[Design by a transcendent intelligence, I should point out, is so
> >>>laughably unlikely a hypothesis that Newton, Boyle, Kepler, Galileo,
> >>>Ray, Linneaus, Pascal, Pasteur, and other such half-wits and dim
> >>>bulbs of scientific history thought it to be true -- yet I digress.]
> >>
> >>Next time you digress, put dates with your half-wits so we can
> >>place them in the proper context to any sort of understanding
> >>of biochemistry.
> >
> >Do you really think that Linneaus would change his views about
> >the divine authorship of the world if he saw a bacterial motor?
> >
> >I think he'd start asking people indignantly why most 20th century
> >biologists pretend not to notice the plain implications of the evidence
> >right in front of them. Your "understanding of biochemistry" assumes
> >that these guys would agree with you. I think it is vastly more likely
> >that they would say, "How on earth did this numbskull view of
> >naturalism come to dominate the sciences we founded?"
>
> Probably. But not because they are better or more knowledgeable thinkers --
> it would be because that is their prejudice.
Ah, but the ancients *were* better and more knowledgeable thinkers if
you understand the steady decline in *absolute* intelligence since the
original *created* intelligence. You only think that today's thinkers
are more intelligent and knowledgeable because you have bought into the
atheistic view of *relative* intelligence. Sure, just because the
current environment has more books and other data sources, and more
people able to read them, the thinkers of today may superficially appear
to be more intelligent (some posters excepted). But the second law of
thermodynamics ensures that intelligence and information has been on a
steady downward spiral since the creation of intelligence. *Absolute*
intelligence, measured over all four+ dimensions of the universe has
steadily degenerated since creation.
[Not really my view, but I think I have heard some similar arguments
lately. :-)]
>
> Again, this is an argument from authority, and worse, an argument from
> the plainly uninformed opinions of antique authorities. Aren't there any
> smart guys in the field of biology today? Why did you leave out Darwin,
> who by any measure stands out as one of the giants of past science?
>
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >>>Then it must also be possible for science to consider the
> >>>hypothesis without requiring independent evidence of the designer.
> >>>In other words, the independence requirement is not methodologically
> >>>necessary. In fact, the independence requirement may be little more
> >>>than Howard's personally convenient God-stopper, jammed into place to
> >>>keep Howard from having sleepless nights about bacterial motors and
> >>>the like.
> >>
> >>Why submit the interpolation about sleepless nights?
> >
> >To get under Howard's skin and make him mad, so he'll think hard
> >instead of deploying specially-contrived philosophical obstacles.
Science rather standardly requires those who adhere to its methodology
to run though all *known* mechanisms and demands that these be
explicitly ruled *out* in principle before those adherents start
asserting that they need a currently unknown mechanism, much less before
they start asserting a specific unknown mechanism that is so vague it
could literally explain anything.
> >But Howard is a big boy, and he can tell us if he's having
> >sleepless nights or not.
I don't sleep with the fishes. I sleep like a baby (wake up every two
hours and cry). I sleep like a lumberjack at work. I sleep like a
narcoleptic. Whatever.
[snip]
> >
> >Well stated! But can you blame them? What is their alternative
> >explanation for these systems? 1. I don't know; 2. The evidence
> >was "lost in history"; and 3. An unknown mechanism may be at work.
> >If you had to use these three explanations, you would be trying
> >to draw attention away from the data too! ;)
Actually, it is Julie and the ID crowd that are pushing for the
explanation of "unknown mechanism". They are simply doing so far too
early. They have not, in principle or in practice, excluded all *known*
mechanisms by which the system could arise. Partly this is because
these are systems chosen so as to present insufficient evidence to
specifically test some of these *known* mechanisms. In science,
however, we don't leap from 'we can neither exclude or include these
*known* mechanisms in this case' directly to 'therefore it must be some
unknown mechanism' or the even worse 'therefore it must be my particular
unevidenced unknown mechanism'.
>
> Now I am mystified. *Your* answer is #3: an unknown mechanism may
> be at work. You've called that mechanism a "designer", but your
> specification of the designer is so broad and vague we might as
> well just call it unknown.
>
[snip]
>
> >But when this happens, the goal-posts get moved. The
> >"design is fruitless" claim becomes "the design is not needed"
> >claim.
"design is fruitless" because "the design is not needed" or, more
specifically, the idea of an unevidenced, unconstrained designer is
equivalent to "unknown cause" and all currently "known" causes have yet
to be explicitly ruled out either in principle or in detail (because the
systems chosen have the necessary information one would need to do so
currently missing). Once (or if) that happens (when you have a system
with the necessary evidence to rule out known mechanisms) then an
"unknown cause" will be needed. That would be step one (as yet
unacheived for *any* biological system). For that "unknown cause" to be
more than a shrug of one's shoulders, a specific new explanation will
have to be presented as a scientific (evidenced, constrained)
explanation rather than a religious (unconstrained, unevidenced) hope.
[snip]
Louann Miller
> Ah, but the ancients *were* better and more knowledgeable thinkers if
> you understand the steady decline in *absolute* intelligence since the
> original *created* intelligence. You only think that today's thinkers
> are more intelligent and knowledgeable because you have bought into the
> atheistic view of *relative* intelligence. Sure, just because the
> current environment has more books and other data sources, and more
> people able to read them, the thinkers of today may superficially appear
> to be more intelligent (some posters excepted). But the second law of
> thermodynamics ensures that intelligence and information has been on a
> steady downward spiral since the creation of intelligence. *Absolute*
> intelligence, measured over all four+ dimensions of the universe has
> steadily degenerated since creation.
Superman, you are one mean drunk.
--
Updated 9/28/98! Media fan fiction at http://www.cyberramp.net/~millers
Mark Isaak
Joe Lurker <iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu> wrote:
>Mostly, they don't want to have to infer a designer, and put
>obstacles in the way of others who try.
What I object to is being asked to infer a designer when there is not the
slightest bit of evidence of a designer. (I note you have no evidence,
either.)
>Wade, from my lofty perch on the lurker's ledge, an old crow
>overlooking the t.o. landscape, I see Julie working mightily to
>get design reasoning off the ground as a genuinely scientific
>tool.
Then why has Julie herself said, over and over, that what she's doing is
*not* scientific?
>She is surrounded however by people who are worried,
>deeply worried, that she might succeed. And that would be Bad
>News Indeed for the widely-held t.o. view that intelligent design
>is necessarily scientifically fruitless.
Huh? I have said repeatedly that intelligent design can be and often is
scientifically fruitful. Inferring intelligent design is simple. For
example, this sentence is intelligently designed.
But just saying something is designed isn't enough. You also must
describe how you know it is designed. I know the sentence is designed
because I saw someone make it. You can conclude that the sentence was
designed based on your own experience of how similar sentences are
produced. Those are the *only* two ways to discern design: see the
designer in action, or compare with situations where you have seen the
designer in action. (Another way is to rule out all other alternatives,
but that way is so impractical it's hardly worth mentioning.)
Does Julie offer either of these methods? No. She gives just one method
of discerning design: her personal opinion. She tries to justify it by
talking about ur-IC and incomplete knowledge of evolutionary mechanisms,
but none of that is relevant to design since none of it relates to the
only means of discerning design.
The only substantive examples of intelligent designs we have to work with
are those made by people. I believe Julie herself has claimed human-like
design in the biomechanisms she refers to. Does life look man-made? It
doesn't to me. Why should I entertain design theories when the raw
evidence falsifies them?
--
Mark Isaak atta @ best.com http://www.best.com/~atta
"My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas but
I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown
plausible reason which I can grasp." - Antony Leeuwenhoek
John Harshman
<rwda...@dnaco.net> wrote:
> "Joe Lurker" c/o Julie Thomas <iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu> wrote:
>
> > ...Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
> > up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
> > sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
> > views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
> > Do some Medlines searches yourself...]
>
> What keywords do you suggest I search for?
>
> I'm only aware of a handful of anomolous results:
>
> "Allosteric Regulation of Crocodilian Haemoglobin", Perutz et al,
> Nature 291:682, June 25, 1981. Chickens were closer to humans in their
> amino acid sequences of alpha hemoglobin than they were to crocodiles.
>
> The closest living relatives of whales (according to DNA analysis) are
> hippos, but -- going from memory here -- artiodactyls appear in the fossil
> record after or about the same time as mesonychids, which are thought to
> be ancestral to whales. This would mean that whales should be equally
> close to all living artiodactyls. Sorry, I don't have a reference handy.
>
> Then there was the recent discussion on t.o about turtles, in which it
> was noted that the fossil evidence was always considered ambiguous.
>
> See also _Molecules and Morphology in Evolution: conflict or compromise?_,
> ed. Colin Patterson (1987).
I went through my main reference file, searching for molecules AND
morphology, and this is what I got. I could have gotten more with more
keywords. If there are general lessons, they are: 1) Conflict is lessening
as we improve our ability to analyze data; 2) Much conflict is between
nodes with poor support, and thus easily interpreted as random noise; 3)
When there's conflict, sometimes molecules are correct, sometimes
morphology (as far as can be told, naturally).
Bledsoe, A. H., and R. J. Raikow. 1990. A quantitative assessment of
congruence between molecular and nonmolecular estimates of phylogeny. J.
Mol. Evol. 30:247-259.
Catzeflis, F. M. 1993. Mammalian phylogeny: Morphology and molecules.
Trends Ecol. Evol. 8:340-341.
Crowe, T. M. 1988. Molecules vs. morphology in phylogenetics: A
non-controversy. Trans. Roy. Soc. S. Afr. 46:317-334.
Eernisse, D. J., and A. G. Kluge. 1993. Taxonomic congruence versus total
evidence, and amniote phylogeny inferred from fossils, molecules, and
morphology. Mol. Biol. Evol. 10:1170-1195.
Hedges, S. B., and C. G. Sibley. 1994. Molecules vs. morphology in avian
evolution: The case of the "pelecaniform" birds. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
USA 91:9861-9865.
Novacek, M. 1993. Mammalian phylogeny: morphology and molecules. Trends
Ecol. Evol. 8:339-340.
Shaffer, H. B., J. M. Clark, and F. Kraus. 1991. When molecules and
morphology clash: A phylogenetic analysis of the North American
ambystomatid salamanders (Caudata: Ambystomatidae). Syst. Zool.
40:284-303.
Springer, M. S., L. J. Hollar, and J. A. W. Kirsch. 1995. Phylogeny,
molecules versus morphology, and rates of character evolution among
fruitbats (Chiroptera: Megachiroptera). Aust. J. Zool. 43:557-582.
I see my simple search failed to turn up the great guinea pig controversy,
or anything about whales (except as both are contained in Novacek's
paper), or turtles. And it seems to me there's a big review article in
Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. on the subject in the last 10 years, which I also
didn't come up with.I also have a paper in press featuring conflict
between molecules and morphology in diving ducks.
> Questions for Julie: Do you agree with Joe Lurker's assessment of the
> DNA evidence as "massively disconfirming received views about phylogeny?"
Massively overstates the case. Sometimes we are surprised, and this makes
the newspapers. More often we aren't, and this doesn't. And of course
molecular systematists most often investigate questions that are
considered still unsolved, giving greater opportunity to conflict with the
current favored view.
--
*Note the obvious spam-defeating modification
to my address if you reply by email.
gro...@my-dejanews.com
iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Julie Thomas) wrote:
>
>
> reply. Since it's a good'n, I sau "sure!"
> Of course, I'd again like to append a few comments of my
> own at the end. I'll then follow this with Joe Lurker's
> last reply (to Paul).
> folks on t.o. say, "Hang on, sweetheart – if you do that, you might
> DISCOVER something! Whoa, nelly!! Young ladies shouldn't play with
> theories or they might predict something novel that turned out to
> be true,
How would it (or could it) turn out to be true, just out of curiosity?
> and then where would we be? Far better to make Julie produce
> God or E.T. first ['cause we all know she can't do THAT! –
> (Howard, are you listening?)], and that philosophical snipe hunt
> we've sent her on will keep her busy and away from the biological
> data."
What biological data would that be?
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
david ford
[snip]
JT As for objections to my claims, 100 lame objections born of
JT closedminded extremism amounts to lots of lame objections
JT from closededminded extremism. Yawn. You go your way, I'll
JT go mine. Oh...but I forgot...that really bothers you, doesn't
JT it? Yeppers, that *would* bother the Crusaders For The One And Only
JT True Way.
White, Errol. "Presidential Address: A little on Lung-fishes"
_Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London_ 177: 1-10 (1966).
Following White's name there appears "C.B.E., F.R.S, Pres. L.S." The
last sentence of the address:
We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the
over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make
much further progress in this by the classical methods of
paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters
by jumping up and down shrilling 'Darwin is God and I, So-and-so,
am his prophet'--the recent researches of workers like Dean &
Hinshelwood (1964) already suggest the possibility of incipient
cracks in the seemingly monolithic walls of the Neo-Darwinian
Jericho.
Dean, K.C.R. and C. Hinshelwood. "What is heredity?" _Nature_ 202:
1046-52 (1964).
maff91
Why don't to post some misquotes from Copernicus to contradict
Einstein?
Huxter4441
>Come on, Wade – get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
**** I say, come on 'Joe Lurker' and Julie Thomas - get off your butts and
crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
mythology they are.
PZ Myers
huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
>Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
>
>>Come on, Wade – get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
>
>
>**** I say, come on 'Joe Lurker' and Julie Thomas - get off your butts and
>crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
>mythology they are.
Wait a minute, there..."Joe Lurker" is an ignoramus, but Julie Thomas *has*
read both textbooks and the original literature. I can't complain about her
knowledge of the facts, although I do think her interpretations are off-the-
wall.
--
PZ Myers
howard hershey
>
> In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
> huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
>
> >Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
> >
> >
> >
> >crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
> >mythology they are.
>
> Wait a minute, there..."Joe Lurker" is an ignoramus, but Julie Thomas *has*
> read both textbooks and the original literature. I can't complain about her
> knowledge of the facts, although I do think her interpretations are off-the-
> wall.
My sentiments exactly.
>
> --
> PZ Myers
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
>
>
> crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
> mythology they are.
>
>
The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
textbook.
On the other hand, her conclusions (i.e.- ID) are a bit tentative. That would
be my main disagreement with her.
Louann Miller
(in a post with no obvious bearing the previous poster's remarks)
> White, Errol. "Presidential Address: A little on Lung-fishes"
> _Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London_ 177: 1-10 (1966).
> Following White's name there appears "C.B.E., F.R.S, Pres. L.S." The
> last sentence of the address:
> We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the
> over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make
> much further progress in this by the classical methods of
> paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters
> by jumping up and down shrilling 'Darwin is God and I, So-and-so,
> am his prophet'--the recent researches of workers like Dean &
> Hinshelwood (1964) already suggest the possibility of incipient
> cracks in the seemingly monolithic walls of the Neo-Darwinian
> Jericho.
>
> Dean, K.C.R. and C. Hinshelwood. "What is heredity?" _Nature_ 202:
> 1046-52 (1964).
I'm quite prepared to concede that this is a serious statement by a Real
Scientist (tm) with lots of genuine degrees. However, the actual history
of the life sciences since he made his prediction (1966) shows quite a
bit of the 'further progress' that he dismisses. I'm going to have to
file this one alongside the patent clerk of 1900 who quit his job
because everything had already been invented.
The warning against shrillness is always in order, but since YEC's are
so shrill as to deafen bats and other small wildlife it's hard to lose a
lot of sleep over it.
Thomas Scharle
|> david ford wrote:
|>
|> (in a post with no obvious bearing the previous poster's remarks)
|>
|> > White, Errol. "Presidential Address: A little on Lung-fishes"
|> > _Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London_ 177: 1-10 (1966).
|> > Following White's name there appears "C.B.E., F.R.S, Pres. L.S." The
|> > last sentence of the address:
|> > We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the
|>
|> I'm quite prepared to concede that this is a serious statement by a Real
|> Scientist (tm) with lots of genuine degrees. However, the actual history
Does anyone out there have easy access to the Proceedings of the
Linnean Society of London, vol. 177? So we can check the context of
this quotation?
--
Tom Scharle scha...@nd.edu "standard disclaimer"
George Acton
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
> biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
> has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
> textbook.
>
> On the other hand, her conclusions (i.e.- ID) are a bit tentative. That would
> be my main disagreement with her.
>
takes
all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to explain.
Hey,
you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it was designed.
George Acton
----------------
Sickle cell disease ... may have originated by natural processes, maybe
not.
--Michael Behe
Jonathan Stone
> In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> > The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
> > biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
> > has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
> > textbook.
> >
> > On the other hand, her conclusions (i.e.- ID) are a bit tentative. That would
> > be my main disagreement with her.
> >
> I agree. She's sabotaging people's faith in God saying that Design
> takes
> all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to explain.
> Hey,
> you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it was designed.
Yeah. The wiring in front of the photoreceptors and the ensuing
visual blind-spot is a dead give-away. No intelligent designer
(let alone an omniscient, omipotent one) would do that. Right?
david ford
on 22 Jan 1999:
[snips]
JL Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
JL up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
JL sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
JL views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
JL Do some Medlines searches yourself (and I don't mean you,
JL Wade: I mean the folks who get their biology lessons from t.o.).
JL Much better to let the t.o. crew read old articles by Dickerson
JL or Futuyma, or the t.o. FAQs on the topic, nearly all of which
JL are hopelessly out of date or just plain wrong.]
The t.o. crew could perhaps read this Futuyma.
Futuyma, Douglas J. _Evolutionary Biology_ (MA: Sinauer Associates,
Inc., 1979), 565pp., 161-3. In the chapter "The Origins of Evolutionary
Novelties," the section "Phenotypic Gaps and Series" has 4 paragraphs,
of which these are the last 2:
Gradualists have been embarrassed by the fossil record, in which
series of intermediate forms leading to major new taxa are most
uncommon. Fossils from here and there can be pieced together to
form series, as in the succession of horses with decreasing numbers
of toes; but seldom if ever can these be shown to be steps on a
direct line of descent (Eldredge and Gould, 1972, Gould and
Eldredge 1977; _Chapter_ 7). Intermediate forms, such as the
therapsids with both reptilian and mammalian features, or
_Archaeopteryx_, with reptilian and avian characteristics, are
plentiful and demonstrate conclusively the phylogenetic origins of
higher taxa; but they are mosaics of ancestral and derived
character states rather than true intermediates. _Archaeopteryx_
demonstrates that birds arose from reptiles but does not tell us
whether feathers evolved gradually.
Gradualists have traditionally attributed the paucity of
intermediate fossils to failures of preservation and to the other
imperfections of the fossil record. Simpson (1953), however,
advanced another view, championed especially by Eldredge and Gould
(1972; Gould and Eldredge 1977). Major evolutionary changes may
occur by QUANTUM EVOLUTION, to use Simpson's term, or by punctuated
equilibria, to use Eldredge's and Gould's (_Chapter 7, Figure 1_).
New characters, including those diagnostic of major new groups, may
evolve very rapidly when a small population is geographically
isolated and becomes a new species (_Chapter 16_). Because of the
rapidity of change, intermediate forms, if they existed, are not
well preserved in the fossil record. Among the great numbers of
species, those with characteristics that adapt them to a new,
long-lasting adaptive zone are the progenitors of major new groups.
The extinction of the others, by a process of species selection,
together with the rapidity of phenotypic change during speciation,
yields gaps in the fossil record. Thus the theory of punctuated
equilibria suggests that major changes can happen very rapidly, but
it still does not tell us whether they occur through intermediate
morphological steps.
Herb Huston
David Ford? (Was that a trick question?)
--
-- Herb Huston
-- hus...@radix.net
-- http://www.radix.net/~huston
Boikat
david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in article
<Pine.SGI.3.96A.990125...@umbc8.umbc.edu>...
> Joe Lurker, posted by Julie Thomas <iz...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
> on 22 Jan 1999:
>
> [snips]
>
> JL Meanwhile, the evidence from molecular biology just keeps piling
> JL up in Julie's corner. Case in point: the results from genome
> JL sequencing projects, which are massively disconfirming received
> JL views about phylogeny. [No, Joe Lurker don't give details.
> JL Do some Medlines searches yourself (and I don't mean you,
> JL Wade: I mean the folks who get their biology lessons from t.o.).
> JL Much better to let the t.o. crew read old articles by Dickerson
> JL or Futuyma, or the t.o. FAQs on the topic, nearly all of which
> JL are hopelessly out of date or just plain wrong.]
>
> The t.o. crew could perhaps read this Futuyma.
>
> Futuyma, Douglas J. _Evolutionary Biology_ (MA: Sinauer Associates,
> Inc., 1979), 565pp., 161-3. In the chapter "The Origins of Evolutionary
> Novelties," the section "Phenotypic Gaps and Series" has 4 paragraphs,
> of which these are the last 2:
> Gradualists have been embarrassed by the fossil record, in which
> series of intermediate forms leading to major new taxa are most
> uncommon.
Since major new taxa are rare, the parent population would be rare, and
therefore, the fossil representatives be even more rare in both
geographical distribution and temporal distribution.
>Fossils from here and there can be pieced together to
> form series, as in the succession of horses with decreasing
numbers
> of toes; but seldom if ever can these be shown to be steps on a
> direct line of descent (Eldredge and Gould, 1972, Gould and
> Eldredge 1977; _Chapter_ 7). Intermediate forms, such as the
> therapsids with both reptilian and mammalian features, or
> _Archaeopteryx_, with reptilian and avian characteristics, are
> plentiful and demonstrate conclusively the phylogenetic origins of
> higher taxa; but they are mosaics of ancestral and derived
> character states rather than true intermediates. _Archaeopteryx_
> demonstrates that birds arose from reptiles but does not tell us
> whether feathers evolved gradually.
Relatively speaking, a minor detail in the grand scheme of things.
>
> Gradualists have traditionally attributed the paucity of
> intermediate fossils to failures of preservation and to the other
> imperfections of the fossil record. Simpson (1953), however,
> advanced another view, championed especially by Eldredge and Gould
> (1972; Gould and Eldredge 1977). Major evolutionary changes may
> occur by QUANTUM EVOLUTION, to use Simpson's term, or by
punctuated
> equilibria, to use Eldredge's and Gould's (_Chapter 7, Figure 1_).
> New characters, including those diagnostic of major new groups,
may
> evolve very rapidly when a small population is geographically
> isolated and becomes a new species (_Chapter 16_). Because of the
>
Hmmm, that sounds familiar.
> rapidity of change, intermediate forms, if they existed, are not
> well preserved in the fossil record. Among the great numbers of
> species, those with characteristics that adapt them to a new,
> long-lasting adaptive zone are the progenitors of major new
groups.
> The extinction of the others, by a process of species selection,
> together with the rapidity of phenotypic change during speciation,
> yields gaps in the fossil record. Thus the theory of punctuated
> equilibria suggests that major changes can happen very rapidly,
but
> it still does not tell us whether they occur through intermediate
> morphological steps.
Doesn't show they didn't either.
Boikat
>
>
Huxter4441
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
> biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
> has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
> textbook.
***** This is true - my point was that without the basic background knowledge -
such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
in ignorance.
George Acton
jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU wrote:
> In article <36AD14...@softdisk.com>, George Acton <gac...@softdisk.com> writes:
> > ... She's sabotaging people's faith in God saying that Design
> > takes all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to
> > explain. Hey, you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it
> > was designed.
>
> Yeah. The wiring in front of the photoreceptors and the ensuing
> visual blind-spot is a dead give-away. No intelligent designer
> (let alone an omniscient, omipotent one) would do that. Right?
You think too much.
--G
Elmer Bataitis
> You think too much.
Maybe he was designed that way........ ;-)
**********************************************************
Elmer Bataitis “Hot dog! Smooch city here I come!”
Planetech Services -Hobbes
716-442-2884
**********************************************************
Andy Groves
> In article <36AD14...@softdisk.com>, George Acton
<gac...@softdisk.com> writes:
> > In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> > Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> > >
> > > The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's
familiarity with
> > > biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember
correctly, she
> > > has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open
a biology
> > > textbook.
> > >
> > > On the other hand, her conclusions (i.e.- ID) are a bit tentative.
That would
> > > be my main disagreement with her.
> > >
> > I agree. She's sabotaging people's faith in God saying that Design
> > takes
> > all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to explain.
> > Hey,
> > you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it was designed.
>
> Yeah. The wiring in front of the photoreceptors and the ensuing
> visual blind-spot is a dead give-away. No intelligent designer
> (let alone an omniscient, omipotent one) would do that. Right?
...and don't get me started on the prostate......
--
Andy Groves
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> <<In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> > The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
> > biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
> > has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
> > textbook.
>
> such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
> in ignorance.
>
>
Scott Chase
James G. Acker
just made a similar argument, I thought this was relevant). BTW,
this post received my one-and-only nomination for Post of the Month.
JGA
-----
Musings on How to Research the Intelligent Design Hypothesis
In the discussions I've had recently, I advanced
the idea that it is possible to examine biological organisms
for evidence that they were intelligently designed, and
have that examination be a truly scientific study. I've had
a chance to think about this a bit, based on some of what
David Ford wrote, and I thought I'd speculate about it a bit.
Feel free to comment and expound. Due to my newsreader lag
time, rapid response from me is not likely.
As I see it, the idea of proving design from complexity
is the wrong way to conduct the study. In biology there is
a bewildering multitude of complex structures, some of which
function both efficiently and exquisitely, and some of which
appear to be jury-rigged kludges that just barely get the job
done -- which is to be expected in the process of natural
selection (as has been described). A process or feature
that can do one thing is seen as being borrowed or co-opted
to do something else, and this natural "borrowing" can lead to
a whole new function via descent with modification.
The way to conduct the study, IMO, is to prove design
from _simplicity_. I.e., to distinguish something which was
formed by intelligent action from something which is naturally
formed. The items which prompted this idea are stone
implements formed by knapping (striking with other stones so
as to fashion a useful tool).
At one end of the spectrum, it is easy to identify
intelligently-fashioned stone tools, such as arrowheads,
particularly Clovis points with a groove to fit into the
spear or arrow. The shape and working of such implements
is obviously unnatural. On the other hand, the very crude
early stone tools may have resulted from very few knapping
blows, and thus are sometimes difficult to distinguish from
the results of natural fashioning, as rocks strike other
rocks occasionally and knock off sharp chips. These sharp
chips can resemble stone tools (and might have even been the
inspiration for making more by hand). Stone tools in Ethiopia
have been dated back 2.5 million years, and consist of round
stones (hammers) and sharp flakes (cutters).
Here's an example of what some really early stone tools
look like:
http://info.gla.ac.uk/Museum/guided/Hominid/Sect2/guid15.html
(note added in proof:
Contrast these with
http://info.gla.ac.uk/Museum/guided/Hominid/Sect3/guid18.html)
The first picture somewhat demonstrates that early stone
tools look similar to naturally fractured rocks, but according
to the experts, it's "easy" to distinguish intelligent (human)
working from natural fracture patterns. My question comes
down to this: how does it become easy to make such a
distinction? I.e. what evidence and what deductive reasoning
is used to establish that these crude tools are, in fact,
crude tools and not naturally modified rocks?
Here's the way I think it might be done:
A. Side-by-side comparison. Assemble a collection of possible
tools, and compare them to an assemblage of what are believed
to be rocks broken by entirely natural processes (such as from
a talus field). The tools should exhibit similar morphology,
whereas the natural rocks should be of disparate morphology.
B. Source material. If a tool is useful it gets re-used, and
even transported. Thus, if a material is found somewhere that
it does not occur naturally, and is a long distance from where
it does occur naturally, this is evidence that it is a tool.
Finding broken rocks in a talus field is likely: finding them
in forest soils is much less likely.
C. Characteristic morphology. Expanding on point A, the tools
should appear to be fashioned to do something, i.e., with a
cutting edge or a flat surface. Though possibly made of different
materials, the actual formation of the tool and its postulated
use should be apparent.
D. Evidence of tool use. Finding a tool and something that it
was used on, such as cut marks on bone (especially with embedded
fragments of the same material that the tool is made of), in
association, is also strong evidence.
E. Evidence of the fashioner. If something is a tool, it
helps to find evidence of that which used the tool. In many
cases, tool finds are associated with fires, shelters, and even
the bones of the postulated fashioner. (But not
always!) So this evidence adds support but is not critical.
F. Fashioning technique. If it is possible to simulate the
creation of a postulated tool and to show that natural mechanisms
do not create the same appearance, this is also evidence that
the object is a tool.
G. Reverse design with modification. As stated earlier, it's
elementary that such items as Clovis points are intelligently
fashioned. By assembling a "history" of tools, it is possible
to follow the creative process backward, toward cruder and
cruder tools (however, it should be noted that sometimes the
early toolmakers got it right and the skill was quite well
developed, but it didn't get passed on to later toolmakers very
well, so tools later in history are actually more crudely
fashioned). For the early stone tools, "obvious" tools usually
post-date questionable tools, and if the development of skill
can be traced backwards, this is additional evidence.
(Did I leave anything out?)
So let's briefly consider how to apply these criteria to
biological organisms (if possible).
A. Not amenable. If we select some organ or function as
intelligently fashioned, that means we're either assuming that
other organs or functions came about entirely by natural means,
or that everything was intelligently fashioned, in which case there
isn't anything to which a given set of organs or functions can
be compared.
B. Possible. If a given organ or function works in one
organism, it should be possible to find the same organ or function
in another very dissimilar organism. Eyes would be the type of
thing that one would expect to find in extremely dissimilar
organisms; they are found in extremely dissimilar organisms.
C. Possible. Organs and functions do, in fact, have
characteristics that allow them to perform particular physiological
actions. Teeth have cutting edges and grinding surfaces; eyes have
lenses that focus light.
D. Possible. Tooth indentations are frequently
found on bones, just like tool cut marks. So the biological organ
can be shown to have been used on something.
E. Not much available. Types of evidence that might be found:
ancient spaceships, ancient organ blueprints complete with "Approved"
stamps, discarded models of organs. (This might sound humorous, but
seriously, what type of additional material evidence could be found?)
F. Possible. We're experimenting with genetic modifications
and seeing what happens; perhaps an organ or function might be found
that somehow clearly can't be acheived by natural genetic changes.
The "fashioning technique" in this case is artificial genetic
modification. (I happen to think this could be a fruitfly, uh,
fruitful line of inquiry for the intelligent design camp.)
G. Observable. We see evidence of organ development in
fossil sequences, generally from a crude organ that does the job
to more "sophisticated" organs. There is a problem here, in that
natural selection explains this as well.
So, at this point, my assessment is that there exists enough
evidence to continue to pursue this research. However, I see points A
and E as major barriers to ever establishing intelligent design in biological
organisms. Points B, C, D, and G can be used to provide evidence for
intelligent design, but they are also evidence for natural selection.
Point F might be, as stated, a way to pursue the research.
Comments are invited.
-------
Jim Acker
===============================================
| James G. Acker |
| REPLY TO: jga...@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov |
===============================================
"Science moves, but slowly slowly,
Creeping on from point to point." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson,
"Locksley Hall"
All comments are the personal opinion of the writer
and do not constitute policy and/or opinion of government
or corporate entities.
Peter Nyikos
>In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
>huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
>>Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
A more objective formulation would be: someone calling him/herself
Joe Lurker wrote the following words, posted by Julie Thomas.
>>>Come on, Wade get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
>>
>>
>>**** I say, come on 'Joe Lurker' and Julie Thomas - get off your butts and
>>crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
>>mythology they are.
No biology textbook existing today could possibly undermine what Thomas has
been posting about for the last two years. Her work is
mostly on what happened before the hypothetical last common ancestor
of all living things on earth appeared. And the exceptions
are still buried billions of years in the past about
things that are beyond the competence of biology textbooks.
>Wait a minute, there..."Joe Lurker" is an ignoramus,
Myers has no basis for this wild speculation. He is just
sore because his long-time net.sidekick Howard Hershey
was aptly skewered by "Joe Lurker", and perhaps also
because ally Wade Hines suffered similarly at JL's hands.
but Julie Thomas *has*
>read both textbooks and the original literature. I can't complain about her
>knowledge of the facts, although I do think her interpretations are off-the-
>wall.
Myers is entitled to his opinions, but until he gives some
reasons for them, he can't expect to have any effect on
either me or Julie.
Or on "Joe Lurker", whoever 'e is.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
nyi...@math.sc.edu
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote:
> Julie Thomas wrote:
> >
> [snip Poor Joe Lurker's ephemeral comments in favor of Julie's more
> on-point comments]
Look up the word "ephemeral", coward, and tell us just what you
think it provides for justifying your put-down and burial of
your head in the sand.
> > Howard writes:
> >
> > >[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
> > >All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
> > >that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
> > >produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
> > >the effect (e.g. hominids).
> >
> > Of course, these are bogus criteria. Howard's first criterion
> > is his "prove the impossible" demand. That is, unless a proponent
> > of ID can show that a natural process cannot account for some
> > feature, ID is to be rejected.
>
> I think Julie is misunderstanding what I mean by "mechanism" and
> confuses that with a detailed hypothesis for generating this or that
> specific feature of nature. My demand is not a "prove the impossible"
> demand, but a demand that before one chooses the explanation *unknown
> mechanism* one must point out why all *known mechanisms* are inadequate,
> in principle, to explain this feature of nature.
"in principle" confirms Julie and "JL"s claim, since one can
always interpret the word "mechanism" broadly enough to
disqualify any attempt. After all, "natural selection" is
a "mechanism".
For a good idea of how broad that mechanism is, see the thread
I did last year on bat evolution, where I showed that it
is a valid mechanism in principle. Natually, you and Myers
did your dirty dishonest best to obscure the "in principle"
aspect and pretend to think that I was proposing my scenario
as a theory about how it ACTUALLY took place.
> That is the standard
> scientific process.
Only in the demand-the-impossible-when-it-suits-me brain of
a Howard Hershey.
>In essence, there are a number of *known*
> mechanisms by which evolution is thought to construct and modify
> features of living organisms.
Like sexual selection, which I used to show the creationists
that natural selection can, in principle, account for bat
evolution. Of course, you and Myers were too jealous to allow me
even that accomplishment.
Are you in talk.origins for science, Howard, or do you post here
because you love to build yourself up by tearing others down?
[...]
> The choice with the evolution of molecular structures is between any and
> all *known* evolutionary mechanisms and a claim that an *unknown*
> mechanism is *required* because none of the *known* mechanisms can, in
> principle, explain the results.
You continue to prove "Joe Lurker"s point. You aren't even honest
about it, since you ignore the fact that intelligent design
is a known mechanism. Think of designer genes, and the lucrative
patents Monsanto [sp?] has been granted on seed which produces
plants with sterile seed.
[further confirmation of JL and Julie's claims by Howard, deleted]
...except for the following:
> > And the only way to satisfy this
> > demand is to have complete knowledge of all possible natural
> > mechanisms such that there is no such thing as an "unknown mechanism."
>
> When I am talking about *mechanism*, I am not talking about the detailed
> "protein x arose by duplication from protein y because of selective
> pressure z".
Thanks for reinforcing what I said up there about the generality
of "mechanism".
> because you have no testable mechanism). I am talking about whether in
> this case one can specifically rule out, say, the assembly of protein
> transport subsystem and a pilin subsystem into a combined system which
> might evolve into a motility function from another useful function *in
> principle*.
In order to do at least that much, you would have to grit your
teeth and hypothesize ONE order in which the events took place,
not omitting such things as flagellar fibers with "hooks", something
you omit here--and you never did settle on a meaning for the
word "hook" either, only trailing off in a fog of "it could be
this, it could be that".
> > And from there, one would have to demonstrate that all these
> > mechanisms cannot account for the feature (which originate in
> > the ancient past), or in other words, it is impossible for the
> > feature to arise via these mechanisms. Anytime someone expects
> > their opponent to "prove the impossible," they are trying to erect
> > a smokescreen around the weakness of their position(that's how
> > I see it).
Further indirect confirmation of Julie's words by Howard, deleted.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Peter Nyikos
>PZ Myers wrote:
>>
>> In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
>> huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
>>
>> >Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
>> >
>> >>Come on, Wade, get off yer butt and crack a logic textbook.
>> >
>> >
>> >**** I say, come on 'Joe Lurker' and Julie Thomas - get off your butts and
>> >crack a biology textbook. Your silly ID wishes might reveal themselves as the
>> >mythology they are.
>>
>> Wait a minute, there..."Joe Lurker" is an ignoramus, but Julie Thomas *has*
>> read both textbooks and the original literature. I can't complain about her
>> knowledge of the facts, although I do think her interpretations are off-the-
>> wall.
See my own separate followup to Myers for a critique of this
indirect net.buttressing of Howard and Wade.
>My sentiments exactly.
Says a coward who snipped all of "Joe Lurker's" comments
in followup, comments which neatly skewered him.
His characterization, "ephemeral", does not hold water
and is irrelevant to the aptness of JL's points in any case.
Howard has all the earmarks of a sore loser.
Here is the beginning of my own followup to Howard on
that other thread.
=============================== begin excerpt
[...]
======================= end included excerpt
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
><<In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
>> biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
>> has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
>> textbook.
>***** This is true - my point was that without the basic background knowledge -
>such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
>in ignorance.
Your point falls on sterile ground. The implication that
Julie does not have basic background knowledge in biology is
without merit.
Peter Nyikos
already four posts deep.
Elmer Bataitis <nyli...@frontiernet.net> writes:
>George Acton wrote:
>> In article <78j4pn$22f$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
>> jona...@DSG.Stanford.EDU wrote:
>> > In article <36AD14...@softdisk.com>, George Acton <gac...@softdisk.com> writes:
>> > > ... She's sabotaging people's faith in God saying that Design
>> > > takes all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to
>> > > explain. Hey, you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it
>> > > was designed.
Strawman. Julie did not claim that the human eye was designed.
Nor did Behe. In fact Behe explicitly (he even has
a long section on the eye) avoids traps like
the following, by going to a more fundamental level:
>> > Yeah. The wiring in front of the photoreceptors and the ensuing
>> > visual blind-spot is a dead give-away. No intelligent designer
>> > (let alone an omniscient, omipotent one) would do that. Right?
Stawman. Julie and Behe have no problems with common descent.
But strawmen are par for the course where George Acton is
concerned. What surprises me is Jonathan's readiness to
indulge in them against Julie.
>> You think too much.
>Maybe he was designed that way........ ;-)
Maybe these people are frustrated by their inability to
engage Julie in meaningful debate. Even if Julie did
respond to them, they would be at a loss, by the looks
of it.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Paul J Gans
>In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
>> biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly, she
>> has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a biology
>> textbook.
>>
>> be my main disagreement with her.
>>
>takes
>all those big words and pages of technical manual stuff to explain.
>Hey,
>you can look at a diagram of an eye and tell it was designed.
By Microsoft?
----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@panix.com]
howard hershey
>
> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >PZ Myers wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
> >> huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> >>
> >> >Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
> >> >
>
> >My sentiments exactly.
>
> Says a coward who snipped all of "Joe Lurker's" comments
> in followup, comments which neatly skewered him.
I had responded to some of JL's comments earlier and felt that Julie's
restatement of what I wanted to comment on was better stated.
[snip]
>
> =============================== begin excerpt
>
> In article <36A847...@indiana.edu>,
> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote:
> > Julie Thomas wrote:
> > >
[snip]
>
> > > Howard writes:
> > >
> > > >[...] Design explanations can be proper in science.
> > > >All that is needed is some evidence that there is no natural mechanism
> > > >that can or has ever been observed to produce the same effect (e.g.
> > > >produce flint flakes) and some potential designer capable of producing
> > > >the effect (e.g. hominids).
> > >
> > > Of course, these are bogus criteria. Howard's first criterion
> > > is his "prove the impossible" demand. That is, unless a proponent
> > > of ID can show that a natural process cannot account for some
> > > feature, ID is to be rejected.
> >
> > I think Julie is misunderstanding what I mean by "mechanism" and
> > confuses that with a detailed hypothesis for generating this or that
> > specific feature of nature. My demand is not a "prove the impossible"
> > demand, but a demand that before one chooses the explanation *unknown
> > mechanism* one must point out why all *known mechanisms* are inadequate,
> > in principle, to explain this feature of nature.
>
> "in principle" confirms Julie and "JL"s claim, since one can
> always interpret the word "mechanism" broadly enough to
> disqualify any attempt. After all, "natural selection" is
> a "mechanism".
And 'natural selection' requires certain features in order to produce an
IC (or any) system. The question is whether the systems chosen have
features which would prevent some *known* version of 'natural selection'
from producing it or are these systems with inadequate information. In
the absence of disconfirming information, one must opt for *known* and
possible mechanisms rather than postulate unknown hypothetical forces.
For example, one *known* 'mechanism' by which evolution through natural
selection can produce a multipart IC system is gradual stepwise
evolution from a version without certain components but for the same
function as the present at all steps. I think a good and reasonable case
could be made that some core IC systems (but not necessarily all
components of a current IC system) could not evolve that way. But that
leaves mechanisms like assembly of subsystems that perform different
functions, co-evolution to IC status, and emergent properties arising
from selection for other functions. Before one says an *unknown*
mechanism (and a hypothetical designer is just a subset of all unknown
mechanisms) is required, one does indeed literally have to examine all
the possible *known* mechanisms and state that "I do not think this
alternative could explain the system because..." followed by the
disconfirming evidence that makes that explanation unlikely. Just
saying "I don't know how it arose." without stating precise reasons is
inadequate. Just saying that "It could not evolve stepwise for the same
function." might be true, but is only looking at one possible
mechanism. OTOH, if the designer mechanism had one, just one, example
where there was actual positive evidence that an appropriate designer
existed at the appropriate time and some system form that time was, in
fact, designed, then one could compare that mechanism more equally with
the other *known* mechanisms and try to find ways of differentiating
between them on the basis of supporting evidence, much in the way Myers
and I compared your explanation for bat's wings (which used a known
mechanism) to other known mechanisms which could explain the result. We
found your explanation wanting in the supporting evidence and simplicity
(Occam's razor) category. We did not reject it as impossible or a
proposal which invoked unknown mechanisms when all known ones had not
yet been rejected.
In science one does not invoke *unknown* mechanisms (and certainly not a
*specific* unknown mechanism, like a hypothetical designer) as a
fall-back until all the known mechanisms have been disposed of.
>
> For a good idea of how broad that mechanism is, see the thread
> I did last year on bat evolution, where I showed that it
> is a valid mechanism in principle. Natually, you and Myers
> did your dirty dishonest best to obscure the "in principle"
> aspect and pretend to think that I was proposing my scenario
> as a theory about how it ACTUALLY took place.
Actually, we were treating it with the respect accorded to any *known*
mechanism which had been proposed. Comparison of the relative merits of
known mechanisms is not the same thing as claiming that *no* known
mechanism can work, so one *must* hypothesize an unknown mechanism
involving purely hypothetical forces and entities working by unspecified
mechanisms.
Sexual selection clearly is a known selective pressure and represents
one of the ways to produce features by natural selection, but sexual
selection is a mechanism that also has certain specific requirements
which can usually be supported by evidence from nature. For example, if
sexual selection were the reason for bat's wings, one might reasonably
expect wing size or wing color to be different between males and
females. One might also reasonably expect some living bat species to
use wing size in sexual display (and there is one that has shoulder
epaulets as I remember). None of this was presented. In short, sexual
selection was a *known* mechanism that was presented *without any
evidence to support it*.
In comparison, there is abundant evidence that wings are currently
crucial to food-gathering in bats (selection for factors that improve
one's ability to collect resources is another *known* mechanism which
could lead to the formation of a variant organ). It is not hard to
envision ways that a gliding intermediate could use this ability to
collect insectivorous food and it is also not hard to envision gliding
as a mechanism to travel from tree to tree for fruit eaters. One of
ther requirement be that intermediate stages have a useful function, and
having that useful function be the same as the current function is
certainly parsimonious with the evidence that this function is currently
the major use of wings.
But an alternative hypothesis might be that the intermediate stages were
used for a different function from their current function. There are
viable intermediate (gliding) stages that are used for escape from
predators in organisms alive today, so that is another *known* mechanism
which could easily explain the evolution of the wing. Both of the
latter have *some* supporting evidence, in that both are using pressures
related to functions that bat's wings still play, unlike the former
mechanism proposed by Peter, which requires selective pressures for
functions that have completely and thouroughly disappeared to be
displaced by the functions we see today. So among the *known*
mechanisms, the problem is not between possibilities equally supported
by evidence, but between a mechanism that has no evidentiary support and
a couple that are congruent with the few observations that can be made
and are much simpler in that they do not unecessarily require switching
the functions one is selecting for. If Peter wants his proposed
mechanism to look better, he merely needs to find the appropriate
evidence, either in the fossil record or as residual evidence of his
mechanism in existing bats. His mechanism is simply completely
unsupported by evidence and involves more changes of function than are
necessary. It is not impossible. *If* he were to have found evidence
of sexual selection in the bat fossil record or in the behaviour of
primitive bats, the issue would certainly be re-examined. As it was
presented (Peter ignored the evidence of the function of bat's wings in
current bats, and seemed unaware that there were reasonable alternative
to sexual selection) sexual selection was not at all equal to the
alternative *known* explanations.
There is a big difference, moreover, between this comparison of *known*
mechanisms and saying that, since there is no fossil evidence of how a
complicated system like bat's wings arose, that one must reject the
possibility that *one* of the possible *known* mechanisms (including
Peter's, BTW) was likely to be responsible and instead claim that we
should accept the idea that some hypothetical bat-wing-designer produced
the wings by an *unknown* mechanism as a reasonable fall-back position.
That fall-back amounts to little more than "We don't know and have no
evidence but want to believe in a bat-wing designer."
>
> > That is the standard
> > scientific process.
>
> Only in the demand-the-impossible-when-it-suits-me brain of
> a Howard Hershey.
I would insist that all possible *known* mechanisms (including yours)
for bat wing's evolution be ruled out *before* one proposes that it must
have been an unknown mechanism. That is the standard scientific
process. If your *unknown* mechanism becomes a *known* mechanism (e.g.
design by a *known* designer acting though observable mechanisms), then
one can compare the weight of evidence for and against that mechanism
with the evidence for and against other possibilities more or less as
equals. But as long as the mechanism is an inherently unfalsifiable
*unknown* designer of *unknown* properties acting by *unknown*
mechanisms (or even any other type of unspecified *unknown* mechanism
that doesn't include a designer), it will remain scientifically
irrelevant until one can exclude all of the known possible mechanisms or
present independent evidence that some system *was* designed by a
designer who could have existed at the time (humans, unless one invokes
time travel) would not do).
>
> >In essence, there are a number of *known*
> > mechanisms by which evolution is thought to construct and modify
> > features of living organisms.
>
> Like sexual selection, which I used to show the creationists
> that natural selection can, in principle, account for bat
> evolution. Of course, you and Myers were too jealous to allow me
> even that accomplishment.
We were giving it the respect it deserved. It was treated like any
other *known* mechanism and the appropriate questions (What evidence do
you have that could support this mechanism?) were asked. Compared to
other possible *known* mechanisms it was unsupported by any evidence and
was a more complex explanation. Not impossible, not unknown, just worse
than the known alternatives (which Peter didn't seem to know about at
the time).
>
> Are you in talk.origins for science, Howard, or do you post here
> because you love to build yourself up by tearing others down?
For science, which I try to stick to. But puncturing the occassional
pseudointellectual pompous ass comes a close second. I try to do that
by pointing out how bad and distorted their view of science is without
being overtly nasty. I try not to call even the most pompous of these
asses liars or dishonest propogandists or make paranoid lists; certainly
I try not to make that a regular feature of my posts. I try to keep my
nastiness subtle and light (I prefer the stiletto to the ax). I don't
always succeed. OTOH, Peter never does. That's one of the reasons
Peter regularly gets killfiled by people. With the possible exception
of Dan Hughes, who is currently rambling incoherently about the
numerology of nature and sounds close to a mental breakdown (for which I
hope I am not responsible), I don't think I get killfiled nearly as
often. That must be some measure of success.
>
> [...]
>
> > The choice with the evolution of molecular structures is between any and
> > all *known* evolutionary mechanisms and a claim that an *unknown*
> > mechanism is *required* because none of the *known* mechanisms can, in
> > principle, explain the results.
>
> You continue to prove "Joe Lurker"s point. You aren't even honest
> about it, since you ignore the fact that intelligent design
> is a known mechanism. Think of designer genes, and the lucrative
> patents Monsanto [sp?] has been granted on seed which produces
> plants with sterile seed.
The sole requirement for design is an appropriate designer at the right
time and place. The evidence you have for this is what? The designed
object? How do you know the object was designed by a designer? Because
it looks designed? Because you cannot think of an alternative? This
type of argument is not particularly convincing as science. Do you have
any independent evidence that any such object was designed before humans
existed? One of the things that evolution (and genetic algorithms) does
is produce useful functions, after all.
>
> ======================= end included excerpt
Huxter4441
In article
78ngcq$7el$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com
nyi...@math.sc.edu
wrote:
<<
Like sexual selection, which I used to show the creationists that natural
selection can, in principle, account for bat evolution.>>
**** Over 900 species in a few thousand years from a single original 'bat
kind'? I guess you mathematicians really can prove just about anything you
want to.
PZ Myers
<hers...@indiana.edu> wrote:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>>
>> >PZ Myers wrote:
>> >>
>> >> In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
>> >> huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
>> >> >
>[snip]
>>
>> >My sentiments exactly.
>>
>> Says a coward who snipped all of "Joe Lurker's" comments
>> in followup, comments which neatly skewered him.
>
>I had responded to some of JL's comments earlier and felt that Julie's
>restatement of what I wanted to comment on was better stated.
>
The "coward" comment by Nyikos above struck me as rather ironic.
I think a real coward is someone who sees a critic announce that he
will make no further comments in a particular thread, and then proceeds
to make a vitriolic post in which the coward speculates heavily about
the critic's children.
I think real cowards find it easier to insult children than to deal
with an argument.
I think stupid cowards like to avoid issues about abstract ideas like
embryology by accusing their critics of irrelevant things, like being
a bad parent.
But that's just me. I'm sure Nyikos disagrees. He seems to think that
kind of behavior is clever and brave.
I think you can put his accusation of cowardice in the proper perspective
now, Howard.
[snip]
--
PZ Myers
david ford
david ford wrote:
LM (in a post with no obvious bearing on the previous poster's remarks)
I presented White's prophet observation for consideration and for
readers' comparison with Julie T.'s crusader comment. Just as I present
[JT]"the Crusaders For The One And Only True Way" and the following:
Gray, J. Book review _Nature_ 173: 227 (1954). Gray was a zoology
professor at Cambridge.[a] One paragraph, and the last third of the
succeeding paragraph (the bracketing is Gray's):
Darwinian orthodoxy demands implicit faith in the efficacy of
natural selection operating on chance mutations. Subscribe to this
and all doubts and hesitations disappear; question it and be
forever lost. The case for orthodoxy can seldom have been stated
with greater cogency and enthusiasm than by Dr. Julian Huxley in
"Evolution in Action". A few readers, perhaps rather pagan in
their outlook, may think it a little strange that, if the case is
quite so strong as they are asked to believe, it should still be
necessary to argue the merits of natural selection with almost
evangelistic vigour.
....No amount of argument, or clever epigram, can disguise the
inherent improbability of orthodox theory; but most biologists feel
it is better to think in terms of improbable events than not to
think at all; there will always be a few who feel in their bones a
sneaking sympathy with Samuel Butler's skepticism: "...there must
have been a little cheating somewhere in these accidental
variations [mutations] before the eagle could have become so great
a winner". How far the heathen will be converted by Dr. Huxley is
difficult to say.
[a] Gertrude Himmelfarb, _Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution_ (NY:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959), 480pp., 419.
Butler lived from 1835-1902.
df White, Errol. "Presidential Address: A little on Lung-fishes"
df _Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London_ 177: 1-10 (1966).
df Following White's name there appears "C.B.E., F.R.S, Pres. L.S." The
df last sentence of the address:
df We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the
df over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make
df much further progress in this by the classical methods of
df paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters
df by jumping up and down shrilling 'Darwin is God and I, So-and-so,
df am his prophet'--the recent researches of workers like Dean &
df Hinshelwood (1964) already suggest the possibility of incipient
df cracks in the seemingly monolithic walls of the Neo-Darwinian
df Jericho.
df
df Dean, K.C.R. and C. Hinshelwood. "What is heredity?" _Nature_ 202:
df 1046-52 (1964).
LM I'm quite prepared to concede that this is a serious statement by a Real
LM Scientist (tm) with lots of genuine degrees. However, the actual history
LM of the life sciences since he made his prediction (1966) shows quite a
LM bit of the 'further progress' that he dismisses.
Are you also prepared to provide references to the literature where
[White]"the mechanics of evolution" are demonstrated to be known/ understood?
LM I'm going to have to
LM file this one alongside the patent clerk of 1900 who quit his job
LM because everything had already been invented.
LM
LM The warning against shrillness is always in order, but since YEC's are
LM so shrill as to deafen bats and other small wildlife it's hard to lose a
LM lot of sleep over it.
howard hershey
>
> In article <36AF2F...@indiana.edu>, howard hershey
> <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
> >>
> >> >PZ Myers wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> In article <19990124141953...@ng35.aol.com>,
> >> >> huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> >Joe Lurker supposedly wrote via JT:
> >> >> >
> >[snip]
> >>
> >> >My sentiments exactly.
> >>
> >> Says a coward who snipped all of "Joe Lurker's" comments
> >> in followup, comments which neatly skewered him.
> >
>
> The "coward" comment by Nyikos above struck me as rather ironic.
>
> I think a real coward is someone who sees a critic announce that he
> will make no further comments in a particular thread, and then proceeds
> to make a vitriolic post in which the coward speculates heavily about
> the critic's children.
>
> I think real cowards find it easier to insult children than to deal
> with an argument.
>
> I think stupid cowards like to avoid issues about abstract ideas like
> embryology by accusing their critics of irrelevant things, like being
> a bad parent.
>
> But that's just me. I'm sure Nyikos disagrees. He seems to think that
> kind of behavior is clever and brave.
>
> I think you can put his accusation of cowardice in the proper perspective
> now, Howard.
> [snip]
>
> --
> PZ Myers
Being called a coward by Peter is no worse than being called an
adulterer by Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, Bill Clinton, or (my own favorite
choice for hypocrite of the decade honors because he's from Indiana) Dan
Burton. When insulted, I always consider the source and whether it is
worthy of respect. I certainly do this for Peter's insults.
Huxter4441
Date: Wed, Jan 27, 1999 12:45 PM
Message-id: <1999012716...@milo.Math.Sc.Edu>>>
<<huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) writes:
><<In article <78gab3$fkk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> Hemida...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> The identity of Joe Lurker might be a mystery, but Julie's familiarity with
>> biology is well documented on previous threads. If I remember correctly,
she
>> has referenced journal articles, which is superior to cracking open a
biology
>> textbook.
>***** This is true - my point was that without the basic background knowledge
-
>such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
>in ignorance.
Your point falls on sterile ground. The implication that
Julie does not have basic background knowledge in biology is
without merit.
++++++ Says you, a mathematician. I, on the other hand, have a great deal of
biological knowledge, and am secure in my opinion. That you rush to her
defense is indicative of the sterility of her claims.
huxter
Huxter4441
knowledge -
> such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
> in ignorance.
>
>
Scott Chase
++++++ It sure does not seem so.
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> <<> ***** This is true - my point was that without the basic background
> knowledge -
> > such as that found in textbooks - referencing journal articles is an exercise
> > in ignorance.
> >
> >
> My point is that she has that basic background knowledge.
>
> Scott Chase
>
> ++++++ It sure does not seem so.
>
>
Scott Chase
david ford
[snip]
PZM I presume you are the same Joe Lurker who had Julie post a similarly
PZM superficial criticism of Howard Hershey last year. Is there a reason
PZM you lurk but are unwilling to post for yourself? Are you embarrassed
PZM to hold the views you state above, or do you prefer to have all the
PZM criticism go through Julie Thomas rather than take it directly, yourself?
JL Have Mark Isaak, Matt Silberstein, maff91, Thomas Paine, and most
JL of the other t.o. regulars look in a mirror.
JL
JL Then have them ask:
JL
JL "Would I want to spend time discussing interesting problems and ideas
JL in natural science and philosophy with the kind, patient,
JL scientifically knowledgeable, friendly person I see in the mirror
JL -- and moreover, use my real name, so that other such kind, patient,
JL knowledgeable people will add their comments in a spirit of
JL respectful open inquiry?"
JL
JL "Or does the person I see in mirror enjoy stepping on other people's
JL ideas, speculative or tentative as they may be, for the feel-good
JL and surge of self-important pride that he gets?"
JL
JL And now you know why I sign myself
JL
JL Joe Lurker
Hayward, A.T.J. Letter _Nature_ 240: 577 (1972). Three paragraphs:
Secondly, there are more anti-Darwinists in British universities
than you seem to realize. Among them is a friend of mine who holds
a chair in a department of pure science "in a field bearing on the
evolutionary question", to use your phrase. If his friends ask why
he keeps quiet about his unorthodox views, he replies in words very
like those used recently in another connexion by Professor Ian
Roxburgh:
"Science is only concerned with the truth, and as the way to truth
is by conjecture and refutation, why don't they (orthodox
scientists) listen? Science is not like that at all. There is a
powerful establishment and a belief system. There are power
seekers and career men, and if someone challenges the establishment
he should not expect a sympathetic hearing."^1
The majority of biologists accept the prevailing views
uncritically--just as a great many competent Russian biologists
were once brainwashed into accepting Lysenko's quackery. Others
have thought for themselves and come to realize the flaws in
contemporary Darwinism. But for them to speak out would be to
invite ridicule, and probably ruin their careers. Can you blame
them for keeping silent? Do you really suppose that the offer of a
year's free subscription to _Nature_ will tempt them to expose
themselves?
Huxter4441
Hemida...@my-dejanews.com
huxte...@aol.com (Huxter4441) wrote:
> yes
>
>
OK. If you say so :-)