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And then we have the evolutionist's when-all-else-fails canard. . . .
Saying you believe in microevolution but not macroevolution is like saying you believe in a penny but not a nickle. Evolutionary scientists aren't even concerned with "macroevolution" as it's an arbitrary term. Only religious whackadoodles try and use it to refute evolution.
Uh-huh. The change between "a penny" and "a nickel", eh? But the evolutionist's scheme of a common ancestry necessarily entails transmutation.
*Crickets chirping*
The reason evolutionists gloss over this distinction is because the mechanisms of evolution cannot adequately explain the transmutation of species. Random variables beget a random variable. Hence, there's no discernable way to quantify the number of transitional forms required to achieve the transformation of one kind of organism into that of another, let alone predict what mutations must be conserved to affect the process. Any reasonable person would expect that all forms of terrestrial life necessarily share certain genetic and morphological characteristics, including the inherent ability to affect adaptive variations within. A universal common ancestry, which is what Darwinian evolution ultimately asserts, does not necessarily follow from that except in textbook illustrations.
As I have written elsewhere:
Pointing to a small handful of groupings of allegedly related lineages consisting of an equally small handful of intermediate forms, which is the best that evolutionists have ever been able to come up with out of millions of fossils, does not impress me. The number of changes required and the degree of complexity involved, for example, in the enterprise of transforming a land animal to a sea animal are immense. Just how many transitional forms are we talking about here? Such a splash didn't take place in one dive. It involved every systemskeletal, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, circulatory, integumentary, lymphatic . . . the transitional migration of a snout into a blowhole on the top of the head! Are we talking about thousands of transitional forms? Tens of thousands? Multiply that by millions of species.
Hence, I wrote that "[m]any evolutionary biologists and paleontologists know this and will even admit it in private, but publicly they are committed to a metaphysical/absolute naturalism and the research grants that go along with it. Otherwise, no money, no peer review.
. . . the ever prevalent conspiracy theory. It's all about the grant money....... Lame.
No. It's all about the processes of microspeciation being inadequate to account for a supposed common ancestry and the evolutionist's pretence of irrelevancy, while in the background the various postulates of Neo-Darwinism, particularly punctuated equilibrium, are in fact attempts to resolve the problem. Lame.
Which it [punctuated equilibrium] did. You can complain all you want about the lack of fossils, but it's really the DNA that tells the story, i.e. WE'RE ALL RELATED. Sure there are lots of changes, but there are also lots of years. I think you're hung up on the human timeframe of things and can't wrap your mind around the concept of millions and billions of years.
It's all in the metaphysical, dooooooooooooooooooooooooood.
You just don't understand the metaphysical.
Pass the bong.
Can you elaborate on "design detection"?
[...]Can you elaborate on "design detection"?I thought most objections to Intelligent Design are not of the form "Intelligent Design is not true because..." but rather center on the fact that the truth content of Intelligent Design claims is not determinable. Which is why it isn't an appropriate subject for scientific analysis. Discuss it in philosophy classes, not science classes.
[...]
It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it. You're simply ignorant of that fact.
The Design Inference from Specified Complexity Defended by Scholars Outside the Intelligent Design Movement
I'm confused. You threw a cluster of links at me but only this one actually comes close to answering my question, i.e. attempting to outline some sort of conceptual/intellectual basis for this line of thinking or what you were hinting at.
Yet it's obviously and admittedly a philosophy article. I think I made it clear initially that I have no issue with tackling these questions in a philosophical context or even in philosophy classes. That's significantly different than implying there's some scientific aspect to this (or worse, claiming some "legitimate and well-established branch of science" substantiates these philosophical meanderings).
Now, do you want to talk about the specifics of the science, abiogenesis and microspeciation?
Not really. My training is in physics, not biology. Which is why I was momentarily interested in the now-abandoned suggestion that information theory had some novel application or insight here that transforms ID into something other than what we know it is. But you've confirmed what already seemed obvious: ID is merely a philosophical exercise, despite the assertions you never seem to find space to support ("the object of ID theory, empirical data, is science and it's methodology, design detection, is scientific."). That's fine for the philosophy classes, but keep it out of the science classroom.
another thread by someone who doesn't know the difference between science and religion?
No, it is all of you who never find space to directly refute what is presented. The assertion that ID theory is not scientific is not an argument, jackass; it's a statement. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING OF SUBSTANCE IN DIRECT REFUTATION OF WHAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED THUS FAR TO GO ALONG WITH THAT SHOESHINE?
Relax, I almost felt the spittle through my screen on that one. . . .
I can see that for you this goes beyond mere philosophy and has become an article of faith (this is made apparent by your odd mix of rage and defensiveness). . . . .
Relax, I almost felt the spittle through my screen on that one. . . .
I can see that for you this goes beyond mere philosophy and has become an article of faith (this is made apparent by your odd mix of rage and defensiveness). . . . .
More sophistry! There's no rage, no spittle: I'm laughing at you clowns. The capitalization is not a shout, it's a 2X4 upside your empty head and your equally empty rhetoric.
The only people here who keep making philosophical arguments are you guys. You never demonstrate a competency of the science. You never go on to the science, which would constitute the only valid refutation of ID.
Here's how it goes with you clowns. . . .
Fact: ID theory strictly deals with empirical data.
Clowns: No it doesn't (i.e., no argument, just a statement).
Fact: Design detection is a legitimate branch of science.
Clowns: No it isn't (i.e., no argument, just a statement).
Fact: Abiogenic research has repeatedly falsified the hypotheses of the evolutionary paradigm.
Clowns: No it hasn't (i.e., no argument, just a statement).
Fact: Abiogenic research has repeatedly shown that natural mechanisms do not produce the precursors of the self-replicating components of specified information.
Clowns: Silence.
Fact: The theoretical constructs of ID, irreducible and specified complexity, are supported by the known laws of biogenesis and experimental research.
Clowns: This observation is . . . philosophical!
Fact: I challenged you to refute the above assertions by showing how the science refutes them.
Clown: My training is in physics, not biology, but these assertions are philosophical.
geauxtohell: No they don't.
LOL! Yes they do.
No. It points towards ID if the object is irreducibly complex and evinces a specified complexity.
LOL! No. What's ludicrous is transforming my statement into a straw man that is obviously ludicrous. I didn't say evolutionists were ignorant about evolutionary theory; I said a lot of them do not understand the methodology of design detection/"eschew its application to origins . . . to microbiology and biochemistry . . . unless the findings of the research are couched in the terms of evolutionary theory".
Evolutionists claim that the concept of irreduciable complexity has some how or another been debunked/debunked insofar as its application to biology is concerned. But this is nonsense, and the claim either goes to massive dishonesty or ignorance, depending on who's making it and why.
From my blog, a portion of a debate with an evolutionary biologist:
Of course there are certainly some proponents who are anti-religious: championed by the likes of Richard Dawkins, but their science is impeccable and elegant. Labsci
Trust me, theres nothing impeccable and elegant about the prospects of abiogenesis to which he must necessarily appeal.
You say that evolutionists play games with words and categories. . . . Labsci
Evolutionists are playing a game of conceptual hide-and-seek when they claim that the classical construct of irreducible complexity in and of itself has been debunked. Refuting Behe's ill-considered application of it to biochemistrya half-baked version that fails to anticipate the obvious possibility of degraded systems or their isolated components performing less efficient or alternate functionsis of no consequence. (Incidentally, I wrote him about that possibility back in '96 after reading his book. Sure enough, well, you know the rest. . . .) Properly rendered, irreducible complexity does not dispute the plausibility of diminished systems, it illustrates the implausibility of complex systems arising by blind luck. That has not been debunked by anyone. Behe should have paid more attention to the essential quality of Paley's formulation and the prerequisites of Kant's.
In other words, in the classical tradition, irreducible complexity obtains to the rise of organization from chaos, not to any potential degradation of function. The former entails an uphill battle in the midst of a chaotic collection of precursors vying against conservation. It has to do with the problem of anticipatorily formulating the overarching function of an interdependent system of discretely oriented parts, each contributing to the sum of a whole that could not have orchestrated its own composition from the ground up.
Further, and now comes the slight-of-hand that impresses no one but bleating sheep, evolutionists themselves do not refute Behes straw man with the paper biochemistry of evolutionary theory, they cynically refute it with the logic of the classical rendition of irreducible complexity itself. The theoretical mechanism of natural selection does not compose complex machines by systematically stripping them of their parts, instead it must build them without a blueprint and do so in a sea of competing precursors, once again, vying against conservation. Its not the other way around. Miller can illustrate the alternate functions of degraded mousetraps all he wants, that does not demonstrate that the mechanisms of evolutionary theory are the cause of the comprehensive functions of complex integrated systems.
But the sheep go bah, bah, bah.
Debunked?
What kind of scientific term is that anyway? The matter cannot be resolved syllogistically or analogously. Its a matter of experimentation and falsification.
Now you see it. Now you dont.
In other words, ultimately, its not even a matter of morphology. Its a matter of accumulating information, not only against a tidal wave of difficulties that rebuff conservation, but against the whims of a genetic material whose sequences are not arranged by any chemically preordained bonding affinity, but by extraneous forces. And to mind that means nothing of particular interest could arise in the first place without the intervention of an intelligent being. I trust that we at least agree on that point, given that you are an theistic evolutionist. Why would you recommend the prattle of an atheist savant who must necessarily override the putative distinction between the vagaries of abiogenesis and the calculi of evolutionary theory?
No, it is all of you who never find space to directly refute what is presented. The assertion that ID theory is not scientific is not an argument, jackass; it's a statement. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING OF SUBSTANCE IN DIRECT REFUTATION OF WHAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED THUS FAR TO GO ALONG WITH THAT SHOESHINE?
Relax, I almost felt the spittle through my screen on that one.
I gave you the opportunity to demonstrate that some valid scientific underpinning to ID exists. You offered links to other posts you've made repeating the same unsupported assertions and one link to a philosophy article making a (circular) philosophical argument for "Design Inference from Specified Complexity" by starting with the premise "Specified complexity reliably points to intelligent design." Certainly nothing approaching what you keep implying you've got.
I can see that for you this goes beyond mere philosophy and has become an article of faith (this is made apparent by your odd mix of rage and defensiveness). You're free to worship at whichever altar you please, just keep it out of the science classroom.
Greenbeard has been polite. You're being a bit of a twat.
You know how they say the first one to get angry loses an argument?
