Marx, Math And Myth

[Hollie]

9. The folly of religionism being substituted for science.

Encyclopedia of American Loons

It’s … The Encyclopedia of American loons! Our new and exciting series presenting a representative sample of American loons from A-Z.

americanloons.blogspot.com

Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher and one of the hotshots of the Discovery Institute. And like some philosophers and all Discovery Institute people, he likes to make grand claims about scientific fields about which he must be counted as an illiterate. Meyer helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the major hive for the ID creationist movement. Meyer is currently vice president and a senior fellow at CSC, and a director of the Access Research Network. He has been described as “the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)”, he contributed to the second edition of Dean Kenyon’s “Of Pandas and People”, wrote (with Ralph Seelke) the ID textbook “Explore Evolution”, was appointed by the Texas Board of Education to be on the committee reviewing Texas’s science curriculum standards, is the primary link to DI sponsor and Taliban theocrat loon Howard Ahmanson, and was partly responsible for the Wedge Strategy, as well as an active speaker and debate panelist.

In 1999, Meyer (with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest) designed a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in the book “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.” (I mean, the point of ID is to get creationism and religion into the schools, not to do science). He is perhaps most famous for trying to realize the strategy through helping to introduce ID to the Dover Area School District (more extensively here), and for his ridiculous2009 book “Signature in the Cell” (which a probably drunk/dementia suffering Thomas Nagel actually praised, flaunting his own ignorance of science). PZ Myers was offered a review copy by Meyer’s assistant Janet Oberembt, but never received it. The book actually makes twelve “predictions” for ID (although they are not predictions in the ordinary scientific sense because they are not derived from any concrete theory, and they all concern testing the theory of evolution, not ID). He also offers a “theory”. The theory is unrelated to the predictions. He derives no predictions from his theory. He offers nothing resembling a coherent justification either, so the book didn’t receive much positive feedback from actual scientists. He has offered some appeals to authority, however (“Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Darwinist”).

In March 2002 he announced the “teach the controversy” strategy aimed at promoting the false idea that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. Since Meyer knows this is false, he was lying, but dishonesty isn’t exactly a surprising trait in ID advocates. The presentation included a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "”Darwinian evolution”. When NCSE contacted the authors, none of the authors who responded (the authors of thirty-four of the papers) thought that their research provided evidence against evolution. Meyer also publicly claimed that the “Santorum Amendment” was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. Which is demonstrably false, but tells you a lot about the DI creationists.

Of course, he thinks there is active persecution of the purportedly fast-growing number of scientists rejecting evolution in Academia (probably because he cannot find any). He was interviewed about those claims in Expelled.
Diagnosis: One of the staunchest, most influential, most dishonest anti-science advocates in the world. Crackpot and complete hack.

 

[Hollie]

10. "Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept."
--John Marberger, President George W. Bush's science adviser, responding to Bush's suggestion that we teach intelligent design creationism in public schools

 

[PoliticalChic]

9. Let’s insert that ol’ ‘an infinite number of random possibilities’ sophistry.


The "The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."
Infinite monkey theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yup….they randomly create the works of Shakespeare….or the diversity of life we witness today.


There are arguments that seem to make sense, until they are examined in the light of reality. Take "infinity."
Given an infinite number of trials, any outcome that has a non-zero probability, will occur. No matter how unlikely....it will happen.


Here's the problem for those applying this ploy: it isn't possible in the real world.

" Now, before one attempts to explain away the obvious problem by inserting the term ‘infinity,’ let’s agree that infinity does not exist in the real world. So, without ‘infinity,’ it follows that everything in the universe is finite, therefore had a beginning….and, an end."
Andrew Parker, "The Genesis Enigma," chapter nine.



I said earlier, 'Upon close inspection, none hold up as "proof" but rather as conjecture, and an appeal to logic. Philosophy rather than science.'

Meaning that there is no 'infinity explanation' to account for evolution.
Mathematics proves that the number of attempts to form the compounds necessary to explain the diversity of life could not have occurred.


Darwin's theory has moment.....but in politics, not in science.

 

[Hollie]

11. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
--Reverend George V. Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory

12. “ID leaders know the benefits of submitting their work to independent review and have established at least two purportedly "peer-reviewed" journals for ID articles. However, one has languished for want of material and quietly ceased publication, while the other has a more overtly philosophical orientation. Both journals employ a weak standard of "peer review" that amounts to no more than vetting by the editorial board or society fellows."
--Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey in "Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution" Washington University Law Quarterly 83 (1)

13. “The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."
--Charles Darwin from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin

14. “While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific."
--Lehigh University Biochemistry Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design"

 

[Hollie]

15. “there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."
--Michael Behe, 2005

 

[Hollie]

16. Eric Rothschild: But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?
Michael Behe: Yes, that's correct.
--Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Trial transcript: Day 11 (October 18, 2005), PM Session, Part 1

17. “We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."
--Ray Mummert, Dover PA pastor

 

[PoliticalChic]

10. Where were we...oh...right: The two arguments for Darwin from government school grads are the fossil record and the existence of DNA.

The hope for Darwinists is that DNA and RNA will prove Darwin where fossil evidence failed.....does it?
No, not really. Begin by considering the immense complexity of the DNA molecule,...


A quick tutorial: DNA is a huge molecule that holds the blueprints for every one of the thousands and thousands of enzymes, molecules, and structures that make up each different cell, and identify each organism.
OK, here it comes- the reason why Darwinian gradualism cannot be correct:

...the entire DNA must be complete and in the correct order of nucleotides and it must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity. This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.



See, one small change, and the molecule is ka-put! It is not available for a next small change.

'DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



But....gee, given millions of years, couldn't one 'good' mutation at a time account for the kind of evolution that Darwin suggests???

No...here's the basis for the 'no'....

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10 to the fiftieth power has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the ‘benefit of the doubt’). Any species known to us, including ‘the smallest single-cell bacteria,’ have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000.
In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist’s favorite expression)."—*I.L. Cohen, "Darwin was Wrong," (1984), p. 205.



Get the point? Those tiny, random changes that Darwin proposed would not prepare an organism for the next tiny alteration…. It would be lethal.



I have yet to see any of the Darwinist drones attempt to dispute this.

 

[PoliticalChic]

11. Now, a quick lesson on the irreducible complexity of DNA, and you will understand that any alteration, mutation, would destroy its usefulness.

DNA is what causes the production of every compound and structure in a cell, and this is why it need be soooooo huge! Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’) DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



Quick example of what changing a single one of those 580,000 ‘letters,’ nucleotides, will do the genetic message:

The nucleotides are 'read' in groups of three...Let's say that this short sentence is the information needed for the cell to build a protein, and we’ll use a sentence with three letter words as though the letters were that nucleotide triplet:

"The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."


Simple, easily understood.....

This sentence represents a gene....I know, much too short...but it's just an example!

Let's assume that each letter corresponds to a nucleotide base, and each word represents a codon, a triplet. The definition of 'codon:' a unit that consists of three adjacent bases on a DNA molecule and that determines the position of a specific amino acid in a protein molecule during protein synthesis.

Basic Genetics

learn.genetics.utah.edu

So.... via a Darwinian random change, what we would call a mutation, would leave out, or add, any one letter in the message, watch how it changes the ‘meaning’ of that sentence:

Drop the first letter, and watch what this sentence, "The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."…..It becomes: "hes unw ash otb utt heo ldm and idn otg eth ish at."

Then it is not the same message at all...the 'mutation' makes the DNA meaningless at best....or lethal at worst! And that is why nearly every single mutation is harmful at best, deadly at worst.



Now apply the idea to the huge DNA molecule....and one can see that Darwin's premise, alterations in the DNA would not produce a new species.....it would destroy the organism.

 

[alang1216]

The math skewers Darwinian theory.

6. Stephen C. Meyer has more recently broken down the probability along slightly different lines, for a small protein molecule, a precursor to living systems, but to the same conclusion:

"The probability of building a chain of 100 amino acids in which all linkages involve peptide bonds is roughly 1 chance in 1030."

"The probability of attaining at random only L-amino acids in a hypothetical peptide chain 100 amino acids long is (1/2)100 or again roughly 1 chance in 1030." [only left-handed amino acid arrangements can be tolerated by functioning proteins]

"…we find that the probability of achieving a functional sequence of amino acids in several functioning proteins at random is still "vanishingly small," roughly 1 chance in 1065 - an astronomically large number - for a protein only one hundred amino acids in length."

"If one also factors in the probability of attaining proper bonding and optical isomers, the probability of constructing a rather short, functional protein at random becomes so small as to be effectively zero (no more than 1 chance in 10125)…" [emphasis mine] 82

Meyer, Stephen C., "Word Games: DNA, Design, & Intelligence", Touchstone, July/August 1999, p. 47

Quoted here: Bibliography



Soooo….is the mathematics wrong, or is Darwin’s theory?

The assumptions that life must be based on DNA and that the process is random are where you went wrong. You're welcome.

 

[alang1216]

10. Where were we...oh...right: The two arguments for Darwin from government school grads are the fossil record and the existence of DNA.

The hope for Darwinists is that DNA and RNA will prove Darwin where fossil evidence failed.....does it?
No, not really. Begin by considering the immense complexity of the DNA molecule,...


A quick tutorial: DNA is a huge molecule that holds the blueprints for every one of the thousands and thousands of enzymes, molecules, and structures that make up each different cell, and identify each organism.
OK, here it comes- the reason why Darwinian gradualism cannot be correct:

...the entire DNA must be complete and in the correct order of nucleotides and it must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity. This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.



See, one small change, and the molecule is ka-put! It is not available for a next small change.

'DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



But....gee, given millions of years, couldn't one 'good' mutation at a time account for the kind of evolution that Darwin suggests???

No...here's the basis for the 'no'....

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10 to the fiftieth power has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the ‘benefit of the doubt’). Any species known to us, including ‘the smallest single-cell bacteria,’ have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000.
In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist’s favorite expression)."—*I.L. Cohen, "Darwin was Wrong," (1984), p. 205.



Get the point? Those tiny, random changes that Darwin proposed would not prepare an organism for the next tiny alteration…. It would be lethal.



I have yet to see any of the Darwinist drones attempt to dispute this.

You assume life began from DNA. You have it backwards DNA began from life.

 

[alang1216]

11. Now, a quick lesson on the irreducible complexity of DNA, and you will understand that any alteration, mutation, would destroy its usefulness.

DNA is what causes the production of every compound and structure in a cell, and this is why it need be soooooo huge! Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’) DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



Quick example of what changing a single one of those 580,000 ‘letters,’ nucleotides, will do the genetic message:

The nucleotides are 'read' in groups of three...Let's say that this short sentence is the information needed for the cell to build a protein, and we’ll use a sentence with three letter words as though the letters were that nucleotide triplet:

"The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."


Simple, easily understood.....

This sentence represents a gene....I know, much too short...but it's just an example!

Let's assume that each letter corresponds to a nucleotide base, and each word represents a codon, a triplet. The definition of 'codon:' a unit that consists of three adjacent bases on a DNA molecule and that determines the position of a specific amino acid in a protein molecule during protein synthesis.

Basic Genetics

learn.genetics.utah.edu

So.... via a Darwinian random change, what we would call a mutation, would leave out, or add, any one letter in the message, watch how it changes the ‘meaning’ of that sentence:

Drop the first letter, and watch what this sentence, "The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."…..It becomes: "hes unw ash otb utt heo ldm and idn otg eth ish at."

Then it is not the same message at all...the 'mutation' makes the DNA meaningless at best....or lethal at worst! And that is why nearly every single mutation is harmful at best, deadly at worst.



Now apply the idea to the huge DNA molecule....and one can see that Darwin's premise, alterations in the DNA would not produce a new species.....it would destroy the organism.

Do you actually understand what you're posting or you just bow to authority?

 

[PoliticalChic]

10. Where were we...oh...right: The two arguments for Darwin from government school grads are the fossil record and the existence of DNA.

The hope for Darwinists is that DNA and RNA will prove Darwin where fossil evidence failed.....does it?
No, not really. Begin by considering the immense complexity of the DNA molecule,...


A quick tutorial: DNA is a huge molecule that holds the blueprints for every one of the thousands and thousands of enzymes, molecules, and structures that make up each different cell, and identify each organism.
OK, here it comes- the reason why Darwinian gradualism cannot be correct:

...the entire DNA must be complete and in the correct order of nucleotides and it must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity. This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.



See, one small change, and the molecule is ka-put! It is not available for a next small change.

'DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



But....gee, given millions of years, couldn't one 'good' mutation at a time account for the kind of evolution that Darwin suggests???

No...here's the basis for the 'no'....

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10 to the fiftieth power has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the ‘benefit of the doubt’). Any species known to us, including ‘the smallest single-cell bacteria,’ have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000.
In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist’s favorite expression)."—*I.L. Cohen, "Darwin was Wrong," (1984), p. 205.



Get the point? Those tiny, random changes that Darwin proposed would not prepare an organism for the next tiny alteration…. It would be lethal.



I have yet to see any of the Darwinist drones attempt to dispute this.

You assume life began from DNA. You have it backwards DNA began from life.

Gads, your'e a moron.

And you don't mind revealing it.

 

[PoliticalChic]

11. Now, a quick lesson on the irreducible complexity of DNA, and you will understand that any alteration, mutation, would destroy its usefulness.

DNA is what causes the production of every compound and structure in a cell, and this is why it need be soooooo huge! Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’) DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



Quick example of what changing a single one of those 580,000 ‘letters,’ nucleotides, will do the genetic message:

The nucleotides are 'read' in groups of three...Let's say that this short sentence is the information needed for the cell to build a protein, and we’ll use a sentence with three letter words as though the letters were that nucleotide triplet:

"The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."


Simple, easily understood.....

This sentence represents a gene....I know, much too short...but it's just an example!

Let's assume that each letter corresponds to a nucleotide base, and each word represents a codon, a triplet. The definition of 'codon:' a unit that consists of three adjacent bases on a DNA molecule and that determines the position of a specific amino acid in a protein molecule during protein synthesis.

Basic Genetics

learn.genetics.utah.edu

So.... via a Darwinian random change, what we would call a mutation, would leave out, or add, any one letter in the message, watch how it changes the ‘meaning’ of that sentence:

Drop the first letter, and watch what this sentence, "The sun was hot but the old man did not get his hat."…..It becomes: "hes unw ash otb utt heo ldm and idn otg eth ish at."

Then it is not the same message at all...the 'mutation' makes the DNA meaningless at best....or lethal at worst! And that is why nearly every single mutation is harmful at best, deadly at worst.



Now apply the idea to the huge DNA molecule....and one can see that Darwin's premise, alterations in the DNA would not produce a new species.....it would destroy the organism.

Do you actually understand what you're posting or you just bow to authority?

I never like being repetitious, but, yet again, I must note that this is not a thread for one with your limited knowledge of the subject.

Stick to the finger painting thread and the one on constructing stuff with a mixture of flour and water.

See ya'....

 

[alang1216]

10. Where were we...oh...right: The two arguments for Darwin from government school grads are the fossil record and the existence of DNA.

The hope for Darwinists is that DNA and RNA will prove Darwin where fossil evidence failed.....does it?
No, not really. Begin by considering the immense complexity of the DNA molecule,...


A quick tutorial: DNA is a huge molecule that holds the blueprints for every one of the thousands and thousands of enzymes, molecules, and structures that make up each different cell, and identify each organism.
OK, here it comes- the reason why Darwinian gradualism cannot be correct:

...the entire DNA must be complete and in the correct order of nucleotides and it must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity. This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.



See, one small change, and the molecule is ka-put! It is not available for a next small change.

'DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 ‘letters,’7—humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See ‘The programs of life’, for an explanation of the DNA ‘letters.’)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess? - creation.com



But....gee, given millions of years, couldn't one 'good' mutation at a time account for the kind of evolution that Darwin suggests???

No...here's the basis for the 'no'....

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10 to the fiftieth power has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the ‘benefit of the doubt’). Any species known to us, including ‘the smallest single-cell bacteria,’ have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000.
In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist’s favorite expression)."—*I.L. Cohen, "Darwin was Wrong," (1984), p. 205.



Get the point? Those tiny, random changes that Darwin proposed would not prepare an organism for the next tiny alteration…. It would be lethal.



I have yet to see any of the Darwinist drones attempt to dispute this.

You assume life began from DNA. You have it backwards DNA began from life.

Gads, your'e a moron.

And you don't mind revealing it.

I'm chalk up that non-answer in the "Is not" category.

 

[Hollie]

18. “To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it."
--Richard Dawkins,

19. “Many states have brought in Intelligent Design but they have called it science. A design needs a designer which is god. It's religion, not science."
--William Nowers, one of the founders of Creation and Evolution Studies classes in Virginia.

20. "Incorporating intelligent design into science classrooms is an obvious impediment to scientific progress."
--Alan J. Scott in "Danger! Scientific Inquiry Hazard" Skeptical Inquirer,

21. “Let's not kid ourselves. Regardless of superficial scientific appearances, intelligent design was fabricated by a handful of Christian apologists with the mission of discrediting evolution and of bringing conservative Christian values into public school classrooms."
--Charles L. Rulon in "Debating Creationists" Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 31, No. 3, May/June 2007

22. "... putting intelligent design in opposition to Darwin is like offering a program on faith healing versus oncology. Faith healing is worth discussing, but not as a scientific alternative to medical treatment ..."
--Lee Cullum, "

 

[Hollie]

23. "Pseudoscientists make poorly substantiated or demonstrably false claims and refuse to relinquish them when shown the counterevidence. 'Scientific' creationism and its 2.0 version, 'intelligent design,' provide the canonical examples of the conservative embrace of pseudoscience. Creationists and intelligent design proponents claim to act scientifically, but in fact they do little more than spread scientific-sounding arguments in defense of a biblical or religious agenda. It is doubtful whether any amount of evidence would change their minds."
--Chris Mooney in The Republican War on Science p. 22

24. "Dembski's law of conservation of information and the rest of Intelligent Design are not just pseudoscience, they are wrong pseudoscience."
--Victor J. Stenger in

 

[abu afak]

A mathematician who claimed that there was insufficient time for the number of mutations apparently needed to make an eye was told by the biologists that his figures must be wrong. The mathematicians, though, were not persuaded that the fault was theirs. As one said: There is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology. Schützenberger, M. P. (1967) “Algorithms and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution” in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, ed. P. S. Moorhead and M. M. Kaplan, Wistar Institute Press, Philadelphia, p. 75.
[Found in Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box: The-Biochemical-Challenge-to-Evolution”]



So…when Darwin’s theory fails the test of mathematics…..who ya’ gonna call….ghost busters???

Michael J. Behe (1952) is an American biochemist, author, and advocate of the Pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).[2][3] He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known as an advocate for the validity of the argument for irreducible complexity (IC), which claims that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases related to intelligent design, including the court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District where his views were cited in the ruling that intelligent design is not science and is religious in nature.[4]

Behe's claims about the irreducible complexity of essential cellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community,[5][6] and his own biology department at Lehigh University published a statement Repudiating Behe's views and intelligent design.[7][8]

`

 

[PoliticalChic]

“Although Darwin’s theory is often compared favorably to the great theories of mathematical physics on the grounds that evolution is as well established as gravity, very few physicists have been heard observing that gravity is as well established as evolution.” Philip Zaleski

 

[PoliticalChic]

William Dembski, with doctorates in both mathematics and philosophy, in his book, ``Uncommon Dissent’’, which is a collection of articles denouncing many of the claims Darwinists make, says, in reference to speciation, "That’s the problem with Darwinism: In place of detailed, testable accounts of how a complex, biological system could realistically have emerged, Darwinism offers just-so stories about how such systems might have emerged in some idealized conceptual space far removed from biological reality."

"...just so stories...."

For Liberals reading along, that means fairy tales.

 

[Hollie]

25. Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life—yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
-Michael Shermer



26. Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact–which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent’s position. They are good at that. I don’t think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!
-Stephen J. Gould