Darwinist
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- flagellum0
A quote:
"Basically, Dawkins is promoting a certain epistemology that elevates science to scientism. Based on the promo, it appears that Dawkins wants us to accept that the only path true and reliable knowledge is what we know from the methods of science. If he were forced to put it as a premise it would be something like “only the scientific method can provide with true and reliable knowledge.” But how would he know that to be true? He can’t demonstrate it via the scientific method because the reliability of the deliverances of the method are what is at issue. He can’t rely on history and say something like “well, look at how much we’ve learned so far”, because there are many things we know that we didn’t learn from science. So what Dawkins wants is an intellectual world where A is “science is the only path to true and reliable knowledge” and non-A where in order to hold to that notion he must also accept that he has other avenues to true and reliable knowledge. In other words, it is all bluff and bluster. Just once I’d like some TV commentator force Dawkins and those of his ilk to explain how they can intellectually hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and say that they are the ones following logic and reason and those who disagree with them have abandon them. This show promises to be Dawkins at the height of his intellectual arrogance. The show should be placed in the comedy category. "
- ********0
Smackdown:
DS: One of the big claims made by IDCists involves a concept called Irreducible Complexity which means, as I understand it, that there are structures at many levels in living organisms in which each component is critical. Remove any component and the entire system fails catastrophically. And so, the claim goes that such a system could not develop in a step by step fashion required by natural selection because the transitory stages would have either have no adaptive value or result in the death of the owner. What's wrong with that?
PZ: This is the same logic that would say it is impossible to build an arch, because removing one piece would cause the whole thing to tumble down. Yet arches are built every day -- bridges must be miracles!
The answer, of course, is that arches are supported by a scaffold during their assembly, and similarly, "irreducibly complex" pathways were supported by duplications and redundancy during their evolution. I've explained this in a little detail here. Simply put, there are two broad explanations for how IC systems could evolve. One is that intermediate steps can be added by gene duplication that do not interfere and can even enhance the effectiveness of the pathway, and subsequent loss of redundancy makes them essential and unremovable. The other explanation is that it is a mistake to assume loss of a piece would cause failure; it may not function for the role you think it should, but it may function in some other capacity. Biological systems tend to be highly multifunctional and rich with redundancies, so none of this is surprising.
You asked earlier why people should think me more credible than Behe. One reason is that he has rested his career on this untenable nonsense of "irreducible complexity", which is so trivially false that it implies a deep misunderstanding of basic concepts of molecular evolution. "
- ********0
flagellum/discipler, right, there are common misconceptions about evolution in general. I posted the major ones way way way above
- flagellum0
A testimony:
"I was a Dawkins-style, militant intellectual atheist and devout Darwinist until age 43 (I’m now 55). However, once I was exposed to the works of Michael Denton, C.S. Lewis, the HS and others, I realized that everything I believed about everything that ultimately matters was wrong. (In essence, I finally realized that atheism is logically self-refuting and horribly destructive — both personally and societally — in too many ways to discuss here.)
Former atheist and Harvard Ph.D. Patrick Glynn commented in his book, “God: The Evidence — The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World,” that the realization of what I described above put him into something of a psychological tailspin. The Good News is that I pulled out of that tailspin and am thriving as never before.
By the way, an unholy trinity (Stalin, Lenin, Mao) is conservatively estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of more that 100,000,000 people. This was done in the name of an explicitly atheistic philosophy called Marxism."
- flagellum0
Sleeper hold:
"Nevertheless, finding a subsystem of a functional system that performs some other function is hardly an argument for the original system evolving from that other system. One might just as well say that because the motor of a motorcycle can be used as a blender, therefore the motor evolved into the motorcycle. Perhaps, but not without intelligent design. "
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/wd…
Still IC and still spinning.
- balboa0
How many times is it necessary for Flagellator to be epicly latered?
At this point, other than flexing some seriously impressive expository muscles, aren't we just honing his debate skills?
Aren't we simply enabling him to evolve into a more resistant strain of the virus?
Who is benefiting more from this exercise after 4509450945 responses?
One side gets higher blood pressure and does everything it can to shine a larger spotlight on what it considers to be a flawed theory, while the other finds more nuanced ways to pirouette around each attack.
Collectively you have proven that a complex subject can be rotated and displayed infinitely, but still not completely understood.
But isn't part of the ID posse's game to patiently keep the subject in the public sphere so that, through sheer volume of debate (and the scientific community's increased effort to methodically disprove every miniscule detail) it succeeds at positioning itself "in opposition" to the prevailing theory?
Hasn't Flagelicious essentially inferred that his sole purpose is to perpetuate the debate?
If so, then this battle was won/lost at the 100th post.
meh.
- ********0
Also from same source quoted above:
"If you want to grow a replacement organ in a vat, if you want to know how to switch off those rogue cells that make up a cancer, if you want to reconstruct an extinct animal, if you want to switch on the process of neural regeneration after spinal cord injury...all of these are technologies that will emerge from the field of developmental biology."
Dsiscipler/Self-Flagellator:
Please tell me what field mentioned their ID scientists are hard at work in? Organ replacement? Cancer research? What facsinating boon to mankind ar ethey working on? I mean other than trying to cut off critical thinking and send us back to fuedal times?
- flagellum0
Homology of components and co-option, does nothing for anti-religionist, P.Z. Myers. He's spouting the same refuted argument as Ken Miller. Efficient engineers always re-use materials for other systems. Doesn't show how a mindless mechanism can build something needs all it's parts at once and has been shown to fail with the removal of one component. If anything homology points even more toward ID.
Tick, is rehashing old data.
- ********0
ehhhh this thread is starting to get ugly and no fun
- flagellum0
All of those, Tick(le).
You have actively researching:
Biochemists
Astronomers
Biologists
Physicistsetc... etc...
Your arguments from ignorance aren't doing much for um... whatever your cause is.
- ********0
balboa,
well said. I find myself silly continuing to respond to this charlatan and huckster of simple-mindedness. And the last thing I want to do is help this peddler of quackery evolve to a higher rhetorical plane. I bow out knowing I have won the war, the battle and the women.
Flagellator is like Baghdad Bob - "Even now we are killing Americans by the thousands!"
Um, yeah. OK. You can call the sky green all day, ain't going to make it so.
- flagellum0
You can get the background of just some of the high profile ID proponents here:
- flagellum0
hehe, Tick. You've succeeded in dodging the actual hard science again and simply quoting and linking old data which you haven't done any comparative study about.
Enjoy the spoils of... emm... victory!
- ********0
One last, and then I am out:
- balboa0
haha
"peddler of quackery"
...like a duck on a bike?
The funny thing would be if we all shut up, and he kept posting. Like, we all left the room during the conference call, and the drone just went on and on and on -
and on
and on
:)
- flagellum0
I love that cartoon, Tick! It demonstrates exactly what ID'ists believe. Namely, that you only get adaptation within a species. Ever seen bacteria become something other than bacteria? Exactly. ;) Nobody doubts microevolution.
Silly Doonsbury cartoonist. He should have done his homework first.
- pavlovs_dog0
" At this point, other than flexing some seriously impressive expository muscles, aren't we just honing his debate skills? "
hear, hear!
its time to engage the flaggelate in a campaign of mockery.
- flagellum0
Yes!
"We can't counter his facts about the science, so rather than be intellectually honest about the evidence... let's just sling mud! It's more fun anyways!"
...
- pavlovs_dog0
no?
- balboa0
No need to sling mud at anything. We're just going to wander off to a more interesting corner of the intarweb. This one's imploded in a black hole of under hot air, ego whoring and bloated puffery.
:P