On 7/14/23 3:45 PM, Ron.Dean wrote:[snip]
On 7/14/2,
not my citeI looked up this book on amazon. For a boo, it's just too
expensive. I live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have
another reason fpr going into town.....
Well worth the 30 miles.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonablewhere vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost
all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this
one.
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the
reasons given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian
complex animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for
highly complex animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the
globe so massive erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is
a very controversial subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Naked links are not conducive to good discussion. And what you say is
a jumble of falsities and things that happened too early to be
relevant to the Cambrian explosion.
But, is there any bona fide links between any of the Cambrian phylaThese modern phyla app,snip>These are successively smaller groups of phyla that you would do
well to
familiarize yourself with, since Bill Rogers and others keep
copying such equivocations from each other.
to these phyla? According to the article, the affinities are still
of small shelly fossils.
What article? What are "these phyla"? If you refer to eumetazoans,
etc., those aren't phyla. They're higher groups containing many
phyla. The small, shelly fauna contains organisms that belong to
these groups but not to any modern phylum. That's what intermediates
look like.
not my cite.
Second, only a small handful were true intermediates between modernAre you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered
phyla
and the smallest of the above listed groups containing them. Most
are "small shellies"
and most of those are too fragmentary to even classify them.
progenitors of Cambrian Phyla?
According to this::
shttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains>.
According to this, what?
What do you mean by "according to this"?
Sorry, couldn't sleep so, I tried this.I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionaryThis is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep
articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
development in biology. It is called the 3/rd field of biology.
Among the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll calls this evidence
proving common descent, beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping
with his own world view. These master control genes, because of
their ancient appearance, their highly conserved nature, throughout
time. And the universality of this family of genes in all animals of
the animal k>> kingdom could certainly be interpreted as evidence of
design.
You need to slow down and concentrate on typing complete, coherent
sentences. You can of course interpret anything you like as anything
you like, but do you have actual reasons why what we see would be
expected from design rather than evolution?
Probably better done with a clear head, if you want to be understood and
have any consideration for anyone reading you.
When you say "design", what do you mean? Are you referring toI think these homeobox genes can be trace back at least to the
separate creation of species?
Cambrian. And I believe the emergence of these genes enabled the building
and formation of animal bodies, organs, limbs etc. of the metazoans at
the time of Cambrian explosion. These are the same master control genes
that control the physical lay-out, from head to toe and the formation
of animal bodies at the present time. As an engineer, I am amazed at the
intricate, far-reaching, effectiveness, elegance and the stability of
these master control gene over such a vast span of time. It just seems
too much for mindless, random, thoughtless trial and error processes
to have evolved this masterpiece of "design". It just seems that there
must have been a purposeful objective forward looking designer.
I will admit when it comes to biology I and out of my element. But
what biologist describe as ancient, highly conserved, and universal
throughout the animal kingdom, this seems convincing. Of course,
biologist see this as convincing proof of common ancestory.
That's nice, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with my
question. Perhaps you could have another go at it.
You can thank the spell corrector. It did not love homeobox genes.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed
each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions
years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs
and organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is
demonstrated by this one organ (the eye) experiment.
I love the idea of Homeboy genes.
I guessed as much. It's a wonderful typo.
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/23 3:45 PM, Ron.Dean wrote:[snip]
On 7/14/2,
not my citeI looked up this book on amazon. For a boo, it's just too
expensive. I live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have >>>> another reason fpr going into town.....
Well worth the 30 miles.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonablewhere vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost >>>>>> all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this >>>>> one.
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the
reasons given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian
complex animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for
highly complex animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the >>>> globe so massive erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is >>>> a very controversial subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Naked links are not conducive to good discussion. And what you say is >>> a jumble of falsities and things that happened too early to be
relevant to the Cambrian explosion.
But, is there any bona fide links between any of the Cambrian phyla >>>> to these phyla? According to the article, the affinities are stillThese modern phyla app,snip>These are successively smaller groups of phyla that you would do
well to
familiarize yourself with, since Bill Rogers and others keep
copying such equivocations from each other.
of small shelly fossils.
What article? What are "these phyla"? If you refer to eumetazoans,
etc., those aren't phyla. They're higher groups containing many
phyla. The small, shelly fauna contains organisms that belong to
these groups but not to any modern phylum. That's what intermediates
look like.
not my cite.
Second, only a small handful were true intermediates between modern >>>>> phylaAre you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered
and the smallest of the above listed groups containing them. Most >>>>> are "small shellies"
and most of those are too fragmentary to even classify them.
progenitors of Cambrian Phyla?
According to this::
shttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains>.
According to this, what?
What do you mean by "according to this"?
Sorry, couldn't sleep so, I tried this.I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionaryThis is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep
articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
development in biology. It is called the 3/rd field of biology.
Among the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll calls this evidence
proving common descent, beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping >>>> with his own world view. These master control genes, because of
their ancient appearance, their highly conserved nature, throughout >>>> time. And the universality of this family of genes in all animals of >>>> the animal k>> kingdom could certainly be interpreted as evidence of >>>> design.
You need to slow down and concentrate on typing complete, coherent
sentences. You can of course interpret anything you like as anything
you like, but do you have actual reasons why what we see would be
expected from design rather than evolution?
Probably better done with a clear head, if you want to be understood and have any consideration for anyone reading you.
When you say "design", what do you mean? Are you referring toI think these homeobox genes can be trace back at least to the
separate creation of species?
Cambrian. And I believe the emergence of these genes enabled the building >> and formation of animal bodies, organs, limbs etc. of the metazoans at
the time of Cambrian explosion. These are the same master control genes >> that control the physical lay-out, from head to toe and the formation
of animal bodies at the present time. As an engineer, I am amazed at the >> intricate, far-reaching, effectiveness, elegance and the stability of
these master control gene over such a vast span of time. It just seems >> too much for mindless, random, thoughtless trial and error processes
to have evolved this masterpiece of "design". It just seems that there
must have been a purposeful objective forward looking designer.
I will admit when it comes to biology I and out of my element. But
what biologist describe as ancient, highly conserved, and universal
throughout the animal kingdom, this seems convincing. Of course,
biologist see this as convincing proof of common ancestory.
That's nice, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with my
question. Perhaps you could have another go at it.
To answer your question: no, I was not claiming a separate design for each species. I tried to answer my thought in the above paragraph. But I did
not come across very well. The truth is, the discovery of this "third
field of biology',
called the "Evolutionary Developmental Biology", which as of yet, I
do not
have a very deep understanding. But I know enough, that it seems to go against
the special concept of design that I have held for maybe two decades.
This
new science goes by several labels by biologist: "Master Control Genes", "the
science of evo devo" a "toolkit" and "the hox family of genes".
This new science of evo devo comes across to me, as hard, solid data,
facts that's
inescapable and actually has been demonstrated in a lab, so the reality
of this toolkit
has been _observed_ and so this new science of evo devo is undeniable.
But this is new to me,
theoretical, just -so-stories, hope, supposition and un-observed and un-observable. But what I learned lately has answered
more of my questions and issues than anything that I've encountered in
the past.
Not that I've given up on deliberate, purposeful design, but I cannot
rule out or
discount evolution, because of what has been _actually_observed_. So, for me I'm not as convinced or committed as I've been. So, At this point, I'm taking a leave
of talk origins.
You can thank the spell corrector. It did not love homeobox genes.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed >>>> each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions >>>> years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs
and organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is
demonstrated by this one organ (the eye) experiment.
I love the idea of Homeboy genes.
I guessed as much. It's a wonderful typo.
On Sunday, July 16, 2023 at 6:00:41 AM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/23 3:45 PM, Ron.Dean wrote:[snip]
On 7/14/2,
To answer your question: no, I was not claiming a separate design for each >> species. I tried to answer my thought in the above paragraph. But I didnot my citeI looked up this book on amazon. For a boo, it's just too
expensive. I live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have >>>>>> another reason fpr going into town.....
Well worth the 30 miles.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonablewhere vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost >>>>>>>> all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this >>>>>>> one.
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the
reasons given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian
complex animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for
highly complex animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the >>>>>> globe so massive erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is >>>>>> a very controversial subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Naked links are not conducive to good discussion. And what you say is >>>>> a jumble of falsities and things that happened too early to be
relevant to the Cambrian explosion.
But, is there any bona fide links between any of the Cambrian phyla >>>>>> to these phyla? According to the article, the affinities are still >>>>>> of small shelly fossils.These modern phyla app,snip>These are successively smaller groups of phyla that you would do >>>>>>> well to
familiarize yourself with, since Bill Rogers and others keep
copying such equivocations from each other.
What article? What are "these phyla"? If you refer to eumetazoans,
etc., those aren't phyla. They're higher groups containing many
phyla. The small, shelly fauna contains organisms that belong to
these groups but not to any modern phylum. That's what intermediates >>>>> look like.
not my cite.
Second, only a small handful were true intermediates between modern >>>>>>> phylaAre you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered
and the smallest of the above listed groups containing them. Most >>>>>>> are "small shellies"
and most of those are too fragmentary to even classify them.
progenitors of Cambrian Phyla?
According to this::
shttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains>.
According to this, what?
What do you mean by "according to this"?
Sorry, couldn't sleep so, I tried this.I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionaryThis is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep >>>>>>> articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
development in biology. It is called the 3/rd field of biology.
Among the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll calls this evidence
proving common descent, beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping >>>>>> with his own world view. These master control genes, because of
their ancient appearance, their highly conserved nature, throughout >>>>>> time. And the universality of this family of genes in all animals of >>>>>> the animal k>> kingdom could certainly be interpreted as evidence of >>>>>> design.
You need to slow down and concentrate on typing complete, coherent
sentences. You can of course interpret anything you like as anything >>>>> you like, but do you have actual reasons why what we see would be
expected from design rather than evolution?
Probably better done with a clear head, if you want to be understood and >>> have any consideration for anyone reading you.
When you say "design", what do you mean? Are you referring toI think these homeobox genes can be trace back at least to the
separate creation of species?
Cambrian. And I believe the emergence of these genes enabled the building >>>> and formation of animal bodies, organs, limbs etc. of the metazoans at >>>> the time of Cambrian explosion. These are the same master control genes >>>> that control the physical lay-out, from head to toe and the formation
of animal bodies at the present time. As an engineer, I am amazed at the >>>> intricate, far-reaching, effectiveness, elegance and the stability of
these master control gene over such a vast span of time. It just seems >>>> too much for mindless, random, thoughtless trial and error processes
to have evolved this masterpiece of "design". It just seems that there >>>> must have been a purposeful objective forward looking designer.
I will admit when it comes to biology I and out of my element. But
what biologist describe as ancient, highly conserved, and universal
throughout the animal kingdom, this seems convincing. Of course,
biologist see this as convincing proof of common ancestory.
That's nice, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with my
question. Perhaps you could have another go at it.
not come across very well. The truth is, the discovery of this "third
field of biology',
called the "Evolutionary Developmental Biology", which as of yet, I
do not
have a very deep understanding. But I know enough, that it seems to go
against
the special concept of design that I have held for maybe two decades.
This
new science goes by several labels by biologist: "Master Control Genes",
"the
science of evo devo" a "toolkit" and "the hox family of genes".
This new science of evo devo comes across to me, as hard, solid data,
facts that's
inescapable and actually has been demonstrated in a lab, so the reality
of this toolkit
has been _observed_ and so this new science of evo devo is undeniable.
But this is new to me,
That's strange - seeing that people introduced that concept in discussion with you over a decade ago like here:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/E0RdBun56Ak/m/wZCUYO7XWHMJ
and by 2019 at least, a mere 9 years later, you too seem to have discovered it for your purposes:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/x6-WYJILk5A/m/0qOFSTflBgAJ
at the time you were informed that far from being "new", it has been around since the 1970s....
I had thought of evolution as hypothetical,
theoretical, just -so-stories, hope, supposition and un-observed and
un-observable. But what I learned lately has answered
more of my questions and issues than anything that I've encountered in
the past.
Not that I've given up on deliberate, purposeful design, but I cannot
rule out or
discount evolution, because of what has been _actually_observed_. So, for me >> I'm not as convinced or committed as I've been. So, At this point, I'm
taking a leave
of talk origins.
You can thank the spell corrector. It did not love homeobox genes.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed >>>>>> each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions >>>>>> years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs >>>>>> and organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is
demonstrated by this one organ (the eye) experiment.
I love the idea of Homeboy genes.
I guessed as much. It's a wonderful typo.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 7:15:40 PM UTC+1, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/14/23 11:08 AM, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 04:09:02 -0400, "Ron.Dean"I read this one reference. From this site, there were no
<[email protected]> wrote:
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the reasons >>>> given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex >>>> animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive >>>> erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial >>>> subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
evidence of fossil linkages back to common ancestors or progenitors.
In fact, near the beginning you find this comment,"the question is
centered over poverty of fossils in the Precambrian" ..."it's still
poorly understood."
It goes on to say " most living animal phyla made their appearance
during the first 20 million years of the Cambrian. In reference to
Ediacurian faunta "they lacked diagnostic features of metazoans and
difficult to to link to Cambrian fauna or living phyla"?.
Towards the end of the article you find this question: "why do no new
phyla arise in subsequent evolutionary radiations?"
I would not, I do not think there is any linkages between phyla. For
Question 1: How would you describe a "reasonable evolutionary
pathway"? >
evolution to occur from a common ancestor, would require several
crossovers between various intermediary phyla.
Eh, no? That makes no sense whatsoever. Me and my great cousin have a common ancestor, that does not mean that there were "crossoevers" between our parents.
made to match this requirement. Where is your equivalent observation when it comes to species?I believe that most phyla arose during the Cambrian, and I think each
phyla is set in stone. But, I can acknowledge that changes occur within
phyla.
In view of the fact that 98%+ of all species that ever lived went
extinct, I question that there is any way to determined
which intermediate links survived to give rise to later descendants.
It's generally possible to recognize design by observation,
Question 2: What evidence do you have that shows Cambrian forms were
designed by a purposeful agent?
yup. Go to any architect's or engineer's office, and you can indeed observe design: you see plans, models, drawings, prototypes, discarded models that did not work etc etc . We observe how a task is formulated, or a need articulated, and then attempts
theories about the way we build them I'd say, If they are more radically different from us, they probably won't and may not even recognise it as a separate object. If they identify it as a separate object, it would then depend if they have a good theoryhowever,
the explanation which is frequently used to disqualify observed
design is the human involvement in known designs. Another disqualifying
characteristic often used is the denial of observed design.
It occurs to me that the space vehicle Voyager 1 is now far beyond
our solar system and into interstellar space.
Suppose, an intelligent agent, from an advanced civilization, were to
find Voyager 1, would he dismiss it as designed, because the designer is
unknown. Or would the observation of design be sufficient to it.
for my civilized agent? I it were to employ the same criteria as we
do. It would not. It would find some way to prove it some how to be the
result of natural processes.
Depends entirely how similar they are to use, and how that on that basis they can form reliable theories about our plans, goals and intentions when building the spacecraft, and if they use similar tools in their civilisation so that they can form
On 7/14/23 4:10 PM, Burkhard wrote:........................
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 7:15:40 PM UTC+1, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/14/23 11:08 AM, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 04:09:02 -0400, "Ron.Dean"I read this one reference. From this site, there were no
<[email protected]> wrote:
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the reasons >>>> given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex
animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive >>>> erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial >>>> subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
evidence of fossil linkages back to common ancestors or progenitors.
In fact, near the beginning you find this comment,"the question is
centered over poverty of fossils in the Precambrian" ..."it's still
poorly understood."
It goes on to say " most living animal phyla made their appearance
during the first 20 million years of the Cambrian. In reference to
Ediacurian faunta "they lacked diagnostic features of metazoans and
difficult to to link to Cambrian fauna or living phyla"?.
Towards the end of the article you find this question: "why do no new
phyla arise in subsequent evolutionary radiations?"
I would not, I do not think there is any linkages between phyla. For
Question 1: How would you describe a "reasonable evolutionary
pathway"? >
evolution to occur from a common ancestor, would require several
crossovers between various intermediary phyla.
Eh, no? That makes no sense whatsoever. Me and my great cousin have a common ancestor, that does not mean that there were "crossoevers" between our parents.
You and your cousin are of the same phyla, so no cross over required.
But from a single ancestor to humanns there are several phyla that the evolutionary pate would need to take.
I believe that most phyla arose during the Cambrian, and I think each
phyla is set in stone. But, I can acknowledge that changes occur within >> phyla.
In view of the fact that 98%+ of all species that ever lived went
extinct, I question that there is any way to determined
which intermediate links survived to give rise to later descendants.
It's generally possible to recognize design by observation,
Question 2: What evidence do you have that shows Cambrian forms were
designed by a purposeful agent?
attempts made to match this requirement. Where is your equivalent observation when it comes to species?yup. Go to any architect's or engineer's office, and you can indeed observe design: you see plans, models, drawings, prototypes, discarded models that did not work etc etc . We observe how a task is formulated, or a need articulated, and then
You do not see this at the cite of the pyramids.
theories about the way we build them I'd say, If they are more radically different from us, they probably won't and may not even recognise it as a separate object. If they identify it as a separate object, it would then depend if they have a good theoryhowever,
the explanation which is frequently used to disqualify observed
design is the human involvement in known designs. Another disqualifying >> characteristic often used is the denial of observed design.
It occurs to me that the space vehicle Voyager 1 is now far beyond
our solar system and into interstellar space.
Suppose, an intelligent agent, from an advanced civilization, were to
find Voyager 1, would he dismiss it as designed, because the designer is >> unknown. Or would the observation of design be sufficient to it.
for my civilized agent? I it were to employ the same criteria as we
do. It would not. It would find some way to prove it some how to be the >> result of natural processes.
Depends entirely how similar they are to use, and how that on that basis they can form reliable theories about our plans, goals and intentions when building the spacecraft, and if they use similar tools in their civilisation so that they can form
I think if they were intelligent critters, regardless of the degree of likeness to us, I believe they would recognize design.
On 7/14/23 4:10 PM, Burkhard wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 7:15:40 PM UTC+1, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/14/23 11:08 AM, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 04:09:02 -0400, "Ron.Dean"I read this one reference. From this site, there were no
<[email protected]> wrote:
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the early Cambrian or the Ediacaran. I've recall the reasons >>>> given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex
animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive >>>> erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial >>>> subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
evidence of fossil linkages back to common ancestors or progenitors.
In fact, near the beginning you find this comment,"the question is
centered over poverty of fossils in the Precambrian" ..."it's still
poorly understood."
It goes on to say " most living animal phyla made their appearance
during the first 20 million years of the Cambrian. In reference to
Ediacurian faunta "they lacked diagnostic features of metazoans and
difficult to to link to Cambrian fauna or living phyla"?.
Towards the end of the article you find this question: "why do no new
phyla arise in subsequent evolutionary radiations?"
I would not, I do not think there is any linkages between phyla. For
Question 1: How would you describe a "reasonable evolutionary
pathway"? >
evolution to occur from a common ancestor, would require several
crossovers between various intermediary phyla.
Eh, no? That makes no sense whatsoever. Me and my great cousin have a common ancestor, that does not mean that there were "crossoevers" between our parents.
You and your cousin are of the same phyla, so no cross over required.
But from a single ancestor to humanns there are several phyla that the evolutionary pate would need to take.attempts made to match this requirement. Where is your equivalent observation when it comes to species?
I believe that most phyla arose during the Cambrian, and I think each
phyla is set in stone. But, I can acknowledge that changes occur within >> phyla.
In view of the fact that 98%+ of all species that ever lived went
extinct, I question that there is any way to determined
which intermediate links survived to give rise to later descendants.
It's generally possible to recognize design by observation,
Question 2: What evidence do you have that shows Cambrian forms were
designed by a purposeful agent?
yup. Go to any architect's or engineer's office, and you can indeed observe design: you see plans, models, drawings, prototypes, discarded models that did not work etc etc . We observe how a task is formulated, or a need articulated, and then
You do not see this at the cite of the pyramids.
theories about the way we build them I'd say, If they are more radically different from us, they probably won't and may not even recognise it as a separate object. If they identify it as a separate object, it would then depend if they have a good theoryhowever,
the explanation which is frequently used to disqualify observed
design is the human involvement in known designs. Another disqualifying >> characteristic often used is the denial of observed design.
It occurs to me that the space vehicle Voyager 1 is now far beyond
our solar system and into interstellar space.
Suppose, an intelligent agent, from an advanced civilization, were to
find Voyager 1, would he dismiss it as designed, because the designer is >> unknown. Or would the observation of design be sufficient to it.
for my civilized agent? I it were to employ the same criteria as we
do. It would not. It would find some way to prove it some how to be the >> result of natural processes.
Depends entirely how similar they are to use, and how that on that basis they can form reliable theories about our plans, goals and intentions when building the spacecraft, and if they use similar tools in their civilisation so that they can form
I think if they were intelligent critters, regardless of the degree of likeness to us, I believe they would recognize design.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write
then stands discredited.
Sean Carroll [claims] it as evidence proving common
descent beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping with his own world
view.
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems:
It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
It is the creationists who link the Cambrian with existential crisis.
I'd say they are the ones who can't cope. Perhaps I'm overgeneralizing,
but it seems creationists cannot cope with large unknowns in anything.
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this one.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >> distinct modern phyla.
Bill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
Are you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered progenitors
of Cambrian Phyla?
According to this::
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
This is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionary development
in biology is called the 3/rd field of biology is said by biologist,
Amoung the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll it as evidence proving common descent beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping with his own world view. These master control genes because of their ancient appearance,
their highly conserved nature throughout time and the universality of
this family of genes throughout time and the animal kingdom could
certainly be interpreted as evidence of design.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed
each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions
years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs and organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is demonstrated by
this one organ (the eye) experiment.
file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html
<file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html>
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems:
It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
More than one leading cosmologist has noted that, compared to it, the evolution of
stars and galaxies is child's play, because only a few physical laws are needed for
an amazing amount of insight into how it happens.
In the other direction, even this hard problem is child's play compared to the origin
of life as we know it, from 20 amino acids and five nucleotides to the most primitive
free-living prokaryotes. After half a century of effort, we have been able to synthesize
the amino acids and nucleotides under simulated prebiotic conditions.
However, these are only on the first two floors of my metaphorical 100 story skyscraper
that life as we know it had to ascend. I talk about it in the post I linked for Ron Dean:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
Jul 14, 2023, 4:30:40?PM
It is the creationists who link the Cambrian with existential crisis.
I'd say they are the ones who can't cope. Perhaps I'm overgeneralizing,
but it seems creationists cannot cope with large unknowns in anything.
I don't think they have a problem with understanding stellar evolution.
The first university course in astronomy at my university explains that in great detail.
Of course, most creationists don't take such courses, and neither do most university science majors,
but the more intelligent ones would not have a problem with that, or even with
teaching themselves from a good textbook of astronomy.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems:
It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
I have no
problem with that. Evolution cannot "cope" with quasars or economic
cycles, either; there are other sciences for coping with them.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems: >> It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway?
The creationist alternative, to make up shit, is, in my opinion, the opposite of doing justice to the problem.
Your alternative, which seems
to be admitting that the problem is hard and unsolved and then giving
up, is only a little better.
On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:24:02 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems: >> It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
More than one leading cosmologist has noted that, compared to it, the evolution of
stars and galaxies is child's play, because only a few physical laws are needed for
an amazing amount of insight into how it happens.
In the other direction, even this hard problem is child's play compared to the origin
of life as we know it, from 20 amino acids and five nucleotides to the most primitive
free-living prokaryotes. After half a century of effort, we have been able to synthesize
the amino acids and nucleotides under simulated prebiotic conditions.
However, these are only on the first two floors of my metaphorical 100 story skyscraper
that life as we know it had to ascend. I talk about it in the post I linked for Ron Dean:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
Jul 14, 2023, 4:30:40?PM
It is the creationists who link the Cambrian with existential crisis.
I'd say they are the ones who can't cope. Perhaps I'm overgeneralizing, >> but it seems creationists cannot cope with large unknowns in anything.
I don't think they have a problem with understanding stellar evolution. >The first university course in astronomy at my university explains that in great detail.
Of course, most creationists don't take such courses, and neither do most university science majors,
but the more intelligent ones would not have a problem with that, or even with
teaching themselves from a good textbook of astronomy.
Right, like Jason Lisle for example: <https://answersingenesis.org/bios/jason-lisle/> **************************************
Dr. Lisle has authored a number of books and articles. His books
include Taking Back Astronomy and The Ultimate Proof of Creation, and
he coauthored Old-Earth Creationism on Trial with Tim Chaffey. He is
also a contributing author for the Answers Books volumes I and II. Dr. Lisle’s articles include the Logical Fallacy Series, Contradictions, “Evolution: The Anti-science,” “Atheism: An Irrational Worldview,” and
many others including our popular web feedbacks. ****************************************
Dr. Lisle also acts as if he has expertise in anthropology: <https://youtu.be/LQJw0nStX5k?t=0>
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
literature describing just such fossils.My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would muckup the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billion years
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
literature describing just such fossils.And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor.
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the Cambrian.
I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 12:55:44?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:24:02 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems: >> >> It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
More than one leading cosmologist has noted that, compared to it, the evolution of
stars and galaxies is child's play, because only a few physical laws are needed for
an amazing amount of insight into how it happens.
In the other direction, even this hard problem is child's play compared to the origin
of life as we know it, from 20 amino acids and five nucleotides to the most primitive
free-living prokaryotes. After half a century of effort, we have been able to synthesize
the amino acids and nucleotides under simulated prebiotic conditions.
However, these are only on the first two floors of my metaphorical 100 story skyscraper
that life as we know it had to ascend. I talk about it in the post I linked for Ron Dean:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
Jul 14, 2023, 4:30:40?PM
I don't think they have a problem with understanding stellar evolution.
It is the creationists who link the Cambrian with existential crisis.
I'd say they are the ones who can't cope. Perhaps I'm overgeneralizing, >> >> but it seems creationists cannot cope with large unknowns in anything. >> >
The first university course in astronomy at my university explains that in great detail.
Of course, most creationists don't take such courses, and neither do most university science majors,
but the more intelligent ones would not have a problem with that, or even with
teaching themselves from a good textbook of astronomy.
You are unusually kind to Jason Lisle below. He's a dogmatic YEC,
and he has almost as little respect for those who disagree with him
as you do for those who disagree with you.
weather. His thesis was entitled “Probing the Dynamics of Solar Supergranulation and its Interaction with Magnetism.” Among other things, he discovered a previously unknown polar alignment of supergranules (solar convection cells), and discoveredRight, like Jason Lisle for example:
<https://answersingenesis.org/bios/jason-lisle/>
**************************************
Dr. Lisle has authored a number of books and articles. His books
include Taking Back Astronomy and The Ultimate Proof of Creation, and
he coauthored Old-Earth Creationism on Trial with Tim Chaffey. He is
also a contributing author for the Answers Books volumes I and II. Dr.
Lisle’s articles include the Logical Fallacy Series, Contradictions,
“Evolution: The Anti-science,” “Atheism: An Irrational Worldview,” and
many others including our popular web feedbacks.
****************************************
A red flag went up when I read the words "Taking Back Astronomy",
after having read the words in his bio. From your linked webpage:
"He did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a PhD in Astrophysics. While there, Dr Lisle used the SOHO spacecraft to investigate motions on the surface of the sun as well as solar magnetism and subsurface
I found out enough from the following webpage of his to be able totraveled from there to here. Since this process is supposed to take billions of years, the universe must be at least billions of years old—much older than the biblical time scale. It is argued that distant starlight therefore supports the big-bang
make the negative comments that I did above.
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/the-age-of-the-universe-part-1/
He takes a while to get down to the biggest and most frequent objection to a young universe,
but he gives himself away with his haughty attitude:
"There are galaxies in the universe that are incredibly far away. These distances are so extreme that even light would take billions of years to travel from these galaxies to the earth. Yet, we do see these galaxies; this indicates that the light has
...
"The point here is to show that the objection itself is vacuous. The argument that distant starlight disproves the biblical account of creation and supports an old “big-bang” universe is based on faulty reasoning."
By "the biblical account" he means that God made the world in *literally* six 24-hour days,
and that the order in which it happened is correct, rather than the order which paleontologists
and astronomers have figured out it happened. This is omphalism at its near worst.
Dr. Lisle also acts as if he has expertise in anthropology:
<https://youtu.be/LQJw0nStX5k?t=0>
I'll pass on this for now. What really gets me at this point is that someone can say such things
as what I quoted above, while being so well versed in astrophysics.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
literature describing just such fossils.And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided?
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*,
and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the
Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
If I recall correctly, the two places where *Kimberella* fossils have been found --
Australia and the White Sea -- were very distant from each other back then, as they indeed are now. It was Austratlia where they were first found,
and for a while they were thought to be jellyfish -- whose symmetry is radial,
not bilateral!
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
At this point, Bill Rogers abruptly changed the whole topic, and so I will make a separate reply
after I get home -- it's already past my usual dinner time.
Sneak preview: you gave up WAY too easily. There were enough holes
in Bill's hackneyed "village atheist" level argument to sail a battleship through.
[email protected] wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billion yearsI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would muck
I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Deanexperiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting longYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billionI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would
.........................................I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initial intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.
--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposefulYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billionI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would
.........................................I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is >no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention, >in earth life over the vast span of time.
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initial intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.Maybe I'm not following your point.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
[email protected] wrote...
up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appearAnd in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would muck
he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from the original design of the universe?
Why do you think you know that God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >> > >>>>
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >> > >>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billionI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >> > >Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would
.........................................I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is >> > >no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention, >> > >in earth life over the vast span of time.
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initialMaybe I'm not following your point.
intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:06 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:interesting experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >> > >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >> > >>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >> > >>> links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >> > >>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >> > >>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
would muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing halfI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the
Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion. >> > >My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species,
I agree that there's no evidence for a supernatural agent. There is still an important distinction between the two cases. Arguing for a supernatural agent on the grounds that its tinkering repeatedly over time was necessary for the world to turn out the.........................................I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention, >> > >in earth life over the vast span of time.
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initial >> > intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.Maybe I'm not following your point.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.The discussion above involves two cases:
1. A supernatural agent created life, and life evolved following the
laws of nature without any additional tinkering from that agent.
2. A supernatural agent created life, and continues to tinker with
life in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified goal.
Yes, the two cases are distinguishable. No, that distinction doesn't
inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. Both cases
presume a supernatural agent. There is as much evidence for a
supernatural agent for the first case as for the second case.
Fine-tuning relates to the above two cases:
3. A supernatural agent created the unverse, and the universe evolved following the laws of nature without any additional tinkering from
that agent. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from the laws
of nature.
4. A supernatural agent created the universe, and continues to tinker
with the universe in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified
goal. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from that tinkering.
As written, 3 and 4 subsume 1 and 2 and are analogous. AOTA presume a supernatural agent. Yes, I distinguished AOTA. No, that distinction
doesn't inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. There
is as much evidence for a supernatural agent regardless of the case.
I acknowledge we don't know the cause of the unverse. IMO to presume
a supernatural agent caused the universe is as reasonable as any other presumption, as all are placeholder labels for our ignorance. OTOH
when you can only presume its existence, to quibble over when/if it did/didn't tinker is pointless. You might as well argue over how many
angels can fit on the head of a pin. Such arguments violate
epistemology.
--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:06 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:would muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species,
I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention, >> > >in earth life over the vast span of time.
.........................................
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initial >> > intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.Maybe I'm not following your point.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.
The discussion above involves two cases:
1. A supernatural agent created life, and life evolved following the
laws of nature without any additional tinkering from that agent.
2. A supernatural agent created life, and continues to tinker with
life in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified goal.
Yes, the two cases are distinguishable. No, that distinction doesn't
inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent.
Both cases
presume a supernatural agent. There is as much evidence for a
supernatural agent for the first case as for the second case.
Fine-tuning relates to the above two cases:
3. A supernatural agent created the unverse, and the universe evolved following the laws of nature without any additional tinkering from
that agent. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from the laws
of nature.
4. A supernatural agent created the universe, and continues to tinker
with the universe in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified
goal. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from that tinkering.
As written, 3 and 4 subsume 1 and 2 and are analogous. AOTA presume a supernatural agent. Yes, I distinguished AOTA. No, that distinction
doesn't inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. There
is as much evidence for a supernatural agent regardless of the case.
I acknowledge we don't know the cause of the unverse. IMO to presume
a supernatural agent caused the universe is as reasonable as any other presumption, as all are placeholder labels for our ignorance. OTOH
when you can only presume its existence, to quibble over when/if it did/didn't tinker is pointless. You might as well argue over how many
angels can fit on the head of a pin. Such arguments violate
epistemology.
--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
It will be interesting to see whether jillery dares to tackle my second reply to Ron Dean
to the benighted part of Bill's post that I've left in below.
I mean, besides pointing out that I carelessly put in only one > attribution markwould muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half
in the margin while tackling sundry pieces of Bill's long paragraph.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 4:10:45 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:06 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >> On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species,
I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
.........................................
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initialMaybe I'm not following your point.
intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.
The discussion above involves two cases:
1. A supernatural agent created life, and life evolved following the
laws of nature without any additional tinkering from that agent.
The basic laws of physics, and the initial conditions of which we are aware, do not include the kinds of laws that Bill Rogers envisions..
I doubt that the human mind is capable of formulating physical laws that make
life on earth, let alone intelligent life, inevitable.
2. A supernatural agent created life, and continues to tinker with
life in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified goal.
Get real. The "unspecified" goal is all around you, although
all the computers in the world could not store a specification
of all the things this planet has in it. And who are we to say
that human beings could have evolved without a hefty fraction of
those things?
Yes, the two cases are distinguishable. No, that distinction doesn't inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent.
What do you mean by "inform"? If it only means what you
say in the next sentence, you've rendered your preceding sentence superfluous.
Both cases
presume a supernatural agent. There is as much evidence for a
supernatural agent for the first case as for the second case.
HOGWASH! As I keep emphasizing, the Modern Synthesis (neo-Darwinism)
is pathetically inadequate to even explain how evolution got us to
the "unspecified" goal from the first prokaryotes, let alone show that it had to happen.
And, as I remarked to Mark Isaak, abiogenesis (OOL) is in even more embryonic a condition.
The playing field is level between ID and naturalistic explanations,
once you take into account the fact that modern forms of ID have
had less than one-sixth of the time to develop than mainstream evolutionary theory.
Only the addition of "supernatural" makes the field less than level,
but that is a far cry from your benighted "as much evidence."
PS I've got a lot on my plate today, but I've left in the sophomoric
stuff you wrote below, in case someone wants to argue in favor of it
while addressing anything I wrote above.
Fine-tuning relates to the above two cases:
3. A supernatural agent created the unverse, and the universe evolved following the laws of nature without any additional tinkering from
that agent. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from the laws
of nature.
4. A supernatural agent created the universe, and continues to tinker
with the universe in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified
goal. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from that tinkering.
As written, 3 and 4 subsume 1 and 2 and are analogous. AOTA presume a supernatural agent. Yes, I distinguished AOTA. No, that distinction doesn't inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. There
is as much evidence for a supernatural agent regardless of the case.
I acknowledge we don't know the cause of the unverse. IMO to presume
a supernatural agent caused the universe is as reasonable as any other presumption, as all are placeholder labels for our ignorance. OTOH
when you can only presume its existence, to quibble over when/if it did/didn't tinker is pointless. You might as well argue over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Such arguments violate
epistemology.
--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*,
and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
I have no
problem with that. Evolution cannot "cope" with quasars or economic
cycles, either; there are other sciences for coping with them.
I'm afraid you are missing the point of what I wrote about stellar evolution.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history)
theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems: >>>> It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various
tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is
hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway?
By doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
The creationist alternative, to make up shit, is, in my opinion, the
opposite of doing justice to the problem.
I've defined "cope" for you. Now it's your turn to define "shit."
Please try to also give us some idea of how you define "creationist".
> Your alternative, which seems
to be admitting that the problem is hard and unsolved and then giving
up, is only a little better.
I'm not giving up, far from it; people who make light of the difficulties are the ones who are giving up.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 8:35:46 AM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
It will be interesting to see whether jillery dares to tackle my second reply to Ron Dean
to the benighted part of Bill's post that I've left in below.
Insults are poor substitutes for arguments (ref. "benighted").
would muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing halfI mean, besides pointing out that I carelessly put in only one > attribution mark
in the margin while tackling sundry pieces of Bill's long paragraph.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 4:10:45 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:06 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species,
I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
.........................................
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initialMaybe I'm not following your point.
intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.
The discussion above involves two cases:
1. A supernatural agent created life, and life evolved following the laws of nature without any additional tinkering from that agent.
.
The basic laws of physics, and the initial conditions of which we are aware,.
do not include the kinds of laws that Bill Rogers envisions.
I doubt that the human mind is capable of formulating physical laws that make
life on earth, let alone intelligent life, inevitable.
We have above a naked assertion, followed by a declaration of incredulity. Why bother? It's huff and puff and little else.
And then there's the odd specification of "life on earth". Other things written make it seem like you are implying that we were the a priori anointed planet.
2. A supernatural agent created life, and continues to tinker with
life in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified goal.
Get real. The "unspecified" goal is all around you, althoughIs that supposed to be meaningful?
all the computers in the world could not store a specification
of all the things this planet has in it. And who are we to say
that human beings could have evolved without a hefty fraction of
those things?
In the first place, what do you imagine to be the significance of this metric of all the computers in the world?
Seems like none, or alternatively
completely arbitrary and capricious.
PS I've got a lot on my plate today, but I've left in the sophomoric
stuff you wrote below, in case someone wants to argue in favor of it
while addressing anything I wrote above.
I have to laugh respective to your multiple recent comments about
how you were going to respond to some comments of mine later in
the day but: "oh look, a butterfly".
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 4:10:44 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:
Consider: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001045117Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*,
and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
"Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia"
Predates Kimberella, but not by much.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 7:45:46 AM UTC-7, erik simpson wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 4:10:44 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:
Consider: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001045117Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*, and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
"Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia"
Predates Kimberella, but not by much."This does not mean that Ikaria could not be a potential bilaterian worm, but the case is far from established. Even if the attribution should turn out to be correct, the headlines — “Ancestor of all animals identified” — would be nonsense."
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/03/ancestor-of-all-animals-in-555-million-year-old-ediacaran-sediments/
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 7:45:46 AM UTC-7, erik simpson wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 4:10:44 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*, and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
Consider: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001045117
"Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia"
Predates Kimberella, but not by much.
"This does not mean that Ikaria could not be a potential bilaterian worm, but the case is far from established.
Even if the attribution should turn out to be correct, the headlines — “Ancestor of all animals identified” — would be nonsense."
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/03/ancestor-of-all-animals-in-555-million-year-old-ediacaran-sediments/
On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
So? Would it "cope" better if it made something up some fiction just so
it would have something to say?
You are blaming science for not knowing everything from the beginning.
That's not its job, though. Its job is to figure things out.
That isn't always easy.
As far as I can see, modern evolutionary (and related earth history) >>>> theory copes with it just fine, as science copes with all hard problems:
It describes what is known and what is unknown, and it gives various >>>> tentative and incomplete hypotheses to test and build upon.
That description doesn't begin to do justice to the complexity of THIS hard problem.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is >> hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway?
By doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
And you honestly think abiogenesis researchers are more deficient in
that area than creationists are?
PS I've got a lot on my plate today, but I've left in the sophomoric
stuff you wrote below, in case someone wants to argue in favor of it
while addressing anything I wrote above.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 4:10:45?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:interesting experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:00:06 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:50:44?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >> >> On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:13:16 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >> >> > >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >> >> > >>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >> >> > >>> links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous >> >> > >>> arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >> >> > >>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >> >> > >>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
would muck up the job of designing the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing halfI think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the
Cambrian. I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion. >> >> > >My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species,
way it has, and in particular, trying to use gaps in scientific explanation as evidence for the supernatural agent, will inevitably draw you into conflict with science and the reality it describes. Simply saying that things are the way they are because aI agree that there's no evidence for a supernatural agent. There is still an important distinction between the two cases. Arguing for a supernatural agent on the grounds that its tinkering repeatedly over time was necessary for the world to turn out theThe discussion above involves two cases:.........................................I think a good case could be made, for just what you describe. There is
no justifiable reason to think that there is an on-going intervention,
in earth life over the vast span of time.
Either there is a good case for both on-going intervention and initial >> >> > intervention, or for neither, as they are the same case.Maybe I'm not following your point.
Case 1. I design and build a clock radio, set it to turn on the radio at 8:00 tomorrow morning and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 the radio turns on.
Case 2. I design and build a non-clock radio and leave it in your kitchen. At 8:00 tomorrow I come to your kitchen and turn on the radio.
It seems to me that the cases are distinguishable, specifically that the first involves an initial intervention, whereas the second involves and initial intervention and a subsequent one.
In case I misunderstood, here's another difference. Evidence that nobody entered your kitchen at 8:00 would be a good case against the second situation, but not against the first.
1. A supernatural agent created life, and life evolved following the
laws of nature without any additional tinkering from that agent.
2. A supernatural agent created life, and continues to tinker with
life in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified goal.
Yes, the two cases are distinguishable. No, that distinction doesn't
inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. Both cases
presume a supernatural agent. There is as much evidence for a
supernatural agent for the first case as for the second case.
Fine-tuning relates to the above two cases:
3. A supernatural agent created the unverse, and the universe evolved
following the laws of nature without any additional tinkering from
that agent. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from the laws
of nature.
4. A supernatural agent created the universe, and continues to tinker
with the universe in order to reach some arbitrary and unspecified
goal. Life is one of many phenomena which follow from that tinkering.
As written, 3 and 4 subsume 1 and 2 and are analogous. AOTA presume a
supernatural agent. Yes, I distinguished AOTA. No, that distinction
doesn't inform their common presumption of a supernatural agent. There
is as much evidence for a supernatural agent regardless of the case.
I acknowledge we don't know the cause of the unverse. IMO to presume
a supernatural agent caused the universe is as reasonable as any other
presumption, as all are placeholder labels for our ignorance. OTOH
when you can only presume its existence, to quibble over when/if it
did/didn't tinker is pointless. You might as well argue over how many
angels can fit on the head of a pin. Such arguments violate
epistemology.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
literature describing just such fossils.My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:00:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
You made an unmarked deletion at this point.
So? Would it "cope" better if it made something up some fiction just so
it would have something to say?
People keep making up fiction about how random mutation of RNA molecules and subsequent
unspecified events will automatically favor the strings of nucleotides that are more effective at
carrying out myriads of functions that are useful for progress towards the first prokaryote
and beyond.
But nobody seems able to describe an analogue of the natural selection in populations
of whole organisms that makes any sense. So it looks like these people are doing it to have
something to say.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is >>>> hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway?
By doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
And you honestly think abiogenesis researchers are more deficient in
that area than creationists are?
No, but I think the current crop of talk.origins anti-ID regulars is more deficient
than the best of them are: they are motivated to seek out the places where the
biggest problems are, and y'all are not.
[email protected] wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1 >https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years
ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, >effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing
the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern
phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half >billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the >origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from
the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
and design infers a designer,
but I see no evidence pointing to the identity
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Deanexperiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting longYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
I have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1 >https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years >ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no >observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberate purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to >allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, >effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern >phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half >billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the >origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from >the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still*
don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating. Claiming these things are caused by "deliberate purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularly
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence.
but I see no evidence pointing to the identityOnce again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
--
[email protected] wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers
You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
literature describing just such fossils.My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been....
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years
ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing
the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern
phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from
the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look andYou posted this paragraph before several times. So I will repeat - nobody is asking you for the exact identity of the designer. However, when you say that there is no evidence for links between different groups of animals, and offer that as evidence for
design infers a designer, but I see no evidence pointing to the identity
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
I have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>> design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. 539 mya, >>> while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years earlier. >>>
I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen
during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they fall short.
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read: hatchet job], said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted, illustrating how even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, by
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what we want okay"
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details >>> than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt >>> to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion. >>> I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca.
539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found >>>> and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts
to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-droppingTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read: hatchet
job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in
the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write >>> then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no designer therefore no design". -Dawkins
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people have
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the "illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on
the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want
and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding
a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what
we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was
introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a
later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more
details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't
attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has
happened since then.
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to
him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if
time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion. >>> I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>> during the early Cambrian.
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca.
539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found >>>> and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts >>>> to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-droppingTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read: hatchet
job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in
the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >>> disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In >>> this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write >>> then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people have is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires >> a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the "illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on
the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want
and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding
a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what
we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement.
Darwin was systematically lying.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's followers,Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They startIt certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of evolutionary biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence you
need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with "some
unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was
introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a
later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >>> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >>> for going into town.....
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more >>>> details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't
attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has
happened since then.
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >> much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to
him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if
time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion. >> I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. 539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years earlier. >>>
during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found >>> and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they fall short.
In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read: hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted, illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write >> then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
True, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no designer therefore no design". -Dawkins
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, by
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
What was the film about: I can guess.
One propensity anti-ID people have
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c comparison.
and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the "illusion of design". - Dawkins
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what we want okay"
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion.
If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt >>> to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion. >>> I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>> during the early Cambrian.
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca.
539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found >>>> and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts >>>> to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
"But phyla were defined based on extant species as the broadest classifications, and so must arise earliest in the history of life, before lower-level groups that they contain. "
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt >>> to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion.
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. 539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years earlier.
I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >> during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian. Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they fall short.
In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read: hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted, illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
faculties in humankind. He believed that the raison d'être of the universe was the development of the human spirit.[147]'As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >> disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In >> this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
True, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no designer therefore no design". -Dawkins
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, by Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
What was the film about: I can guess.It was impressive: some virtual "animals" got good at stealing
resources from others whose bodies were not sufficiently equipped
for getting them back.
One propensity anti-ID people haveComparison is not the be-all and end-all of theories in general.
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c comparison.
In fact, this oft-repeated "reasoning" is illogical, given examples like the following.
Physicists have come up with the concept of "fields" to solve such
old problems as the incompatibility of the corpuscular and wave
theories of light, and the amazing fact that any two electrons
have identical mass, charge, and any other detectable properties.
One would naturally expect no two electrons (defined as the negative sub-particles of atoms) to be exactly alike, just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike.
Physicists have come up with the theory of an electron field permeating all our universe, which can be made to produce electron-positron pairs
seemingly from nothing, and the hypothesized properties of the field
are supposed to make it automatic that every pair produced in this way
has the identical properties of every other pair.
and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.Humans haven't experienced anything in their lives that behaves anything like those fields. Yet physicists have decided that fields exist with those staggering properties.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the "illusion of design". - DawkinsDawkins was just expressing his atheistic conviction, nothing more.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what we want okay"
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.That's an idealized version of research, which amounts to a myth
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion.
as to how it is actually conducted. Notice how Szostak never states
the hypothesis that his team was testing, if any.
But then, a great deal of scientific research does not begin
with a hypothesis, but is of a nature, "Let's try this and see what happens."
A great deal of my mathematical research has been like this.
If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, butThis attitude especially pervaded talk.origins back while Trump
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
was president. Did you ever see my Chez Watt, "Hitler
compared favorably to Trump"? It was taken from a post
where some good points of Hitler were recalled, and there were
no unambiguously bad points recalled. Unlike now, when there
has been so much acrimony over Chez Watts, nobody uttered
a peep of criticism, not even the person whom I was quoting.
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.I'm not sure that was his goal from the beginning. Don't forget,
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement.
Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the same scientific theory
independently of Darwin, yet he also believed that supernatural
entities had occasionally intervened in the origin and evolution of life:
`He stated that something in "the unseen universe of Spirit" had interceded at least three times in history: the creation of life from inorganic matter; the introduction of consciousness in the higher animals; and the generation of the higher mental
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
The last sentence is a bit strange, given Wallace's interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life,
also talked about in the long Wikipedia entry.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's followers,There is nothing wrong with gathering evidence against something
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
you dislike, as long as you are scrupulously honest about the evidence
you find. It's even permissible to avoid mentioning other things you find, as long as they do not undermine what you do mention.
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.That is indeed dishonest, when it occurs.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They startWhether it is science does not depend on the motivation,
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
but only on the reasoning from the data.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS Have you looked at the thread I linked for you [see below] yet?
I've been neglecting that thread to keep abreast of this one,
and of the math conference I've been attending on line.
But I will return to it, now that I've given the lecture for
which I was scheduled, a little over an hour ago.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >> for going into town.....
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 2:45:46 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion. >>>>> I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>>>> during the early Cambrian.
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. >>>>>> 539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found >>>>>> and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts >>>>>> to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
This from someone who jeered at what I wrote about Bill Rogers's
incompetent post about God, but was unable to refute anything
I wrote about it. You twisted my criticism into (nonexistent) praise
of myself, but here you are advertising just how clever you think you were.
Fact is, your "analysis" is riddled with distortions of what goes on in the book, and includes some
illogical attempts at refutation.
To take just one *very short* example:
"A major claim in this chapter is the idea of “top-down” appearance: phyla appearing before families, families before species, etc. He dismisses the idea that this is an artifact of classification, but makes no real argument."
Strangely enough, Erwin and Valentine endorse this so strongly, you
may have a hard time believing they wrote it. Meyer quotes a paper by
them, so you may have missed it due to it not being in their book that you've been praising so highly. I'll give a more complete cite tomorrow; I'm still in my office and can't access Meyer's book here.
You continued:
"But phyla were defined based on extant species as the broadest classifications, and so must arise earliest in the history of life, before lower-level groups that they contain."
This makes no sense whatsoever. Phyla are distinguished from each other by measures of truly major disparity. Pre-Cambrian phyla were few, not because the species were few, but because the degree of disparity of the species
did not warrant more phyla.
I think you've been so mesmerised by the slogan, "Ranks are arbitrary"
that you may have a hard time wrapping your mind around what Erwin and Valentine
wrote in their paper.
One phylum, Porifera, was the lone metazoan phylum for a long time, and I would
not be surprised if it turned out that it contained many lower-level groups before any
other metazoan phyla arose. So the part beginning with "and so must arise" is essentially vacuous.
You continued:their respective groups."
His counter is that these early taxa all have the distinctive features of their modern relatives. Oddly enough, he frequently cites one of my favorite papers, Budd & Jensen 2000, which shows that nearly all Cambrian taxa are at best stem-members of
This doesn't undermine Meyer's counter, as long as they share the same body plan.
Being stem members means that they are closer to the crown members than are the members, extant or extinct, of any other phylum. So "Oddly enough" is unwarranted.
Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and
setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million
years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca.
539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
Explosion.
I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>>> during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be
found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various
attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-droppingTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read:
hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in
the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In >>>> this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you
write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no
designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people have
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with
the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to
undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the
grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c
comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the
"illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on
the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want
and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding
a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what
we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
Darwin was systematically lying.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin'sfollowers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across
evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or
explained away. (no data was from Gould)
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in
mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
It certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of evolutionary biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence you
need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with "some
unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was
introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a
later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >>>> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more
details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't
attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has
happened since then.
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >>> much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to
him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if
time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.
Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.
But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence andAttributes of the Deity in order to graduate. The Evidences had stopped being part of the mandatory curriculum in Cambridge over a decade before Darwin studied there, Darwin had to read Moral and Political Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity ,
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you....
It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...
A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement
And here the lies start in earnest.
And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated.
But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we know that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem thatdelayed the publication of his work.
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit.
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the
scientific method" comment.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just that
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >> for going into town.....
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:about the motives of the people who make them. Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post. Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations
But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence andAttributes of the Deity in order to graduate.
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you., ... It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...
A Chinese scientist,that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem that delayed the publication of his work.
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
And here the lies start in earnest. And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated. But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we know
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017<
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit. And I quote you:
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to
undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the
scientific method" comment.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just that
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence >> that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained
away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind.
Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >>>> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt >>>>> to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >>> much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him. >>>
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:Seeing a image in a cloud, such as a person, or thing.
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and
setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million >>>>>>> years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments;
485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. >>>>>> 539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known
from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years
earlier.
Explosion.
I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>>>> during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian.
Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be
found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various
attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they
fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-droppingTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind
in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read:
hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata in
the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >>>>> disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In >>>>> this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you
write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no
designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?
As an atheist, atheism is his paradigm, which takes precedence and priority
over evidence, data, facts everything.
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there shouldOne example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people have >>> is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires >>>> a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with
the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to
undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the
grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c
comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's the >>> "illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on
the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into >>>> RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want
and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without
adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what
we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".-
Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild
speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
Darwin was systematically lying.
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
I did not say Darwin was lying. I just think he was influenced by
Paley and was challenged to come up with a natural explanation.
The evidence is the fact that in order to receive his ab degree he had to read Paley.I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin'sfollowers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
I think evolutionist owe a debt of gratitude to Paley.
I realize that Wallace was about to publish a comparable book, so,
Darwin after
setting on his work for a couple decades , he rushed to publish before Wallace.
Maybe so, but it is the philosophical basis for real science methodology.If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across
evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data"
or explained away. (no data was from Gould)
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in
mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then
ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
It certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of evolutionary
biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/scientific-method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence you
need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with "some
unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
There is not reason I cannot take issue with X and not offer an
alternative X
I can dispute and argue against with alchemy and not offer an alternative explanation, as to how I would turn lead into gold.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was
introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a
later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives
more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't
attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has
happened since then.
expensive. I
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >>>>> for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves
science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it
to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if
time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
I think evolutionist owe a debt of gratitude to Paley.
I realize that Wallace was about to publish a comparable book, so, Darwin after
setting on his work for a couple decades , he rushed to publish before Wallace.
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46?PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:about the motives of the people who make them. Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post. Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations
But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence andAttributes of the Deity in order to graduate. The Evidences had stopped being part of the mandatory curriculum in Cambridge over a decade before Darwin studied there, Darwin had to read Moral and Political Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity ,
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you.... It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...
A Chinese scientist,that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem that delayed the publication of his work.
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
And here the lies start in earnest. And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated. But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we know
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit. And I quote you:
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to
undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the
scientific method" comment.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just that
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence >> that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained
away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind.
Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >> >> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >> > much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46?PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip>
This is just incredible....
Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.
I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post, >about two hours ago:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.
Get real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the >actual examples are different.
And you did that to me recently. You confidently asserted that I reported
a student for cheating because it was my duty to do so. Yet this was
way back in the 1980's, before I even became aware of any such requirement. >In fact, we faculty were given wide leeway in judging for ourselves how >serious an infraction was, and to assign a penalty accordingly.
The accused party had a right to appeal, but they almost never did out
of fear that they might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
The truth is that I reported students for the reason I gave: they were giving >themselves an unfair advantage over others -- an explanation that
your bureaucratic mentality evidently made you disbelieve.
Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.
Where's your evidence that Darwin only came by his skepticism
about God after he made his discoveries? In my own reply
to Ron, I merely reminded him of the way Wallace was NOT
swayed by his discoveries.
Attributes of the Deity in order to graduate. The Evidences had stopped being part of the mandatory curriculum in Cambridge over a decade before Darwin studied there, Darwin had to read Moral and Political Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity ,But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and
Books are full of inaccurate information about famous people, and many people >are unfortunate enough to have been taught out of them or come across them >rather than across books with accurate information. There is a famous example about
Hannibal supposedly being made by his father to swear to be an eternal enemy >of Rome. That is because countless books rely on Livy's version, rather than >the very different version given by Polybius, who was reporting a personal >interview he had with Hannibal.
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you....
Inappropriate preamble, akin to Harshman's perennial abuse of the meaning of the word "paranoid".
It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...
Your aggressive attacks belie both halves of this comment, the second being >baseless innuendo at this point.
A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >> >
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement
And here the lies start in earnest.
I think you are not interpreting the context properly. Ron began with a >suspicion, and his intended meaning was that IF his suspicion
is correct, THEN Darwin needed an instrument...
delayed the publication of his work.And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated.
Bill Rogers made a serious misrepresentation of something Ron had supposedly been *repeatedly* told,
and he used it to come down just as hard on Ron as you are doing now.
Unlike Bill, you do give documentation below, but you overplay your hand.
But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we know that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem that
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
This is redundant evidence: you simply repeated here what you wrote there, without
any documentation of your claims.
By the way, I saw no sign that Ron was aware of this 2021 post of yours. You >really ought to date your references. The following was from 2018:
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit.
Your talents as a pejorative-loving spin doctor are impressive. Only someone with
an agenda similar to that which Ron suspected Darwin of would behave like you do here.
And I quote you:
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to
undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the
scientific method" comment.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just that
You lack a sense of proportion. I could document far worse behavior by Harshman
and jillery, but I suspect you would live up to a nickname that I gave Harshman about
a decade ago, one he lives up to all the time:
Don'tWanna HearAboutIt.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
On 21/07/2023 12:51, [email protected] wrote:
Likewise, atheists that I know didn't become atheists because evolution provides a better explanation for nested hierarchies than creationism, they did so because of theodicy, or disillusionment with the behavior of religious people they know.
It's not the same as your first alternative (and close to your third),
but supposedly people have become atheists because the discovered that creationists were lying to them about evolution, and inferred that they
were lying about other stuff as well. Not everybody "throws out the baby (Christianity) with the bathwater (creationism)", but I've seen credible reports that some do.
--
alias Ernest Major
Likewise, atheists that I know didn't become atheists because evolution provides a better explanation for nested hierarchies than creationism, they did so because of theodicy, or disillusionment with the behavior of religious people they know.
On 21/07/2023 12:51, [email protected] wrote:
Likewise, atheists that I know didn't become atheists because evolution provides a better explanation for nested hierarchies than creationism, they did so because of theodicy, or disillusionment with the behavior of religious people they know.
It's not the same as your first alternative (and close to your third),
but supposedly people have become atheists because the discovered that >creationists were lying to them about evolution, and inferred that they
were lying about other stuff as well. Not everybody "throws out the baby >(Christianity) with the bathwater (creationism)", but I've seen credible >reports that some do.
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 05:30:44 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
trolled:
PS I've got a lot on my plate today, but I've left in the sophomoric
stuff you wrote below, in case someone wants to argue in favor of it
while addressing anything I wrote above.
Your comment above is an example of not-disagreement,
but instead mere insult for the sake of it
And since you consider what I wrote sophomoric, I have no
motivation to reply to your mindless noise.
May you live in interesting times.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 8:35:46?PM UTC-4, jillery trolled while lying that I trolled:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 05:30:44 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
trolled:
PS I've got a lot on my plate today, but I've left in the sophomoric
stuff you wrote below, in case someone wants to argue in favor of it
while addressing anything I wrote above.
Your comment above is an example of not-disagreement,
Stupid/insincere misreading noted. I disagree with stuff you wrote,
otherwise I would not have used the word "sophomoric."
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 9:30:47 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Your "Yet again" below, Martin, is a serious distortion. The comment
to which you are alluding had nothing to do with Burkhard's ethnicity,
but only about at least one draconian policy of the current regime in Germany.
An analogy: in my riposte to a mendacious post by jillery this morning,
I made it clear that jillery's totalitarian bent of mind
was reminiscent of the regime that is ruling China with an iron hand.
It had nothing to do with Chinese people in general.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
his German ethnicity.
Stupid/insincere misreading. I USED palpable character deficiencies in Burkhard
to ask a question which I've had at the back of my mind for decades, and which
his behavior rekindled.
Naturally, you deleted my comments that supported the existence
of the character deficiency that I identified.
The reason the question interests me so much now is that my father
was on the German faculty of Washington and Jefferson
college, and a linguist by training and research,
and he never found a German equivalent of the
phrase, "giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt."
He also could not find a German word for "kick,"
but only the circumlocution "mit dem Fuss stossen"
[In those days, the two double s's were written with
a letter that looks somewhat like a lower-case Greek beta.
Now it seems there is a spelling reform in Germany
and Austria to replace this with double s.]
Of course, you had no way of knowing about my
father having been on the German faculty, unless you went on a
muckraking expedition similar to the one involving
my military service in the early 1970's.
Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
You are even more of a violator of the benefit of doubt concept than Burkhard.
And no, I won't ask any questions about Gaelic terms. My father never studied Gaelic.
[...]
Peter Nyikos
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
his German ethnicity.
Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
[...]
On 21/07/2023 02:14, Ron Dean wrote:
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
Credible estimates of the number of living species are around 10
million. Taking 5 million years as an estimate for the average species lifetime, and a 500 million year fossil record, gives 1 billion species.
If only 1 in 200 "fully formed species" have been found in the fossil
record why would the fossil record to be packed with fine grained transitions?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
[all of which might no longer exist because of erosion, or metamorphism,
or subduction, or be inaccessible because they're buried deep underground.]
Many fossil species are known only from a single fossil, or a single
site, or a single stratum. Why do you expect to see gradual change?
The members of a species at a particular time are not identical. They
can differ because of genetic or environmental factors, either within a population, or between geographically separated populations, or because
they are at different stages of the life cycle. With a sufficiently
large sample of fossils of various ages you could disentangle this
variation from gradual change within a population, but with the number
of specimens known for the average species how do you to propose to demonstrate that the species show stasis?
The fossil record is heavily biased, which means that it non-trivial to predict how many fine-grained transitions between species we should
expect to find. But the number is way smaller than what you would have
us believe. If you want to make the case that the expected fossils are missing you have to do the modelling.
[For a crude model, where all species are equally likely to be
fossilised and discovered, consider the occurrence of three species
forming successive members of a temporal sequence. Take the presence of
the middle species as given. Then there is 1 in 200 chance of the
earlier species being found, and 1 one in 200 chance of the later
species being found, i.e. 1 in 40,000. So one predicts around 10
sequences of 3 consecutive species in the known fossil record. (The
biases in the fossil record - both recency bias, and the fact that some taxonomic groups have much better fossil records than others, increases
that expectation, perhaps substantially.) One would expect the odds of fine-grained transitions to be appreciably higher.]
On 7/21/23 9:26 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 9:30:47 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Your "Yet again" below, Martin, is a serious distortion. The comment
to which you are alluding had nothing to do with Burkhard's ethnicity,
but only about at least one draconian policy of the current regime in Germany.
An analogy: in my riposte to a mendacious post by jillery this morning,
I made it clear that jillery's totalitarian bent of mind
was reminiscent of the regime that is ruling China with an iron hand.
It had nothing to do with Chinese people in general.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
his German ethnicity.
Stupid/insincere misreading. I USED palpable character deficiencies in Burkhard
to ask a question which I've had at the back of my mind for decades, and which
his behavior rekindled.
Naturally, you deleted my comments that supported the existence
of the character deficiency that I identified.
The reason the question interests me so much now is that my father
was on the German faculty of Washington and Jefferson
college, and a linguist by training and research,
and he never found a German equivalent of the
phrase, "giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt."
He also could not find a German word for "kick,"
but only the circumlocution "mit dem Fuss stossen"
[In those days, the two double s's were written with
a letter that looks somewhat like a lower-case Greek beta.
Now it seems there is a spelling reform in Germany
and Austria to replace this with double s.]
Jeez, what an aßhat.
Of course, you had no way of knowing about my
father having been on the German faculty, unless you went on a
muckraking expedition similar to the one involving
my military service in the early 1970's.
Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
You are even more of a violator of the benefit of doubt concept than Burkhard.
And no, I won't ask any questions about Gaelic terms. My father never studied Gaelic.
[...]
Peter Nyikos
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 9:30:47?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Your "Yet again" below, Martin, is a serious distortion. The comment
to which you are alluding had nothing to do with Burkhard's ethnicity,
but only about at least one draconian policy of the current regime in Germany.
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
[…]
On 21/07/2023 02:14, Ron Dean wrote:
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species. Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates not conserved in the strata?
Credible estimates of the number of living species are around 10
million. Taking 5 million years as an estimate for the average species lifetime, and a 500 million year fossil record, gives 1 billion species.
If only 1 in 200 "fully formed species" have been found in the fossil
record why would the fossil record to be packed with fine grained transitions?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
[all of which might no longer exist because of erosion, or metamorphism,
or subduction, or be inaccessible because they're buried deep underground.]
Many fossil species are known only from a single fossil, or a single
site, or a single stratum. Why do you expect to see gradual change?
The members of a species at a particular time are not identical. They
can differ because of genetic or environmental factors, either within a population, or between geographically separated populations, or because
they are at different stages of the life cycle.
With a sufficiently
large sample of fossils of various ages you could disentangle this
variation from gradual change within a population, but with the number
of specimens known for the average species how do you to propose to demonstrate that the species show stasis?
The fossil record is heavily biased, which means that it non-trivial to predict how many fine-grained transitions between species we should
expect to find. But the number is way smaller than what you would have
us believe. If you want to make the case that the expected fossils are missing you have to do the modelling.
[For a crude model, where all species are equally likely to be
fossilised and discovered, consider the occurrence of three species
forming successive members of a temporal sequence. Take the presence of
the middle species as given. Then there is 1 in 200 chance of the
earlier species being found, and 1 one in 200 chance of the later
species being found, i.e. 1 in 40,000. So one predicts around 10
sequences of 3 consecutive species in the known fossil record. (The
biases in the fossil record - both recency bias, and the fact that some taxonomic groups have much better fossil records than others, increases
that expectation, perhaps substantially.) One would expect the odds of fine-grained transitions to be appreciably higher.]
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to write God out of the picture?
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other religions.
[…]
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>>>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>>>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>> only a very few appearing laterYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>>>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>>>
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>>>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>>>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>>>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberateIt seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years
ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection,
effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing
the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern
phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >>> years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half
billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the
origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from
the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still*
don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,
Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes
functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating.
purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularlyI have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence.
but I see no evidence pointing to the identityOnce again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
--
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to write God out of the picture?
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
.....Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" from theirI do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of some
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is where
In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist, married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith, Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St. Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other religions.
[…]
On 7/20/23 6:14 PM, Ron Dean wrote:<
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:Seeing a image in a cloud, such as a person, or thing.
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian. >>>>> Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ <snip for space>
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book,
_Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be >>>>>>> found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various
attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they >>>>>>> fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this
one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping >>>>> in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving threeTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind >>>> that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read:
hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata
in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable.
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >>>>>> disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist"
sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you >>>>>> write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no
designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?
As an atheist, atheism is his paradigm, which takes precedence and
priority
over evidence, data, facts everything.
I see how you turned that around. Clever. But you miss the argument. You
can see design in the undesigned if you're looking for it. And no,
atheism doesn't take precedence over evidence, etc. That's insulting.
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there shouldOne example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but
requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
have
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with
the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to >>>> undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the >>>> grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c >>>> comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans. >>>> In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's
the
"illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on
the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into >>>>> RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want
and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without
adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh
what we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".-
Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific
observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild
speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
Darwin was systematically lying.
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Darwin explained why that sort of evidence should not be expected.
Eldredge and Gould had a similar explanation, though they didn't seem to realize it. So this expectation is your strawman.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
How do you distinguish a fully formed species from a partially formed
one?
And you should remember that "hundreds of thousands" is a small
percentage of extant species and a microscopically small percentage of
all the species that have ever existed.
Further, the absent intermediates, as Gould points out, are between
closely similar species, not between higher taxa. Do you think that speciation doesn't happen and that all species are separately created,
or arise by saltation, or what? Are your opinions consistent with the
fossil record? Have you ever though of that?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
True, but how many of those would be preserved in the fossil record?
That's the point of peripheral isolates: they're less likely to be
preserved than are widespread species.
I did not say Darwin was lying. I just think he was influenced by
Paley and was challenged to come up with a natural explanation.
It requires him to have a motive other than what he claimed, and a
reaction to Paley other than what he claimed. That's lying. Own your
claims.
The evidence is the fact that in order to receive his ab degree he had toI honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin'sfollowers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their
goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
read Paley.
Turns out not to be the case. And that has nothing to do with his
motives anyway.
I think evolutionist owe a debt of gratitude to Paley.
I realize that Wallace was about to publish a comparable book, so,
Darwin after
setting on his work for a couple decades , he rushed to publish before
Wallace.
No, Wallace was not about to publish a comparable book. He merely sent
Darwin a copy of his paper on natural selection, which encouraged Darwin
to abandon a long book ("Natural Selection") and write a shorter one
("Origin of Species"). Do you know much about the history of biology?
Maybe so, but it is the philosophical basis for real science methodology.If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across
evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data"
or explained away. (no data was from Gould)
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They
start out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in
mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then
ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence
to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
It certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of
evolutionary biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/scientific-method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
You are confused. I was agreeing with "this is not science", and
disagreeing that you have correctly represented how evolutionary biology works. There's no need to explain the scientific method (or methods) to me.
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,There is not reason I cannot take issue with X and not offer an
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence you
need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with "some
unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
;
alternative X
I can dispute and argue against with alchemy and not offer an
alternative
explanation, as to how I would turn lead into gold.
That's not the data, since you can't turn lead into gold. You can argue against alchemy by showing that it's incompatible with the data, but you
need to show what is compatible with the data for all but the very
simplest matters. So far we don't even know what you're arguing against.
Does speciation happen? Is there common descent at any level, and if so
what? Does natural selection even exist, and if so what do you think it
can and can't explain? If the fossil record is incompatible with
evolution, what is it compatible with?
I can see how you wouldn't want to expose your views, because that makes
them vulnerable to testing with data, and you wouldn't like the results.
But is that an honorable way to act?
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was
introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ >>>>> Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a
later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives
more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't >>>>>>> attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has
happened since then.
expensive. I
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >>>>>> for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves
science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it
to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today
if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic.
How do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian
who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to write God out of the picture?
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther,
Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other religions.
John Harshman wrote:.......
On 7/20/23 6:14 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:Seeing a image in a cloud, such as a person, or thing.
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian. >>>>> Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ <snip for space>
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, >>>>>>> _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be >>>>>>> found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various
attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they >>>>>>> fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this
one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping >>>>> in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving three >>>>> names for theTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind >>>> that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the >>>>> Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read:
hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based >>>>> on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata >>>>> in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable. >>>>>
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with >>>>>> disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist"
sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you >>>>>> write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that >>>>> appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no
designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?
As an atheist, atheism is his paradigm, which takes precedence and
priority
over evidence, data, facts everything.
I see how you turned that around. Clever. But you miss the argument. You can see design in the undesigned if you're looking for it. And no,<
atheism doesn't take precedence over evidence, etc. That's insulting.
I apologize, I did not mean this as an insult! Just a statement of
fact. It
also applies to the religious.
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there shouldOne example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people >>>> have
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the >>>>> next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects. >>>>>
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but
requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources, >>>>> and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with >>>> the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they try to >>>> undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the >>>> grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c >>>> comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to humans. >>>> In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or it's >>>> the
"illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist >>>>> Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on >>>>> the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into >>>>> RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want >>>>> and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without
adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle, >>>>> uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh
what we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- >>>> Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific
observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>> selection became his God replacement.
No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild
speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
Darwin was systematically lying.
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Darwin explained why that sort of evidence should not be expected. Eldredge and Gould had a similar explanation, though they didn't seem to realize it. So this expectation is your strawman.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species. >> Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates >> not conserved in the strata?
How do you distinguish a fully formed species from a partially formed
one?
Once a fossil is discovered it provided with scientific nomenclature is a once they appear they remain, remain in a state of stasis for the duration of that tenure on the planet.
I would say once a species remains unchanged or little changed over a long span of time, that's a fully formed species.
And you should remember that "hundreds of thousands" is a small
percentage of extant species and a microscopically small percentage of
all the species that have ever existed.
True, but I don't know that it changes anything. In reality, if evolution: if it's real, there should be many finely graded examples of transitional fossils between ancestor and decedents, since this is the case, intermediatesI don't see how this makes sense. If it is the case that stasis is very common and that transitions happen quickly (relative to the periods of stasis), then there will have lived many, many times more individuals of the static, named species, than of any
found should still vastly outnumber the named species, I understand predication,
erosion failure to fossilize etc. serve as reason for this shortcoming.
But
scientifically named species have been and are still being found, there still
should be more far more transitional fossils between predecessor and decedents.
That is unless there is a huge jump between the scientific named species
and their predecessors. An nobody thinks a reptile laid an egg and a
bird flew
out.
No more time now.
Further, the absent intermediates, as Gould points out, are between closely similar species, not between higher taxa. Do you think that speciation doesn't happen and that all species are separately created,
or arise by saltation, or what? Are your opinions consistent with the fossil record? Have you ever though of that?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
True, but how many of those would be preserved in the fossil record? That's the point of peripheral isolates: they're less likely to be preserved than are widespread species.
I did not say Darwin was lying. I just think he was influenced by
Paley and was challenged to come up with a natural explanation.
It requires him to have a motive other than what he claimed, and a reaction to Paley other than what he claimed. That's lying. Own your claims.
The evidence is the fact that in order to receive his ab degree he had to >> read Paley.I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>> followers,from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their
goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
Turns out not to be the case. And that has nothing to do with his
motives anyway.
I think evolutionist owe a debt of gratitude to Paley.
I realize that Wallace was about to publish a comparable book, so,
Darwin after
setting on his work for a couple decades , he rushed to publish before
Wallace.
No, Wallace was not about to publish a comparable book. He merely sent Darwin a copy of his paper on natural selection, which encouraged Darwin to abandon a long book ("Natural Selection") and write a shorter one ("Origin of Species"). Do you know much about the history of biology?
Maybe so, but it is the philosophical basis for real science methodology. >> https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/scientific-methodIf in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across
evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" >>>> or explained away. (no data was from Gould)
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They
start out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective. >>>> And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in
mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then
ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence
to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
It certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of
evolutionary biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
You are confused. I was agreeing with "this is not science", and disagreeing that you have correctly represented how evolutionary biology works. There's no need to explain the scientific method (or methods) to me.
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,There is not reason I cannot take issue with X and not offer an
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence you >>> need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with "some
unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
alternative X
I can dispute and argue against with alchemy and not offer an
alternative
explanation, as to how I would turn lead into gold.
That's not the data, since you can't turn lead into gold. You can argue against alchemy by showing that it's incompatible with the data, but you need to show what is compatible with the data for all but the very simplest matters. So far we don't even know what you're arguing against. Does speciation happen? Is there common descent at any level, and if so what? Does natural selection even exist, and if so what do you think it can and can't explain? If the fossil record is incompatible with evolution, what is it compatible with?
I can see how you wouldn't want to expose your views, because that makes them vulnerable to testing with data, and you wouldn't like the results. But is that an honorable way to act?
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was >>>>> introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ >>>>> Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a >>>>> later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian >>>>>>> explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives >>>>>>> more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't >>>>>>> attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has >>>>>>> happened since then.
expensive. I
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >>>>>> for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves
science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it >>>>> to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today >>>>> if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 6:14 PM, Ron Dean wrote:<snip for space>
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
<Seeing a image in a cloud, such as a person, or thing.To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian. >>>>>> Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the thirdIn a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I >>>>> mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, >>>>>>>> _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can >>>>>>>> be found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various
attempts to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how
they fall short.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this
one:
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
Prothero, a specialist on ungulates, did some childish name-dropping >>>>>> in his highly dishonest "review" of Meyer's book, by giving threeTrue, There is a statement "Biologist must constantly keep in mind >>>>> that what we see was not design, but but rather evolved". - Crick
names for the
three main divisions of the early Cambrian. It turns out that the
Erwin and Valentine
book [see below], which Prothero touted in his "review" [read:
hatchet job],
said that these divisions were unworkable because they were based
on Siberian strata that could not be correlated with other strata
in the world.
Wikipedia still uses the old names that Prothero parroted,
illustrating how
even in uncontroversial science matters, it isn't wholly reliable. >>>>>>
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met >>>>>>> with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist"
sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever
you write
then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that >>>>>> appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
There is this "Biology is the study of complicated that give the
appearance of
having been designed for a purpose". Then he stated. "there is no
designer
therefore no design". -Dawkins
Are you familiar with the term "pareidolia"?
As an atheist, atheism is his paradigm, which takes precedence and
priority
over evidence, data, facts everything.
I see how you turned that around. Clever. But you miss the argument.
You can see design in the undesigned if you're looking for it. And no,
atheism doesn't take precedence over evidence, etc. That's insulting.
I apologize, I did not mean this as an insult! Just a statement of
fact. It
also applies to the religious.
Once a fossil is discovered it provided with scientific nomenclature is a once they appear they remain, remain in a state of stasis for the durationThat's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there shouldOne example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, byWhat was the film about: I can guess. One propensity anti-ID people
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects. >>>>>>
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but
requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
have
is the determination to link scientific creationism and ID. I
understand this,
it serves their purpose. By doing so, they don't have to deal with >>>>> the scientific
foundation or the evidence of intelligent design. Of course they
try to
undermine every argument for design in nature in every case, upon the >>>>> grounds that there is no design by a supernatural designer to make a c >>>>> comparison. and every design we can know about is attributed to
humans.
In the real world what we see as design is "apparent design" or
it's the
"illusion of design". - Dawkins
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist >>>>>> Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of
on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed
into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we
want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without
adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh
what we want okay"
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific
observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>> selection became his God replacement.
No need to be sorry for things you can't help, but yes, this is wild
speculation, free of any evidence, and requires you to suppose that
Darwin was systematically lying.
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Darwin explained why that sort of evidence should not be expected.
Eldredge and Gould had a similar explanation, though they didn't seem
to realize it. So this expectation is your strawman.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of
intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
How do you distinguish a fully formed species from a partially formed
one?
of that tenure on the planet.
I would say once a species remains unchanged or little changed over a long span of time, that's a fully formed species.
And you should remember that "hundreds of thousands" is a smallTrue, but I don't know that it changes anything. In reality, if evolution:
percentage of extant species and a microscopically small percentage of
all the species that have ever existed.
if it's real, there should be many finely graded examples of transitional fossils between ancestor and decedents, since this is the case, intermediates
found should still vastly outnumber the named species, I understand predication,
erosion failure to fossilize etc. serve as reason for this shortcoming. But scientifically named species have been and are still being found, there
still
should be more far more transitional fossils between predecessor and decedents.
That is unless there is a huge jump between the scientific named species and their predecessors. An nobody thinks a reptile laid an egg and a
bird flew
out.
No more time now.
Further, the absent intermediates, as Gould points out, are between
closely similar species, not between higher taxa. Do you think that
speciation doesn't happen and that all species are separately created,
or arise by saltation, or what? Are your opinions consistent with the
fossil record? Have you ever though of that?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
True, but how many of those would be preserved in the fossil record?
That's the point of peripheral isolates: they're less likely to be
preserved than are widespread species.
I did not say Darwin was lying. I just think he was influenced by
Paley and was challenged to come up with a natural explanation.
It requires him to have a motive other than what he claimed, and a
reaction to Paley other than what he claimed. That's lying. Own your
claims.
The evidence is the fact that in order to receive his ab degree heI honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>> followers,from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their
goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
Again, you assert more about the motivations of all sorts of people,
with zero evidence. Is this really a good thing to do?
had to
read Paley.
Turns out not to be the case. And that has nothing to do with his
motives anyway.
I think evolutionist owe a debt of gratitude to Paley.
I realize that Wallace was about to publish a comparable book, so,
Darwin after
setting on his work for a couple decades , he rushed to publish
before Wallace.
No, Wallace was not about to publish a comparable book. He merely sent
Darwin a copy of his paper on natural selection, which encouraged
Darwin to abandon a long book ("Natural Selection") and write a
shorter one ("Origin of Species"). Do you know much about the history
of biology?
Maybe so, but it is the philosophical basis for real scienceIf in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across
evidence that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no
data" or explained away. (no data was from Gould)
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They
start out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective. >>>>> And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in
mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then
ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence
to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
It certainly wouldn't be. But you present a caricature of
evolutionary biology, based on nothing whatsoever.
methodology.
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/scientific-method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
You are confused. I was agreeing with "this is not science", and
disagreeing that you have correctly represented how evolutionary
biology works. There's no need to explain the scientific method (or
methods) to me.
I ask you once again: if the history of life is not one of evoluton,There is not reason I cannot take issue with X and not offer an
what is it? You won't say. If you're going to talk about evidence
you need two hypotheses to compare. You can't just compare X with
"some unstated thing that isn't X". This is not science.
;
alternative X
I can dispute and argue against with alchemy and not offer an
alternative
explanation, as to how I would turn lead into gold.
That's not the data, since you can't turn lead into gold. You can
argue against alchemy by showing that it's incompatible with the data,
but you need to show what is compatible with the data for all but the
very simplest matters. So far we don't even know what you're arguing
against. Does speciation happen? Is there common descent at any level,
and if so what? Does natural selection even exist, and if so what do
you think it can and can't explain? If the fossil record is
incompatible with evolution, what is it compatible with?
I can see how you wouldn't want to expose your views, because that
makes them vulnerable to testing with data, and you wouldn't like the
results. But is that an honorable way to act?
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video
was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ >>>>>> Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for
a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian >>>>>>>> explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives >>>>>>>> more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't >>>>>>>> attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has >>>>>>>> happened since then.
expensive. I
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another
reason
for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves
science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it >>>>>> to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today >>>>>> if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 12:35:48 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/21/23 9:26 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 9:30:47 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...] >>>>>
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Your "Yet again" below, Martin, is a serious distortion. The comment
to which you are alluding had nothing to do with Burkhard's ethnicity,
but only about at least one draconian policy of the current regime in Germany.
An analogy: in my riposte to a mendacious post by jillery this morning,
I made it clear that jillery's totalitarian bent of mind
was reminiscent of the regime that is ruling China with an iron hand.
It had nothing to do with Chinese people in general.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
his German ethnicity.
Stupid/insincere misreading. I USED palpable character deficiencies in Burkhard
to ask a question which I've had at the back of my mind for decades, and which
his behavior rekindled.
Naturally, you deleted my comments that supported the existence
of the character deficiency that I identified.
The reason the question interests me so much now is that my father
was on the German faculty of Washington and Jefferson
college, and a linguist by training and research,
and he never found a German equivalent of the
phrase, "giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt."
He also could not find a German word for "kick,"
but only the circumlocution "mit dem Fuss stossen"
[In those days, the two double s's were written with
a letter that looks somewhat like a lower-case Greek beta.
Now it seems there is a spelling reform in Germany
and Austria to replace this with double s.]
Jeez, what an aßhat.
SMILE when you say that, podner, or be guilty of sinking
ever deeper into hypocrisy.
Of course, you had no way of knowing about my
father having been on the German faculty, unless you went on a
muckraking expedition similar to the one involving
my military service in the early 1970's.
Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
You are even more of a violator of the benefit of doubt concept than Burkhard.
And no, I won't ask any questions about Gaelic terms. My father never studied Gaelic.
[...]
Peter Nyikos
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 12:25:47 PM UTC-4, Ernest Major wrote:
On 21/07/2023 02:14, Ron Dean wrote:
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates >>> not conserved in the strata?
Credible estimates of the number of living species are around 10
million. Taking 5 million years as an estimate for the average species
lifetime, and a 500 million year fossil record, gives 1 billion species.
This assumes that there were an average of around 10 million species
during those 500 million years. But this involves a big bone of contention between John Harshman and myself, with Ron Dean as its originator.
In an article by Erwin, Valentine and Sepkoski, they remarked on the apparent reversal in the fossil record of a pattern that Darwin had predicted.
This was that fossils would first show a radiation into lower taxa
before radiation into higher taxa. Instead, the lower Cambrian showed
a diversification into ca. 20 phyla, with only a handful of lesser taxa
in each one. Vertebrata, for instance, had only one or two genera, and IIRC only one
or two more in Chordata.
If only 1 in 200 "fully formed species" have been found in the fossil
record why would the fossil record to be packed with fine grained
transitions?
You are giving Ron the benefit of the doubt here: his figure and
yours would give less than one in 1000. But, due to the
pattern I told you about, and also the mass extinctions since
the Cambrian, 1 in 200 is more realistic.
However, there ARE fine grained intermediates [1] in the horse family Equidae, as shown in Kathleen Hunt's excellent FAQ [2],
and there may be some in others. But if there are no others
that are even half as fine grained as that of Equidae, I do
have to wonder why.
[1] "transitions" is highly ambiguous, as Harshman has reluctantly agreed.
[2] http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
I disagree, unless one is satisfied with intermediates
between families, as in the order Proboscidea.
Were it not for the undeserved total victory of cladism in
the "cladistic wars", it would be perfectly intelligible to say
things like "family C is intermediate between family A and family B."
It would be understood to mean that a (usually unknown) species
that *belongs* within family C has a direct ancestor in family A
and the LCA of family B as a direct descendant.
Cladism, as Harshman describes it, is guilty of foisting
a Newspeak [3] on biology that makes it impossible to
explain many things in respected peer-reviewed journals.
[3] Have you read the appendix on Newspeak in George Orwell's _1984_ [_Nineteen_Eighty-Four_ for purists]?
[all of which might no longer exist because of erosion, or metamorphism,
or subduction, or be inaccessible because they're buried deep underground.] >>
Many fossil species are known only from a single fossil, or a single
site, or a single stratum. Why do you expect to see gradual change?
The members of a species at a particular time are not identical. They
can differ because of genetic or environmental factors, either within a
population, or between geographically separated populations, or because
they are at different stages of the life cycle.
You seem to think that Ron wants a fine gradation from population
to population. I'm not sure he wouldn't be satisfied with a genus to genus gradation. Even in Hunt's FAQ, she only talks about species to species gradation within Merychippus.
With a sufficiently
large sample of fossils of various ages you could disentangle this
variation from gradual change within a population, but with the number
of specimens known for the average species how do you to propose to
demonstrate that the species show stasis?
The fossil record is heavily biased, which means that it non-trivial to
predict how many fine-grained transitions between species we should
expect to find. But the number is way smaller than what you would have
us believe. If you want to make the case that the expected fossils are
missing you have to do the modelling.
[For a crude model, where all species are equally likely to be
fossilised and discovered, consider the occurrence of three species
forming successive members of a temporal sequence. Take the presence of
the middle species as given. Then there is 1 in 200 chance of the
earlier species being found, and 1 one in 200 chance of the later
species being found, i.e. 1 in 40,000. So one predicts around 10
sequences of 3 consecutive species in the known fossil record. (The
biases in the fossil record - both recency bias, and the fact that some
taxonomic groups have much better fossil records than others, increases
that expectation, perhaps substantially.) One would expect the odds of
fine-grained transitions to be appreciably higher.]
All good points, Ernest. I hope Ron takes them to heart.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS I still recall fondly how you and another person were
engaged in a tough but fair critique of some wild ideas
about homology by a then-newcomer to talk.origins,
Daud Deden. I welcomed him to talk.origins, added some
corrections to yours, and gave him kudos for attracting
the attention of two of the best people in talk.origns.
[...]That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 14:45:49 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39?AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In
this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write >> then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, by
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Your objection above is a PRATT.
The above is analogous to artificial
selection, in the sense that the selection is intelligent, but the
mechanism which created what to select was random,
which was Dawkins' point.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what we want okay"
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13:00 and 13:50 into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
Well, at least this time you cited what you're talking about. However,
your alleged "bombshell" suffers the same logical flaw as your Dawkins
PRATT above.
Again, the experimenters did the selecting, but what
they selected from was randomly generated, the very point of these experiments.
That makes your "bombshell" just another self-parody.
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the CambrianI looked up this book on amazon. For a boo, it's just too expensive. I
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason
fpr going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- >http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
Do your employers know you associate them with a parody of yourself?
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" ><[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
his German ethnicity. Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
[...]
On 21/07/2023 02:14, Ron Dean wrote:
That's my problem with evolution. no evidence where there should
be vast amounts of evidence, such as large numbers of intermediates
between species.
Perhaps 500,000 or more, fully formed and developed species
are found in the fossil record. I think if evolution held any water,
the intermediates would vastly outnumber the recognized fossil species.
Why is this not the case? If hundreds of thousands of species are
conserved in the strata, why are the much larger numbers of intermediates
not conserved in the strata?
Credible estimates of the number of living species are around 10
million. Taking 5 million years as an estimate for the average species lifetime, and a 500 million year fossil record, gives 1 billion species.
If only 1 in 200 "fully formed species" have been found in the fossil
record why would the fossil record to be packed with fine grained transitions?
Even in punctuated equilibrium, punctuation must leave 10's of
thousands of intermediates even in these "isolates".
[all of which might no longer exist because of erosion, or metamorphism,
or subduction, or be inaccessible because they're buried deep underground.]
Many fossil species are known only from a single fossil, or a single
site, or a single stratum. Why do you expect to see gradual change?
The members of a species at a particular time are not identical. They
can differ because of genetic or environmental factors, either within a population, or between geographically separated populations, or because
they are at different stages of the life cycle. With a sufficiently
large sample of fossils of various ages you could disentangle this
variation from gradual change within a population, but with the number
of specimens known for the average species how do you to propose to demonstrate that the species show stasis?
The fossil record is heavily biased, which means that it non-trivial to predict how many fine-grained transitions between species we should
expect to find. But the number is way smaller than what you would have
us believe. If you want to make the case that the expected fossils are missing you have to do the modelling.
[For a crude model, where all species are equally likely to be
fossilised and discovered, consider the occurrence of three species
forming successive members of a temporal sequence. Take the presence of
the middle species as given. Then there is 1 in 200 chance of the
earlier species being found, and 1 one in 200 chance of the later
species being found, i.e. 1 in 40,000. So one predicts around 10
sequences of 3 consecutive species in the known fossil record. (The
biases in the fossil record - both recency bias, and the fact that some taxonomic groups have much better fossil records than others, increases
that expectation, perhaps substantially.) One would expect the odds of fine-grained transitions to be appreciably higher.]
You have been going out on a limb these last few days, Ron.
I suggest you follow my example and take the weekend off.
It often gives me a sense of perspective, and keeps me
from suffering burnout.
Also, it slows down your critics. It took me a long time
to learn to resist the temptation to respond quickly to provocative
posts laced with unfair tactics. Usually now I let them
sit for at least a day, aware that otherwise I'm likely to get another
round in short order.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic.
The two may go hand in hand with his brand of anti-ID zealotry.
Thomists are generally hostile to Behe because he undermines
their concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God.
Two magazines dominated by Catholics, "Catholic Answers" and "First Things," have published
articles distorting what ID is all about, and given no (CA) or very limited (FT)
chance for rebuttal.
How do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian
CORRECTION: a committed "Cafeteria Catholic" with a cavalier attitude towards Jesus's
commandment, "Do not bear false witness."
Also someone with a shallow commitment to the Catholic Church's pro-life doctrines.
Even while he was his much more reasonable alter ego, AlwaysAskingQuestions, he admitted that the main reason he voted against liberalizing Ireland's abortion laws was that he didn't like going with the tide [not his exact words,
but I think I have captured their spirit] of people around him.
Under the name of Martin Harran, he has completely reversed that: he now goes enthusiastically with the tide of venom that my worst self-appointed adversaries hurl at me.
who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
I doubt that Martin knows what the ToE is all about: it has nothing to do with
accepting common descent. It is about the (totally inadequate) theory
of neo-Darwinism attempting to explain HOW this common descent came about.
hand that God set the world a-turnin' and set evoluiton up and, at the same time, is more than the deistic first cause. Of course, one can say that God steps in and 'steers' evolution, but that leads to the odd "recognition" that, if this be so, aroundAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
Nor have I. But I no longer suspect Martin of being a clandestine apostate; he doesn't seem to take the Catholic dogma of life after death seriously enough to actively assent to, or dissent from, it.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
I haven't looked at it yet, but the following claim about it in the first of the "top reviews"
makes his relentless anti-Behe behavior look hypocritical:
"More suprising, and perhaps, troubling, is that Miller not only believes in God, but in a very specific Christian God - a God who is actively involved in things, capable of miracles, and has certain...personality traits. It is hard to say on the one
--https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501#customerReviewsfallacy in presenting weakened versions of their positions, which he then tears down."
The author of this review, Kevin Currie-Knight, does not seem to realize that ID is very different
from a creationism that denies common descent. Behe in particular has a strong
commitment to common descent, so much so that he probably scares a lot of creationists
from buying his books.
OTOH the next review, by "Free Thinker," seems right on the money:
"[Miller] then defends evolution (to be specific, naturalistic evolution) againsts the objections of Phillip Johnson and Micheal Behe. Here he is weaker. I have read both Johnson and Behe's works, and in my opinion he is guilty of the "straw man"
Harshman does the same for Meyer in his "analysis" on which I commented yesterday.
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first
time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced
themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told >> was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
I am sorry you had this outrageous treatment. But you are going
way out on a limb below.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther,
He had many serious flaws, but what do you see wrong with Wesley,
or St. Peter, or the current Pope?
Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
I don't get it. Pope Francis is no saint, but he's nothing
like some utterly vile medieval popes. Losing the Papal
States was one of the best things that happened to the
Catholic Church, in pushing its priorities in the right direction.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS At the end of your latest post to this thread, you wrote,
"No more time now." Do please consider carefully what
I wrote at the beginning of this post.
An analogy: in my riposte to a mendacious post by jillery this morning,
I made it clear that jillery's totalitarian bent of mind
was reminiscent of the regime that is ruling China with an iron hand.
It had nothing to do with Chinese people in general.
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 5:00:40?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2023 14:45:49 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39?AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
As a general rule, referencing Intelligent Design writers is met with
disdain. And you are accused of appealing to "creationist" sources. In >> >> this way, they "shoot the messenger" and by so doing, whatever you write >> >> then stands discredited.
Fortunately, there are sometimes intelligent design arguments that
appear in anti-ID sources without the authors realizing it.
And these pose good opportunities for us.
One example was long ago, in the book _The_Blind_Watchmaker_, by
Dawkins. He described some computer experiments that mutated
simulations of flowers, picking the most interesting ones for the
next generation, and ended up with pictures that resembled insects.
Your objection above is a PRATT.
Like hell it is.
Random mutation, which you harp on below,
is like the sound of one hand clapping without natural or
intelligent selection.
[That's a famous Zen metaphor.]
The above is analogous to artificial
selection, in the sense that the selection is intelligent, but the
mechanism which created what to select was random,
which was Dawkins' point.
It was a CLAIM, not a point.
In fact, Dennett even called attention
in his lecture (see below) to another flaw. The simulated flowers
had no genotype; the "mutations" were to the phenotype, which
calls to mind Lamarck and Lysenko, and not Darwin.
So one could say that Dawkins threw Darwin under the bus;
the same applies to your use of the insult "PRATT" to the
heart and soul of Darwinism, natural selection as opposed
to human selection.
Like the flaw I pointed out, though, the lack of a genotype
was repaired in new experimental designs, according to Dennett.
Of course, "most interesting" is not a biological concept, but requires
a subjective intelligence. This flaw was pointed out to Dawkins
soon enough, and several teams of researchers came up with
experiments that used actual simulated competition for resources,
and there were some clear winners in one such experiment.
Another ID foe, Daniel Dennett, showed a film of it on a visit
to our campus two or three decades ago. Very interesting.
But now, an example from just a few months ago: the OOL specialist
Jack Szostak did a 55 minute lecture back in March where he
described an experiment with the same flaws as Dawkins's,
I had forgotten about Dawkins's the phenotype flaw when I wrote the above. >In Szostak's experiment, the phenotype WAS the genotype.
and one other: where Dawkins had no idea what the final outcome
would be, Szostak described an experiment where they did
intelligent design selection with a specific goal in mind:
"so what we were able to do pretty easily was build libraries of on the order of
10 to the 15th different random sequences made in DNA transcribed into
RNA and then take that set of sequences and subject it
to a selection okay, so enriching for the ones that do what we want and throwing away the ones
that don't and then amplifying those survivors with or without adding a little bit more variation and going
around and around this cycle, going around and around that cycle,
uh until the population is taken over by molecules that do uh what we want okay"
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13:00 and 13:50 into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ
Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
Well, at least this time you cited what you're talking about. However,
your alleged "bombshell" suffers the same logical flaw as your Dawkins
PRATT above.
There is no logical flaw, and you need to provide some excuse for
using the acronym PRATT. Where do you think it was ever refuted?
Again, the experimenters did the selecting, but what
they selected from was randomly generated, the very point of these
experiments.
To use a term your admirer Burkhard used the other day on this thread,
you are making up shit with your speculation, "the very point".
The real point was spelled out by Szostak: they were aiming for
a ribozyme that "does what we want"-- bind to an ATP molecule
in the right way.
That makes your "bombshell" just another self-parody.
Your use of "self-parody" here is just as unintelligible
as your use of it was in your rejected Chez Watt.
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be
noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
That;s not where I found the quote. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1199179-in-china-we-can-criticize-darwin-but-not-the-government
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
It just seemed to me, that it was too much of a coincidence, considering
the familiarity of Darwin with Paley's "evidences", the timing, and the dissidence to Darwin's book to Paley's.....
It seemed illogical that Darwin and his knowledge of Paley's efforts,
had no bearing on his mind. It's a suspicion I've had. for a while.
My suspicion was taken as a attack, but I did questioned Darwin's motives. Which, it seems to me is verboten.
On 7/21/23 10:33 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 12:35:48?PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/21/23 9:26 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 9:30:47?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...] >>>>>>
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
Your "Yet again" below, Martin, is a serious distortion. The comment
to which you are alluding had nothing to do with Burkhard's ethnicity, >>>> but only about at least one draconian policy of the current regime in Germany.
An analogy: in my riposte to a mendacious post by jillery this morning, >>>> I made it clear that jillery's totalitarian bent of mind
was reminiscent of the regime that is ruling China with an iron hand.
It had nothing to do with Chinese people in general.
Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to >>>>> his German ethnicity.
Stupid/insincere misreading. I USED palpable character deficiencies in Burkhard
to ask a question which I've had at the back of my mind for decades, and which
his behavior rekindled.
Naturally, you deleted my comments that supported the existence
of the character deficiency that I identified.
The reason the question interests me so much now is that my father
was on the German faculty of Washington and Jefferson
college, and a linguist by training and research,
and he never found a German equivalent of the
phrase, "giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt."
He also could not find a German word for "kick,"
but only the circumlocution "mit dem Fuss stossen"
[In those days, the two double s's were written with
a letter that looks somewhat like a lower-case Greek beta.
Now it seems there is a spelling reform in Germany
and Austria to replace this with double s.]
Jeez, what an a�hat.
SMILE when you say that, podner, or be guilty of sinking
ever deeper into hypocrisy.
No problem. I was smiling; in fact I was laughing out loud.
Of course, you had no way of knowing about my
father having been on the German faculty, unless you went on a
muckraking expedition similar to the one involving
my military service in the early 1970's.
Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
You are even more of a violator of the benefit of doubt concept than Burkhard.
And no, I won't ask any questions about Gaelic terms. My father never studied Gaelic.
[...]
Peter Nyikos
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day >Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told >was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular >church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 11:50:47?AM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >> > >> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >> > > do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >> > > write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
shared, at least outside YEC circles.
Your personal opinion has as much weight as any other's opinion. You consistently appear to believe that your unsupported claims should be regarded as having any truth value.
It looks to me that you are just reflecting your own reasons for being an atheist, as well as coloring it with claims that justify and legitimize those reasons. But at heart you believe there is no God, and it is possible if not likely the reason isyour belief in evolution, and not a critique of the Bible.
"During the first few years of the twenty-first century, a number of high-profile populist books offering an aggressively atheist critique of religion appeared. This �clustering� of prominent works of atheist apologetics may be attributed to the factthat developments in biology, especially evolutionary biology, have profound negative implications for belief in God. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, both published in 2006, argue that the Darwinian theory of
https://academic.oup.com/chicago-scholarship-online/book/17978/chapter-abstract/175817652?redirectedFrom=fulltext
In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first
time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced
themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day >> > Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
[�]
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >> >> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >> >> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >> >> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >> > to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >> > of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >> > do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >> > at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >> > write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >> > highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior ofThere are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
If it was the main reason, for you, that would explain your fixation on the relationship between evolution and faith, but it is not a fixation that is widely
shared, at least outside YEC circles.
[…]
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >> >> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious training)
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of some
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is where
If it was the main reason, for you, that would explain your fixation on the relationship between evolution and faith, but it is not a fixation that is widely
shared, at least outside YEC circles.
John Harshman wrote:
<As an atheist, atheism is his paradigm, which takes precedence and
priority
��over evidence, data, facts everything.
I see how you turned that around. Clever. But you miss the argument. You
can see design in the undesigned if you're looking for it. And no,
atheism doesn't take precedence over evidence, etc. That's insulting.
I apologize, I did not mean this as an insult! Just a statement of
fact. It
also applies to the religious.
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about� the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US� you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be
noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source.
The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just
plain wrong is another reason not to use it.
You have been going out on a limb these last few days, Ron.
I suggest you follow my example and take the weekend off.
It often gives me a sense of perspective, and keeps me
from suffering burnout.
Also, it slows down your critics. It took me a long time
to learn to resist the temptation to respond quickly to provocative
posts laced with unfair tactics. Usually now I let them
sit for at least a day, aware that otherwise I'm likely to get another
round in short order.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >> >> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic.
The two may go hand in hand with his brand of anti-ID zealotry.
Thomists are generally hostile to Behe because he undermines
their concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God.
Two magazines dominated by Catholics, "Catholic Answers" and "First Things," have published
articles distorting what ID is all about, and given no (CA) or very limited (FT)
chance for rebuttal.
How do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian
CORRECTION: a committed "Cafeteria Catholic" with a cavalier attitude towards Jesus's
commandment, "Do not bear false witness."
Also someone with a shallow commitment to the Catholic Church's pro-life doctrines.
Even while he was his much more reasonable alter ego, AlwaysAskingQuestions, >he admitted that the main reason he voted against liberalizing Ireland's >abortion laws was that he didn't like going with the tide [not his exact words,
but I think I have captured their spirit] of people around him.
Under the name of Martin Harran, he has completely reversed that: he now goes >enthusiastically with the tide of venom that my worst self-appointed adversaries hurl at me.
who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
I doubt that Martin knows what the ToE is all about: it has nothing to do with >accepting common descent. It is about the (totally inadequate) theory
of neo-Darwinism attempting to explain HOW this common descent came about.
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
Nor have I. But I no longer suspect Martin of being a clandestine apostate; >he doesn't seem to take the Catholic dogma of life after death seriously >enough to actively assent to, or dissent from, it.
hand that God set the world a-turnin' and set evoluiton up and, at the same time, is more than the deistic first cause. Of course, one can say that God steps in and 'steers' evolution, but that leads to the odd "recognition" that, if this be so, aroundYou say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
I haven't looked at it yet, but the following claim about it in the first of the "top reviews"
makes his relentless anti-Behe behavior look hypocritical:
"More suprising, and perhaps, troubling, is that Miller not only believes in God, but in a very specific Christian God - a God who is actively involved in things, capable of miracles, and has certain...personality traits. It is hard to say on the one
--https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501#customerReviewsfallacy in presenting weakened versions of their positions, which he then tears down."
The author of this review, Kevin Currie-Knight, does not seem to realize that ID is very different
from a creationism that denies common descent. Behe in particular has a strong >commitment to common descent, so much so that he probably scares a lot of creationists
from buying his books.
OTOH the next review, by "Free Thinker," seems right on the money:
"[Miller] then defends evolution (to be specific, naturalistic evolution) againsts the objections of Phillip Johnson and Micheal Behe. Here he is weaker. I have read both Johnson and Behe's works, and in my opinion he is guilty of the "straw man"
Harshman does the same for Meyer in his "analysis" on which I commented yesterday.
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first
time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced
themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told >> was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
I am sorry you had this outrageous treatment. But you are going
way out on a limb below.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther,
He had many serious flaws, but what do you see wrong with Wesley,
or St. Peter, or the current Pope?
Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
I don't get it. Pope Francis is no saint, but he's nothing
like some utterly vile medieval popes. Losing the Papal
States was one of the best things that happened to the
Catholic Church, in pushing its priorities in the right direction.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS At the end of your latest post to this thread, you wrote,
"No more time now." Do please consider carefully what
I wrote at the beginning of this post.
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just plain wrong is another reason not to use it.
--
Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:That;s not where I found the quote. >https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1199179-in-china-we-can-criticize-darwin-but-not-the-government
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just >> plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
It just seemed to me, that it was too much of a coincidence, considering
the familiarity of Darwin with Paley's "evidences", the timing, and the >dissidence to Darwin's book to Paley's.....
It seemed illogical that Darwin and his knowledge of Paley's efforts,
had no bearing on his mind. It's a suspicion I've had. for a while.
My suspicion was taken as a attack, but I did questioned Darwin's motives. >Which, it seems to me is verboten.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:03:59 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <[email protected]>training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 11:50:47?AM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >> > far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >> > >> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >> > >> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >> > >> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >> > > see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >> > > to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >> > > of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >> > > at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >> > > highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >> > > accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >> > > for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >> > from theirI do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
shared, at least outside YEC circles.
Your personal opinion has as much weight as any other's opinion. You consistently appear to believe that your unsupported claims should be regarded as having any truth value.There is a lot of projection in that claim.
your belief in evolution, and not a critique of the Bible.It looks to me that you are just reflecting your own reasons for being an atheist, as well as coloring it with claims that justify and legitimize those reasons. But at heart you believe there is no God, and it is possible if not likely the reason is
fact that developments in biology, especially evolutionary biology, have profound negative implications for belief in God. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, both published in 2006, argue that the Darwinian theory"During the first few years of the twenty-first century, a number of high-profile populist books offering an aggressively atheist critique of religion appeared. This “clustering” of prominent works of atheist apologetics may be attributed to the
https://academic.oup.com/chicago-scholarship-online/book/17978/chapter-abstract/175817652?redirectedFrom=fulltext
In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion. After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >> > time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >> > themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned >> > was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men >> > he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset >> > me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was >> > advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and >> > we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St. >> > Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
[…]
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>> write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:29:31 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" ><[email protected]> wrote:
You have been going out on a limb these last few days, Ron.
I suggest you follow my example and take the weekend off.
It often gives me a sense of perspective, and keeps me
from suffering burnout.
I'm not sure why you think it useful to offer advice that clearly
hasn't worked for yourself.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:This was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts, >>>>>>> shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers >>>>>>> of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>> only a very few appearing laterYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>>>>> distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>>>
literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>>>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>>>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the scientific
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>>>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
I have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberateIt seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years
ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection,
effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing
the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern
phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >>> years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half
billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the
origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from
the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still*
don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes
functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating. Claiming these things are caused by "deliberate
purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularly
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence.
but I see no evidence pointing to the identityOnce again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
--
Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:That;s not where I found the quote.
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".-
Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should
be noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who
is not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is
just plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
On 7/21/23 8:53 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
Mark Isaak wrote:Nevertheless, that's as far back as the quote can be traced. There is
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:That;s not where I found the quote.
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".-
Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should
be noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who
is not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is
just plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
no evidence that Dr. Chen ever said it.
You certainly don't see anything wrong with spreading misinformation. And you have no problem with speaking ill of others without a shred of real evidence.I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.Have you ever considered that it's not questioning Darwin that is the problem, but in spreading misinformation? No, of course not. You see
nothing wrong with spreading misinformation.
--
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
Likely you never "had" religion, and so never "fell away" from religion, but was exposed to atheistic arguments and now just claim to have fallen away from religion. But you haven't fallen away from what you believe, and that is naturalism, or "noAs noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women. *Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
--
Glenn wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46?AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>For >>>>>>>> me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>>>>>> design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting longThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,You know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years >>>>>>>> ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>>>>
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>>>>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National >>>>>> Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>>>>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
I have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years >>>> ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection,
effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing >>>> the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern >>>> phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >>>> years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half >>>> billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)?
What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the >>>> origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from >>>> the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberate
purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still*
don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,
Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes
functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating. Claiming these things are caused by "deliberate
purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularly
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence.
but I see no evidence pointing to the identity
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
Once again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
A common argument against is there is no known way to recognize design, >since we cannot identify the designer, there is no design with which to >compare.
We recognize ancient designs because they are comparable to known human >designs. It's been my position that there are comparable characteristics, namely,
multiple layers of integrated complexity each layer interdependent,
but linked together in a singular form. This requires controlled energy, >controlled or directed by mind/information. An automobile engine for example,
a house, a telephone, a motorcycle a watch. they all have
one common denominator - intelligence/mind.
Life itself,
is a prime example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or >undirected chemistry brought about life.
You can see a huge pile of stones, for all you know
they were dropped by a melting glacier. But if you observe a mile long stone >fence, you can know that this did not just happen by accident and you can be certain
that a tornado didn't. Only an intelligence controlled energy is capable of taking this
stone pile and building this fence.
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:That;s not where I found the quote. >https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1199179-in-china-we-can-criticize-darwin-but-not-the-government
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be
during a lecture in California was warned about� the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US� you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
noted that the Chen quote above is dubious.� Its source is one
unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is
not a reliable source.� The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just
plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
It just seemed to me, that it was too much of a coincidence, considering
the familiarity of Darwin with Paley's "evidences", the timing, and the >dissidence to Darwin's book to Paley's.....
It seemed illogical that Darwin and his knowledge of Paley's efforts,
had no bearing on his mind. It's a suspicion I've had. for a while.
My suspicion was taken as a attack, but I did questioned Darwin's motives. >Which, it seems to me is verboten.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be inherently evil
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological >explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
On 23/07/2023 09:44, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil
Religion claims revealed knowledge. Religion claims moral authority.
When people speaking for a religion use that authority to advocate for
evil, then a number of possible conclusions come to mind.
1) They're lieing. In which case the credibility of other claims to
revealed knowledge are undermined. => atheism
2) The religion actually entails those claims.
2a) The claims are false. In which case revealed knowledge can be
inferred as a invalid epistemology. => atheism.
2b) The claims are true. => mysterious ways or maltheism
Mysterious ways leads you into theodicy. And I suspect that people have >internalised that claims of divine benevolence to a degree that atheism
is found more plausible that maltheism.
The Gospel of Matthew offers an experimental test (Matthew 7:16-23). >Strictly speaking it applies to individuals, rather than the institution
and doctrines, but it's like UFOs - when you eliminate the errors and
hoaxes there might a residue of genuine alien spaceships, but that's not
the way most people would bet.
On the other hand, I doubt that it is common for people to directly >deconvert because the argument "religion leads to evil therefore
religion is false" - rather they ask "how can this (the religion) be
true?" and in doing so discover that their religious belief lacked firm >empirical or logical foundations.
Not everyone goes all the way to atheism. Some adopt an amorphous deism, >pantheism, or ietsism.
I don't consider religious evil a especially good (logically) reason to >conclude atheism - as with theodicy maltheism is an alternative, and
there is also possibility of a corrupt institution with a core of truth
in its doctrines - but it leads to questioning, and questioning leads to
the issues of divine hiddenness and the contradictory content of
revealed knowledge.
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
[...]A common argument against is there is no known way to recognize design,
since
we cannot identify the designer, there is no design with which to
compare. We
recognize ancient designs because they are comparable to known human
designs.
It's been my position that there are comparable characteristics, namely, multiple layers of integrated complexity each layer interdependent,
but linked
together in a singular form. This requires controlled energy,
controlled or directed
by mind/information.
An automobile engine for example, a house, a telephone, a motorcycle a
watch.
they all have one common denominator - intelligence/mind. Life itself,
is a prime
example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or
undirected chemistry
brought about life. You can see a huge pile of stones, for all you know
they were
dropped by a melting glacier. But if you observe a mile long stone
fence, you can
know that this did not just happen by accident and you can be certain
that a tornado
didn't. Only an intelligence controlled energy is capable of taking this stone pile
and building this fence.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be inherently evil?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says - all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul, even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, allWhat other mechanism do you propose?I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics >> you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >>> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the
comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so >indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls. In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 1:00:50 PM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote:all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says - all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul, even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul,What other mechanism do you propose?I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in it.
Yes and no I'd say, and for the yes side and additional "yes, but so what"? It depends a lot on what you mean with panpsychism, not just lots of flavours, but also some entirely different fields.way that will not bother people for whom "idealism" has a negative connotation, but I cannot see that it is different from idealist monism in any other way. "
Your analysis is I'd say correct for many philosophical theories. But for many of them, your last sentence also works in the other direction - i.e.one could as well say "it seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in a
Ultimately, materialist monism (all is material) and idealist monism (all is mind, esse est percipii) are indistinguishable - there is by design no possible experiment that can distinguish between "everything is matter" and "everything is consciousness". Many of the traditional forms of panpsychism take this as a starting point, and try to resolve the apparent, but ultimately illusionary, conflict between them. That was the key idea in Galen Strawson's influential paper that revived modern
Another good example that I always quite liked was Bertrand Russel's neutral monism - avoids the dualist problem of the causal relation between mind and matter, but preserve "the phenomena" that is account for subjective experiences through thecumulation of "mental atoms" the same way the complexity of physical bodies is accounted for the combination of constituent parts. These and similar theories are philosophies - that is they aim at highly abstract, conceptual clarification and
And then there are the more directly scientific theories, which have, for some surprisingly, taken on that terminology. Integrated information theoryderive the properties that any postulated physical substrate must have to account for this experience. So IF the observed properties of conscious experience can be fully accounted for by an underlying physical system, THEN the properties of the physical
(IIT) is the most well known, and currently for many the most promising, example. They take an "instrumental panpsychism" i you will - starts with consciousness and the reality of our own phenomenologically experienced consciousness, and from that
So IIT like materialism, or science, in general, a mechanistic theory, just one that aims at describing the the essential properties of conscious experience from which then the essential properties of conscious physical systems are derived. And thetheory that in this approach explains the data best is one that strictly identifies consciousness with integrated information, and from that they get by extrapolation an informational aspect into the building blocks of everything.
Now, this does lead to (weak) testable experiments, and one of these was just completed this week as it so happens - a project funded by the Templeton Foundation, that pitted ITS against its main competitor, Global Workspace Theory. The project wascalled Cogitate, and the results were published last week. The underlying idea was “adversarial collaboration” - proponents of different theories team up to devise experiments that they both agree distinguishes between them in the form of an
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to >> answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have >> been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over 80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 13:04:43 +0100, Ernest Majortraining) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 23/07/2023 09:44, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>> responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
Or it's bullshit, and atheism is a worldview which accepts naturalism and no God, and excuses are made by criticizing religion and behaviors of religious believers.
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil
Religion claims revealed knowledge. Religion claims moral authority.
When people speaking for a religion use that authority to advocate for >evil, then a number of possible conclusions come to mind.
1) They're lieing. In which case the credibility of other claims to >revealed knowledge are undermined. => atheism
2) The religion actually entails those claims.
2a) The claims are false. In which case revealed knowledge can be
inferred as a invalid epistemology. => atheism.
2b) The claims are true. => mysterious ways or maltheism
Mysterious ways leads you into theodicy. And I suspect that people have >internalised that claims of divine benevolence to a degree that atheism
is found more plausible that maltheism.
The Gospel of Matthew offers an experimental test (Matthew 7:16-23). >Strictly speaking it applies to individuals, rather than the institution >and doctrines, but it's like UFOs - when you eliminate the errors and >hoaxes there might a residue of genuine alien spaceships, but that's not >the way most people would bet.
On the other hand, I doubt that it is common for people to directly >deconvert because the argument "religion leads to evil therefore
religion is false" - rather they ask "how can this (the religion) be >true?" and in doing so discover that their religious belief lacked firm >empirical or logical foundations.
Not everyone goes all the way to atheism. Some adopt an amorphous deism, >pantheism, or ietsism.
I don't consider religious evil a especially good (logically) reason to >conclude atheism - as with theodicy maltheism is an alternative, and
there is also possibility of a corrupt institution with a core of truth
in its doctrines - but it leads to questioning, and questioning leads to >the issues of divine hiddenness and the contradictory content of
revealed knowledge.
FWIW there are numerous bloggers who self-identify as having been
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
raised in Christian families, and then became activist atheists as
adults. One such person is Paul Ens aka Paulogia, who outed himself
in this six-minute video:
<https://youtu.be/zFUScz0d5w0>
*********************************
@4:58
Now I want to be clear. Accepting scientific truths like evolution
with common descent is not the same thing as rejecting the Bible.
Millions of Christians, including prominent scientists church leaders
and the Pope himself, find ways to reconcile these things. This
channel is less about religious claims and more about my frustration
towards unnecessary science denial.
**********************************
As you describe above, it's not the fact of evolution that led
Paulogia away from the Bible, but the lies and nonsense which so many Christian evangelicals promote to attack evolution and other
scientific facts, and so the video's title "Ken Ham made me an
atheist".
--
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:18:43 -0400
jillery <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >>> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the
comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls. In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
You seem to have gone out of your way to illustrate my point.
I'll not keep posting on this topic, by all means have the last word.
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:05:49?AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 13:04:43 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 23/07/2023 09:44, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >> >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >> >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >> >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >> >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
Or it's bullshit, and atheism is a worldview which accepts naturalism and no God, and excuses are made by criticizing religion and behaviors of religious believers.FWIW there are numerous bloggers who self-identify as having been
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >> >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >> >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >> >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >> >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >> >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >> >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >> >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil
Religion claims revealed knowledge. Religion claims moral authority.
When people speaking for a religion use that authority to advocate for
evil, then a number of possible conclusions come to mind.
1) They're lieing. In which case the credibility of other claims to
revealed knowledge are undermined. => atheism
2) The religion actually entails those claims.
2a) The claims are false. In which case revealed knowledge can be
inferred as a invalid epistemology. => atheism.
2b) The claims are true. => mysterious ways or maltheism
Mysterious ways leads you into theodicy. And I suspect that people have
internalised that claims of divine benevolence to a degree that atheism
is found more plausible that maltheism.
The Gospel of Matthew offers an experimental test (Matthew 7:16-23).
Strictly speaking it applies to individuals, rather than the institution >> >and doctrines, but it's like UFOs - when you eliminate the errors and
hoaxes there might a residue of genuine alien spaceships, but that's not >> >the way most people would bet.
On the other hand, I doubt that it is common for people to directly
deconvert because the argument "religion leads to evil therefore
religion is false" - rather they ask "how can this (the religion) be
true?" and in doing so discover that their religious belief lacked firm
empirical or logical foundations.
Not everyone goes all the way to atheism. Some adopt an amorphous deism, >> >pantheism, or ietsism.
I don't consider religious evil a especially good (logically) reason to
conclude atheism - as with theodicy maltheism is an alternative, and
there is also possibility of a corrupt institution with a core of truth
in its doctrines - but it leads to questioning, and questioning leads to >> >the issues of divine hiddenness and the contradictory content of
revealed knowledge.
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
raised in Christian families, and then became activist atheists as
adults. One such person is Paul Ens aka Paulogia, who outed himself
in this six-minute video:
<https://youtu.be/zFUScz0d5w0>
*********************************
@4:58
Now I want to be clear. Accepting scientific truths like evolution
with common descent is not the same thing as rejecting the Bible.
Millions of Christians, including prominent scientists church leaders
and the Pope himself, find ways to reconcile these things. This
channel is less about religious claims and more about my frustration
towards unnecessary science denial.
**********************************
As you describe above, it's not the fact of evolution that led
Paulogia away from the Bible, but the lies and nonsense which so many
Christian evangelicals promote to attack evolution and other
scientific facts, and so the video's title "Ken Ham made me an
atheist".
--
Atheism is as much a religion as any other.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:18:43 -0400
jillery <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >>> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the
comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls. In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
You seem to have gone out of your way to illustrate my point.
I'll not keep posting on this topic, by all means have the last word.
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 12:25:49?PM UTC+1, Martin Harran wrote:doing a lot of work here, and you risk setting up a strawperson. Lots of things can't be explained "just" by evolution - Jazz, or Haikus for instance (as stand -ins for lots and lots of cultural expressions of course. Some of the underlying aspects can
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
I'd say you are trying here to defend a reasonable position with rather problematic arguments. The first is a problematic formulation of the problem, when you write "I don't think can be explained as just the products of evolution". The "just" is
And from the other end, you get the opposite issue. I don't know of any theory of consciousness, from the most of fashioned religious ones to the most recent (quasi) scientific ones where "experiencing consciousness" would be an evolutionarydisadvantage at least for the material aspect of an organisms to have. In most, and most certainly all the more scientifically minded ones, including panpsychist-leaning theories such as IIT, focus on the advantages for an organism to have a unified and
considers foundational, the ToE only provides some constraints.have sex that leads to a child, the throw resulting child from a cliff, report your feelings during sex and cliff-throwing and compare) The most obvious explanation assumes that subjective and internal experience of pleasure/revulsion causally
In fact, my own favourite argument for (a form of property) dualism comes directly from the ToE: for evolutionary old traits, we subjectively experience evolutionary harmful actions as revolting, those enhancing fitness as pleasurable (scientific test:
(bit of an interlude: Some form of "illusionist" accounts of consciousness in Mahayana Buddhism and similar traditions may postulate that (self)consciousness is harmful for enlightenment, and therefore possibly in the "very long run" (i.e. as seen fromthe cycle of rebirth etc) - there is a fascinating fictional account of this in the context of AI and if robots are enlightened by design, in the second story within Doomsday Book, the South Korean movie that also has an...interesting take on the
etc)Similarly, we have a wealth of data how physical interference such as drugs, hormone injection, electroshocks etc causally impact on your consciousness. And we can also predict, with varying degrees of accuracy, from the fmri images that show brain
So for any reasonable interpretation of "just", I don't think you get much purchase out of your approach, the ToE explains those and only those parts one would it expect to explain "just fine".
You have similar problems with the other part of your post: " I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in it"
Here "link" too does way too much work, or else seriously, underestimates the insights that link biology to consciousness, and that includes also the more scientifically minded versions of modern panpsychism, such as IIT.
Some of is is so trivial that you probably don't even think about it - but there is a wealth of studies how different injuries to your physical brain (and/or the sensors connected to it) impact both our conscious experience and our self-awareness.
So there is rather clearly a causal pathway from biological states to consciousness, and any theory of consciousness that denies it is I'd say dead in the water. And causal pathways are of course the type of link science is interested in. That does notmean that consciousness can necessarily be "reduced" to the biological substratum, but "full reduction" is jut sone type of link, and one that is more a concern for philosophers than scientists.
Beyond these obvious links, you also underestimate the progress that consciousness studies as a field is making - as a scientific endeavour it is very much alive and kicking, in the same way as lots of "hard" scientific research paradigms are alive andkicking: manageable sub-problems are identified, testable hypothesis formulated, observations done - which then leads to new data, and refined ideas. The do it again with the new data. And again...
Over the last few weeks, Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness held its annual conference in New York - I was terribly tempted to use an underspend in one of my research project to go there, and somehow explain to our funders that adeep-dive in consciousness studies is just what we need for a project that tries to tell autonomous vehicles not to break road traffic laws, but have been travelling too much as it is this year, so only followed as much as I could online.
I thought in particular that the keynotes by May-Britt Moser, Doris Tsao and Yoshua Bengio were all brilliant and massively stimulating. (we are talking here after all a Nobel prize winner, a NAS member and a Turing Award winner). What I found mostimpressive was that they did not just read out their latest papers, but really showed how their mainstream neuroscience/AI research is linked to more foundational questions in consciousness. So e.g. Doris Tsao's connected in her talk her older work on
Even more interesting for people who want to combine traditional philosophy with hard empirical science, Mat-Brit Moser's talk was about her studies on baby rats that showed that the grid cell system taht is needed for spatial processing is formedprior to any sensory experience � so if you like, the Kantian view that we are born with spatial priors gets empirical support - IF you accept the standard evolutionary model that is needed to make insights from the brain of rats relevant to humans.
The third keynote was by Yoshua Bengio (https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06403) and his idea of how attractor dynamics in working memory lead to phenomenological ineffability, and he then linked this to one of the current "hot topic" neuro-philosophicaltheories of consciousness, the concept of limited-capacity workspace in the Dehaene�Changeux model (a.k.a. global workspace theory or GWT) as neurocomputational basis of conscious experience
These were just the keynotes, I also followed some of the other talks, and pretty much all of it I could recommend for follow ups and tracing down the papers of the speakers, or the tutorials https://theassc.org/assc-26/#programprovisional and preliminary to boot, another small brick in the wall of data. (same attitude we see on TO with abiogenesis research)
Now, some people will inevitably say that none of this "solves" what consciousness "really is" - fine, they are new piecemeal theories of specific aspects of consciousness, some very specific features it "has", but not what is "is", and all of it
I'd say that simply shows that the field is getting emancipated from philosophy and becomes a proper science. Scientists might indeed argue that the perception of a "hard problem" is to a degree a hangover from pre-modern times - the idea thatexplanations are in the form of the "essence" of an object rather than its causal relations. Essentialist thinking is (possibly for evolutionary reasons :o) ) difficult to get out of our system, but that is what modern science does - we are happy to
discipline, or vice versa.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried toWe're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says - allbits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in a way
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally sorespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in aeven an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says -
Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On
the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence,
for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that
is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock'
but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat
and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat
and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about
how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers
yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements
in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally sorespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to >> >> answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have >> >> been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics >> >> you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological >> explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area >> of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> it.
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1UOK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 20:12:41 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:18:43 -0400
jillery <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >>> >>> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >>> >>> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >>> >>> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >>> >>> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the
comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls. In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
You seem to have gone out of your way to illustrate my point.
QED
I'll not keep posting on this topic, by all means have the last word.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:20:50 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> it.
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1UOK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
On Saturday, 22 July 2023 at 06:55:48 UTC+3, Ron Dean wrote:
Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[...]
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
In addition to the more serious problems with your attack, it should be noted that the Chen quote above is dubious. Its source is one unreferenced remark in an anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells, who is not a reliable source. The fact that the quote, in its meaning, is just plain wrong is another reason not to use it. '
That;s not where I found the quote. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1199179-in-china-we-can-criticize-darwin-but-not-the-government
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
That is politics. Politics are neutral about actual truth. If truth helps to brain wash masses then it is good truth if not then bad truth. China, Russia, United States, India ... all so different, yet so similar.
It just seemed to me, that it was too much of a coincidence, considering the familiarity of Darwin with Paley's "evidences", the timing, and the dissidence to Darwin's book to Paley's.....
It seemed illogical that Darwin and his knowledge of Paley's efforts,
had no bearing on his mind. It's a suspicion I've had. for a while.
My suspicion was taken as a attack, but I did questioned Darwin's motives. Which, it seems to me is verboten.
You have totally moved away from scientific to political controversies.
That "verboten" is politically loaded term. Germany actually tries to be different
from China, Russia, United States, India. Tries to become better.
But that does
not matter, there it is also politics, they may fail, or turn into some other ugly,
you will find no truth in politics.
Theory of evolution is science, not politics.
You can discriminate or boast
some aspects of science with politics, but scientist knows ...
"eppur si muove".
That knowledge can be only gained without political
arguments. Did your designer design these political controversies? Or
what those have to do with anything?
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:35:50 AM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:Mine was a bit of Pythagoras, by way of Ovid.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:20:50 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1UOK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological >> explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area >> of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> it.
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1UOK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 10:00:51?AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:35:50?AM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:Mine was a bit of Pythagoras, by way of Ovid.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:20:50?AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1U
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote: >> > > > >> On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it >> > > > as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because >> > > > of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just> be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrainQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
from> questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,>
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction> he
seemed to be going.> To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but> you better not criticize the government. But in the US
can criticize the government, but you better not criticizeDarwin".- Chen
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian
community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just> be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrainQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
from> questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,>
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction> he
seemed to be going.> To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but> you better not criticize the government. But in the US
can criticize the government, but you better not criticizeDarwin".- Chen
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian
community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:20:50 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> it.
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1UOK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
It's great for putting one into a certain frame of mind,.
but that frame is inexpressible, and so is not relevant
to talk.origins, where sentiments that are expressed
are of utterly different natures.
You expressed some in your metaphor of our knowledge
expanding like a balloon, and I promised to talk about it today. Unfortunately, the post where you made it is not in this whole Usenet thread as defined by GG. Can you remember under which subject line
you posted it?
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 10:15:50 AM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:20:50 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because of its implications.https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1U
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
.Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
It's great for putting one into a certain frame of mind,.
but that frame is inexpressible, and so is not relevant
to talk.origins, where sentiments that are expressed
are of utterly different natures.
I feel truly sorry for you.
You expressed some in your metaphor of our knowledge
expanding like a balloon, and I promised to talk about it today. Unfortunately, the post where you made it is not in this whole Usenet thread
as defined by GG. Can you remember under which subject line
you posted it?
It's in the Szostak thread but I release you from your promise.
Listen to some music, or watch this video (again). 5min 48sec
And time well spent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLbmnvMWM0
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong
such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way; it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain
from questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction he
seemed to be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US
you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years.
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least
his second year in the same state, so this post is for the general readership,
including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original sourceIt might be just be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain >> from questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction he
seemed to be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US
you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the state of Washington,
going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."
Some further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give
yet more details if anyone is interested.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous response that Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized Darwin. As it turned out,Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly right, but neither Burkhard
nor Bill has uttered anything about that.
Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and Burkhard interact suggests that the two are locked in a perennial "I've got your back,
you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather few among
talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart
condition was. She played the wounded innocent about
some valid things Ron had said about her, and then reminded him
of his precarious state, asking whether this was the legacy he wanted to leave his family.
--With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
especially the RNA World which is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Of course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution of life as we know it,
and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:18:43 -0400
jillery <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
[]On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >>> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >>> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >>> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >>> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so >indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over >80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls.
In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
You seem to have gone out of your way to illustrate my point.
I'll not keep posting on this topic, by all means have the last word.
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least
his second year in the same state, so this post is for the general readership,
including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: <snip to focus on one point.
It might be just be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain >> from questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist, >> during a lecture in California was warned about the direction he
seemed to be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize >> Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US
you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original source
of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the state of Washington,
going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."
Some further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give
yet more details if anyone is interested.
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous response that Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized Darwin. As it turned out,
Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly right, but neither Burkhard
nor Bill has uttered anything about that.
Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and Burkhard interact suggests that the two are locked in a perennial "I've got your back, you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather few among
talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?
No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago, shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart
condition was. She played the wounded innocent about
some valid things Ron had said about her, and then reminded him
of his precarious state, asking whether this was the legacy he wanted to leave his family.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,
especially the RNA World which is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Of course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution of life as we know it,
and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?
.
Some people prefer to discuss ideas.
You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
On 2023-07-24 21:27:57 +0000, Lawyer Daggett said:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:I didn't know about Nyikos's post until you quoted it.
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years>.
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least> his
second year in the same state, so this post is for the general
readership,> including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden
wrote:> > On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:> >> > >> > On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:> > > >> <snip to focus on one point.> > >> > >> It might be just be wild
speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain> > >> from questioning
Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,> > >> during a
lecture in California was warned about the direction he> > >> seemed to >> be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize> > >>
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US> >
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the originalyou can criticize the government, but you better not criticize> > >> >> Darwin".- Chen
source> of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the
state of Washington,> going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.">> Some
further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give> yet more >> details if anyone is interested.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous responseQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up> >>>> > > in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the >>>> bounds> > > of the very large and politically powerful evangelical
Christian> > > community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
that> Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized
Darwin. As it turned out,> Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly
right, but neither Burkhard> nor Bill has uttered anything about
that.>> Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and
Burkhard interact> suggests that the two are locked in a perennial
"I've got your back,> you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather >> few among> talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,>
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart> condition was. She >> played the wounded innocent about> some valid things Ron had said about >> her, and then reminded him> of his precarious state, asking whether
this was the legacy he wanted to> leave his family.
--With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is >> afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.>> Of
course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution
of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be >> hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?.Some people prefer
to discuss ideas. You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years>.
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least> his
second year in the same state, so this post is for the general
readership,> including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden
wrote:> > On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:> >> >
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:> > ><snip to focus on one point.> > >> > >> It might be just be wild
speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain> > >> from questioning
Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,> > >> during a
lecture in California was warned about the direction he> > >> seemed to
be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize> > >>
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US> >
Darwin".- Chenyou can criticize the government, but you better not criticize> > >>
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original
source> of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the
state of Washington,> going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.">> Some
further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give> yet more
details if anyone is interested.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous responseQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up> >>>> > > in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the
bounds> > > of the very large and politically powerful evangelical
Christian> > > community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
that> Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized
Darwin. As it turned out,> Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly
right, but neither Burkhard> nor Bill has uttered anything about
that.>> Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and
Burkhard interact> suggests that the two are locked in a perennial
"I've got your back,> you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather
few among> talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,>
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart> condition was. She
played the wounded innocent about> some valid things Ron had said about
her, and then reminded him> of his precarious state, asking whether
this was the legacy he wanted to> leave his family.
--With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which
is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.>> Of
course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution
of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be
hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?.Some people prefer
to discuss ideas. You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least
his second year in the same state, so this post is for the general readership, >including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51?AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain
from questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction he
seemed to be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US
you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original source >of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the state of Washington,
going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."
Some further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give
yet more details if anyone is interested.
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds >> > of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian
community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous response that >Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized Darwin. As it turned out,
Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly right, but neither Burkhard
nor Bill has uttered anything about that.
Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and Burkhard interact >suggests that the two are locked in a perennial "I've got your back,
you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather few among
talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?
No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart
condition was. She played the wounded innocent about
some valid things Ron had said about her, and then reminded him
of his precarious state, asking whether this was the legacy he wanted to >leave his family.
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,
especially the RNA World which is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Of course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution of life as we know it,
and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- >http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 3:15:50?PM UTC-4, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:18:43 -0400
jillery <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:21:01 +0100, Martin Harran[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> > >>> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> > >>> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> > >>> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
It seems the challenge is to not rely on baseless allusions like the
comment immediately above.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over >> > >80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
That's true, since Harran is among those who think that personal
attack is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who
disagrees with them. Another irony here is Harran pretends he isn't
among the 80% who indulge their inner trolls.
Jillery's 80% is a misreading, but it may be closer than 20% where the >percentage of regulars of talk.origins are concerned.
In fact, Harran goes
out of his way to look for posts on GG from those he killfiles. He
doesn't just indulge his inner troll, he spoils it rotten.
Jillery is correct here, but it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
You seem to have gone out of your way to illustrate my point.
I hope it isn't about attacks *per se*, but unjust ones.
Honest counterattack is a necessity here in talk.origins,
with all the trumped-up false charges going around.
I'll not keep posting on this topic, by all means have the last word.
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Are you familiar with the saying, "If you throw enough shit against a wall, >some of it is bound to stick." The only defense against that is an
untiring series of counterattacks, to make the shit-throwing costly
for the shit-flinger. One thing that makes counterattacks tricky,
though, is to avoid coming off as someone who can't resist
"feeding the troll."
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years>
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least> his
second year in the same state, so this post is for the general
readership,> including lurkers.
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is >> afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which
is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Of course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution >> of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be >> hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
is it really possible that he really doesn't understand the
difference between biological evolution and the origin of life? That's
the sort of confusion (usually deliberate) one expects from
professional creationists, not from a professor at the University of
South Carolina.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
Bill Rogers ... Athel ... Öö Tiib ... Burkhard ... Dean ... jillery ... Ron ...
On 2023-07-24 21:27:57 +0000, Lawyer Daggett said:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years>.
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least> his
second year in the same state, so this post is for the general
readership,> including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51?AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden
wrote:> > On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:> >> >
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:> > ><snip to focus on one point.> > >> > >> It might be just be wild
speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain> > >> from questioning
Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,> > >> during a
lecture in California was warned about the direction he> > >> seemed to
be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize> > >>
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US> >
Darwin".- Chenyou can criticize the government, but you better not criticize> > >>
This morning, I told �� Tiib about what I believe to be the original
source> of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the
state of Washington,> going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.">> Some
further details can be found in my reply to ��, and I'll give> yet more
details if anyone is interested.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous responseQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up> >>>>> > > in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the >>>>> bounds> > > of the very large and politically powerful evangelical
Christian> > > community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
that> Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized
Darwin. As it turned out,> Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly
right, but neither Burkhard> nor Bill has uttered anything about
that.>> Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and
Burkhard interact> suggests that the two are locked in a perennial
"I've got your back,> you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather
few among> talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,>
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart> condition was. She
played the wounded innocent about> some valid things Ron had said about
her, and then reminded him> of his precarious state, asking whether
this was the legacy he wanted to> leave his family.
--With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which
is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.>> Of
course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution
of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be
hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?.Some people prefer
to discuss ideas. You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
I didn't know about Nyikos's post until you quoted it. You're right, of >course, in your interpretation, but there is still a question to be
asked: is it really possible that he really doesn't understand the
difference between biological evolution and the origin of life? That's
the sort of confusion (usually deliberate) one expects from
professional creationists, not from a professor at the University of
South Carolina.
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 10:11:42 +0200, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Athel Cornish-Bowden
<[email protected]>:
On 2023-07-24 21:27:57 +0000, Lawyer Daggett said:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >>> Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years>
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least> his >>> second year in the same state, so this post is for the general.
readership,> including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51?AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden
wrote:> > On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:> >> > >>> > On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:> > > >>> <snip to focus on one point.> > >> > >> It might be just be wild
speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain> > >> from questioning
Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,> > >> during a
lecture in California was warned about the direction he> > >> seemed to >>> be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize> > >>
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US> > >>> >> you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize> > >> >>> Darwin".- Chen
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original >>> source> of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the
state of Washington,> going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.">> Some >>> further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give> yet more
details if anyone is interested.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous responseQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up> >>>>> > > in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the >>>>> bounds> > > of the very large and politically powerful evangelical >>>>> Christian> > > community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
that> Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized >>> Darwin. As it turned out,> Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly
right, but neither Burkhard> nor Bill has uttered anything about
that.>> Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and
Burkhard interact> suggests that the two are locked in a perennial
"I've got your back,> you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather >>> few among> talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago,>
shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart> condition was. She >>> played the wounded innocent about> some valid things Ron had said about >>> her, and then reminded him> of his precarious state, asking whether
this was the legacy he wanted to> leave his family.
--With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is >>> afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which >>> is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.>> Of
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution >>> of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be >>> hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?.Some people prefer >> to discuss ideas. You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
I didn't know about Nyikos's post until you quoted it. You're right, of >course, in your interpretation, but there is still a question to be
asked: is it really possible that he really doesn't understand the >difference between biological evolution and the origin of life? That's
the sort of confusion (usually deliberate) one expects from
professional creationists, not from a professor at the University of
South Carolina.
IIRC he's a math professor, so in matters of biology he's
just another somewhat informed layman.
Of course, he may
think, as many seem to, that a doctorate in any discipline
confers expertise in *all* disciplines, sort of an academic
Dunning-Kruger Effect.
- Isaac Asimov
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:line.
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-
<snip>
[email protected] wrote:line.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-
In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
..
<snip>
On 2023-07-25 15:58:53 +0000, Ron Dean said:
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".-
Chen
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the
bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical
Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
;
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
Evidence? Examples? OK, I know you don't believe in evidence or
examples, but try to make an effort.
Michael Denton still has a job, I think. Admittedly it is at the
Dishonesty Institute, so maybe that shouldn't count. But until he
reached retirement age he had a job at the perfectly respectable
University of Otago. Michael Behe likewise: not only at the Dishonesty Institute but also at Lehigh University. (I think I may have known
Michael Denton (very slightly) around 1976 when we were on the Editorial Board of the Biochemical Journal.)
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be justQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian
community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
On 7/25/23 9:38 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-25 15:58:53 +0000, Ron Dean said:
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>> <snip to focus on one point.In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- >>>> Chen
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up >>> in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the
bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical
Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
Evidence? Examples? OK, I know you don't believe in evidence or
examples, but try to make an effort.
Michael Denton still has a job, I think. Admittedly it is at the Dishonesty Institute, so maybe that shouldn't count. But until he
reached retirement age he had a job at the perfectly respectable University of Otago. Michael Behe likewise: not only at the Dishonesty Institute but also at Lehigh University. (I think I may have known
Michael Denton (very slightly) around 1976 when we were on the Editorial Board of the Biochemical Journal.)
Still, if you were in line for a position in biology at any non-fundamentalist college or university and the title of your job talk
was "Evolution is a Hoax", I doubt you would do well. I'd be surprised
if you made it as far as the job talk, actually.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 12:26:03 -0400, Ron Deanexperiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
<[email protected]> wrote:
Glenn wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46?AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced.
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposefulYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>>>>>
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530. >>>>>>> (this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous >>>>>>> arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
I have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years >>>>> ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus
snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to >>>>> allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, >>>>> effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing >>>>> the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern >>>>> phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >>>>> years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half >>>>> billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)? >>>>> What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the >>>>> origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from >>>>> the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that
God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberate >>>> purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still*
don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,
Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes
functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating. Claiming these things are caused by "deliberate
purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularly
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence.
but I see no evidence pointing to the identity
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
Once again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
Glenn's comment above is classic not-disagreement, mindless insult
that doesn't even qualify as relevant opinion; typical troll tripe.
A common argument against is there is no known way to recognize design,
since we cannot identify the designer, there is no design with which to
compare.
That is not the argument I posted above, and your paraphrase of the
"common argument against" misrepresents the argument others have
raised. Once again, to the best of my knowledge, nobody in T.O. has
ever asked you to identify your designer. Instead, they have
challenged you to specify the necessary and sufficient *qualities*
which your presumptive designer must have in order to have designed
the things you say it designed when you say it designed them.
The purpose of this challenge is *not* to identify your presumptive
designer. Instead, the purpose *is* to identify an objective basis to distinguish things which might plausibly have been designed from
things which might plausibly be not designed. Failure to meet this
challenge makes it impossible to do even this necessary first step. To
the best of my knowledge, this is a challenge few ID advocates have
even acknowledged, and none have met.
We recognize ancient designs because they are comparable to known human
designs. It's been my position that there are comparable characteristics, namely,
multiple layers of integrated complexity each layer interdependent,
but linked together in a singular form. This requires controlled energy,
controlled or directed by mind/information. An automobile engine for example,
a house, a telephone, a motorcycle a watch. they all have
one common denominator - intelligence/mind.
Incorrect. They have at least one other common denominator, which you conveniently ignore; they are all known to be human designs. All of
your examples are analogies at best, which illustrate a point, but
aren't evidence of anything but their authors' rhetorical abilities.
Life itself,
is a prime example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or
undirected chemistry brought about life.
By your own words, your presumptive purposeful designer is no less a
matter of _faith_, which makes pointless your objection about
undirected chemistry. More to the point, there is nothing about life
which violates natural laws, which means life doesn't require faith or
a purposeful intelligent designer.
You can see a huge pile of stones, for all you know
they were dropped by a melting glacier. But if you observe a mile long stone >> fence, you can know that this did not just happen by accident and you can be certain
that a tornado didn't. Only an intelligence controlled energy is capable of taking this
stone pile and building this fence.
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and
so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of
ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided
natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
On Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 8:20:51 AM UTC-7, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 10:11:42 +0200, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Athel Cornish-Bowden
<[email protected]>:
On 2023-07-24 21:27:57 +0000, Lawyer Daggett said:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is
afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,> especially the RNA World which >>> is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Of course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution
of life as we know it,> and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be
hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
Some people prefer to discuss ideas. You are not their cup of tea.
I didn't know about Nyikos's post until you quoted it. You're right, of >course, in your interpretation,
but there is still a question to be
asked: is it really possible that he really doesn't understand the >difference between biological evolution and the origin of life?
That's the sort of confusion (usually deliberate) one expects from >professional creationists, not from a professor at the University of >South Carolina.
IIRC he's a math professor, so in matters of biology he's
just another somewhat informed layman.
He knows that.
Of course, he may
think, as many seem to, that a doctorate in any discipline
confers expertise in *all* disciplines, sort of an academic
Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Expertise? Like you?
jillery wrote:scientific literature describing just such fossils.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 12:26:03 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Glenn wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46?AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>> [email protected] wrote:
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor.
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire
article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>>> meaning.
If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references.
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been >>>>> updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years >>>>> ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus >>>>> snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back >>>>> through connecting linkages.
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
Life itself,
is a prime example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or >> undirected chemistry brought about life.
By your own words, your presumptive purposeful designer is no less a matter of _faith_, which makes pointless your objection about
undirected chemistry. More to the point, there is nothing about life
which violates natural laws, which means life doesn't require faith or
a purposeful intelligent designer.
You can see a huge pile of stones, for all you know
they were dropped by a melting glacier. But if you observe a mile long stone
fence, you can know that this did not just happen by accident and you can be certain
that a tornado didn't. Only an intelligence controlled energy is capable of taking this
stone pile and building this fence.
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and
so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
On 7/24/23 1:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers ... Athel ... Öö Tiib ... Burkhard ... Dean ... jillery ... Ron ...
FYI, Peter, the behavior I highlight above is normal for you, but
abnormal for humans in general.
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 5:30:51 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:25:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers has had his head buried in the sand for several years
about everything I have posted, and Athel is going on in at least
his second year in the same state, so this post is for the general readership,
including lurkers.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 11:00:51 AM UTC-4, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-24 14:30:01 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: <snip to focus on one point.
It might be just be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain
from questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist, >> during a lecture in California was warned about the direction he
seemed to be going. To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize
Darwin, but you better not criticize the government. But in the US >> you can criticize the government, but you better not criticize
Darwin".- Chen
This morning, I told Öö Tiib about what I believe to be the original source
of Chen quotes like this one, not in California but in the state of Washington,
going back to 2000, and worded in this way:
"In China, we can criticize Darwin, but not the government.
In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."
Some further details can be found in my reply to Öö, and I'll give
yet more details if anyone is interested.
Quite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds
of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Bill's word "snark" doesn't begin to describe the venomous response that Burkhard made to some statements by Ron Dean when he criticized Darwin. As it turned out,
Burkhard was wrong and Dean was mostly right, but neither Burkhard
nor Bill has uttered anything about that.
Everything I've seen in the years I've watched Bill and Burkhard interact
suggests that the two are locked in a perennial "I've got your back, you've got my back" relationship -- one of rather few among
talk.origins regulars.
Extremely silly. Has anyone tried to put Ron Dean in prison?
No, but jillery risked giving Ron a heart attack a year or two ago, shortly after Ron revealed how precarious his heart
condition was. She played the wounded innocent about
some valid things Ron had said about her, and then reminded him
of his precarious state, asking whether this was the legacy he wanted to leave his family.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
With authorship of that book as background, I have no idea why Athel is afraid to discuss abiogenesis with me,
especially the RNA World which is so central to speculation about how it could have happened.
Your canned speech below seems to have been intended for a differentOf course, it could be that Athel focuses purely on biochemical evolution of life as we know it,
and doesn't touch OOL. Even so, it shouldn't be hard for Athel to get up to speed on OOL.
post, Daggett. Only in reply to John Kerr-Mudd did I come anywhere near 95% attack.
And it was all justified, and you don't dare contest any of it below.
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the other boys don't want to come out and play with you?I never wonder about boys like you and Harran, who frequently do 100% attack posts in reply to me, including the very one to which I am replying. In fact, rare is
the Harran reply to me or *about me that isn't 100% attack.
100% attack posts on Glenn are quite common, especially by jillery. Hemidactylus used to revel in them, but he seems to have restrained himself of late.
Have you ever wondered why, your insincere spiel here notwithstanding, Harran has several boys playing "See no evil, hear no evil speak no evil" with him, including yourself?
It's like, self-appointed enmity against Peter Nyikos and Glenn covers
a multitude of sins in this topsy-turvy forum, talk.origins.
Your very first reply to me, years ago, bristled with unprovoked enmity,
and it got immediate appreciation from John Harshman, who responded,
"Nobody better mess with Lawyer Daggett. He has True Grit."
[Quoted from memory, but it's at least as close to the original
as the quotes from Chen about Darwin and government are to each other]
.I more so than you, especially with largely guileless people like Ron Dean, or basically sincere and honest people like Öö Tiib. Neither of them ever gets
Some people prefer to discuss ideas.
personal attacks from me, but lots of ideas, even though Tiib
can be nasty to people like Dean and (especially) Glenn and even, rarely, tp me.
No wonder Martin Harran lied to him (also to Bill Rogers, even more so) about what manner of man I am, as seen here:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/xqiemRxP0mI/m/zJ8rzQ7uAAAJ
Re: A thread about banning, paradoxically about stopping discussion of banning
Jun 9, 2023, 7:05:49 PM
You're not their cup of tea.Transparently insincere use of the word "Crikey" noted.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
Your whole post is stereotyped mass of insincerity,
showing no more originality than very similar posts
that I get about once a year on average. But only about
half of them pretend to be surprised at the fiction they've concocted,
with a word like "Crikey".
Peter Nyikos
PS Rest assured: if Martin Harran shows no signs of being aware of this post on his return from Bristol, I will let him know about it.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 10:15:51 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:[snip]
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 5:30:51 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
https://youtu.be/QfwE00yIg2Q?t=89Transparently insincere use of the word "Crikey" noted.
You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
Your whole post is stereotyped mass of insincerity,
showing no more originality than very similar posts
that I get about once a year on average. But only about
half of them pretend to be surprised at the fiction they've concocted,
with a word like "Crikey".
Steve Irwin wrangling a spitting cobra. Note it's set to begin
at the 89 second mark, quickly followed by his trademark "Crikey"
and then being tagged by a spitting cobra. Again, humor eludes you.
[email protected] wrote:line.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be justQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
..
<snip>
jillery wrote:experiment, but, despite the title and hype, not related to either punctuated equilibrium or the Cambrian explosion.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 12:26:03 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Glenn wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 3:25:46?AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:15:09 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/>ForThis was an on-going header and somehow the link got misplaced. >>>>>>> Well, either that, or you just read the title and the first paragraph or so of the article and noticed the hype, but not the fact that the only experiment it dealt with was an in vitro evolution experiment in the bacterium E. coli. An interesting
me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposefulYou know the article you linked to has absolutely nothing to do with the evolution of animal phyla in the Cambrian, right?
design on a universal scale with functions and designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms and parts,
shapes, organs, limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of
modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>>>>> only a very few appearing later
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+
distinct modern phyla.
his is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two >>>>>>>>>> explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective. numbers >>>>>>>>>
scientific literature describing just such fossils.
My
mention of 485 was a careless mistake. It should have been 541 and 530.
(this according to Britannica.)
Or 543 - 533 (from Biologos) another link states 530 - 52o myo (National
Center for Science education - NCSE)
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor. But. I have read numerous >>>>>>>> arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>>>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion. Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like
The way I explained it is the way I understood the challenge. My argumentI have concluded that you aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, jillery.It seems from this article you reference to Deuerostomes has been
updated and reinterpreted
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182915v1
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe2741
Based on what I've read protostomes originated about 600 million years >>>>>> ago. There is two types.
1) lopotrococzoa whhich includs Leeches, earthworms, squid octopus >>>>>> snails and slugs.
2)Ecdysozoa
which includes arthropods, nemotodes and lardogrades.
But like the typical nature of evolution, there is absolutely no
observable links between the
dozen or so separate and distinct animals that can be traced back
through connecting linkages.
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.create a universe with precisely tuned physical constants designed to >>>>>> allow life to survive, and a system of mutation, drift and selection, >>>>>> effective at producing new species, would muck up the job of designing >>>>>> the physical laws of the universe so badly that in order to get modern >>>>>> phyla to appear he had to intervene on multiple occasions half a billion >>>>>> years ago (and then had to return intermittently over the ensuing half >>>>>> billion years to produce new orders and families within those phyla)? >>>>>> What makes you think God couldn't have done all the design work up >>>>>> front, and designed physical laws and fine tuned constants so that the >>>>>> origin of life and all its subsequent evolution unfolded naturally from >>>>>> the original design of the universe? Why do you think you know that >>>>>> God's intelligence has limits and what those limits are?
And in any case, why do you think a designer powerful enough to
I see evidence of deliberate purposeful design where ever I look
You keep saying that but never identify evidence that shows deliberate >>>>> purposeful design. Your comments above are just the latest example.
Even if there are no observable links among protostomes, you *still* >>>>> don't say how that shows deliberate purposeful design.
and design infers a designer,
Once again, it does not. Design in the sense you use here describes
functional processes, which you know unguided natural processes are
capable of creating. Claiming these things are caused by "deliberate >>>>> purposeful design" presumes your presumptive designer has regularly
tweaked, and continues to tweak, functional processes into existence. >>>>>
but I see no evidence pointing to the identity
of the designer. If a person believes the designer
is God, this is strictly by _faith_ not evidence.
Once again, the identity of your presumptive purposeful designer
doesn't inform how the evidence shows purposeful design. Your
arguments are classic circularity. How many times are you going to
post things like this?
Glenn's comment above is classic not-disagreement, mindless insult
that doesn't even qualify as relevant opinion; typical troll tripe.
A common argument against is there is no known way to recognize design,
since we cannot identify the designer, there is no design with which to >>> compare.
That is not the argument I posted above, and your paraphrase of the
"common argument against" misrepresents the argument others have
raised. Once again, to the best of my knowledge, nobody in T.O. has
ever asked you to identify your designer. Instead, they have
challenged you to specify the necessary and sufficient *qualities*
which your presumptive designer must have in order to have designed
the things you say it designed when you say it designed them.
is that you can compare design to design IE human design to intelligent >design in nature. Because highly complex design has at its foundation >mind/intelligence, this infers a designer. I suspect, for this reason >design, is denied and when observed, it is denied by deliberate attempts to explain
it away or to misidentify it.
The purpose of this challenge is *not* to identify your presumptive
designer. Instead, the purpose *is* to identify an objective basis to
distinguish things which might plausibly have been designed from
things which might plausibly be not designed. Failure to meet this
challenge makes it impossible to do even this necessary first step. To
the best of my knowledge, this is a challenge few ID advocates have
even acknowledged, and none have met.
I have! I've tried to identify the after-effects of design by life Vs >non-living actions or processes.
A good definition: when you observe and identify highly complex >inter-dependent level of highly complex, organized and unified item,
activity or process, you can almost be assured this is not the actions
of non-life.
Here again, you argue that we recognize this as designed, because we know >humans designed it.We recognize ancient designs because they are comparable to known human
designs. It's been my position that there are comparable characteristics, namely,
multiple layers of integrated complexity each layer interdependent,
but linked together in a singular form. This requires controlled energy, >>> controlled or directed by mind/information. An automobile engine for example,
a house, a telephone, a motorcycle a watch. they all have
one common denominator - intelligence/mind.
Incorrect. They have at least one other common denominator, which you
conveniently ignore; they are all known to be human designs. All of
your examples are analogies at best, which illustrate a point, but
aren't evidence of anything but their authors' rhetorical abilities.
Here you "short-come" my comment. I used engines
telephones etc, as examples or as ways we identify of design. In the same >sence. I think we could recognize design by a mind by the peculiarities
and attributes, which I described just above your critique.
Life itself,
is a prime example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or >>> undirected chemistry brought about life.
By your own words, your presumptive purposeful designer is no less a
matter of _faith_, which makes pointless your objection about
undirected chemistry. More to the point, there is nothing about life
which violates natural laws, which means life doesn't require faith or
a purposeful intelligent designer.
You can see a huge pile of stones, for all you know
they were dropped by a melting glacier. But if you observe a mile long stone
fence, you can know that this did not just happen by accident and you can be certain
that a tornado didn't. Only an intelligence controlled energy is capable of taking this
stone pile and building this fence.
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and
so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in
nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of
ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided
natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
Life itself,
is a prime example. It's nothing more than _faith_ that natural forces or
undirected chemistry brought about life.
By your own words, your presumptive purposeful designer is no less a
matter of _faith_, which makes pointless your objection about
undirected chemistry. More to the point, there is nothing about life
which violates natural laws, which means life doesn't require faith or
a purposeful intelligent designer.
Jillery is showing her shallow understanding of OOL with this *non sequitur*.
The natural laws that permit it might take ten times the age of the universe >to make life (as we know it) probable anywhere in the universe,
yet it allegedly happened in only ca. 500 million years -- less than 0.5% of that time span.
100% attack posts on Glenn are quite common, especially by jillery.
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:11:40 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
jillery wrote:
Once again,
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and
so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in
nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of
ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided
natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
No comment to any of the above.
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and
so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
Is that what you mean by
"short-come"?
On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 5:00:52?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:11:40 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
jillery wrote:
Once again,
<snip for focus>
Once again, your fence example is known to be of human manufacture and >> >> so ignores the very category you claim to be making, that of design in >> >> nature. Defining a fence to be of purposeful intelligent design
doesn't help make your case. Instead, consider what are the
qualities of "fence":
"a barrier, railing, or other upright structure, enclosing an area of
ground to mark a boundary, control access, or prevent escape."
Once again, you grossly misinterpreted this definition.
I have seen numerous examples of such structures created by unguided
natural processes. Here's one:
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
I bet 100 Quatloos you have seen them too.
No comment to any of the above.
Not by Ron as of yet. However...
On 7/19/23 2:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:00:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope >>>> with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
You made an unmarked deletion at this point.
And I make it again, because the deleted part is irrelevant to the point.
We already know that the problem of abiogenesis is unsolved. The next question for you is: So what?
That is not a rhetorical question. So what?
I think you want to say, So divine intervention!
but realize that
nothing anyone has said can support such a conclusion, so you keep
stopping just short of saying that
and hope others will make that
mistake on their own.
So? Would it "cope" better if it made something up some fiction just so >> it would have something to say?
People keep making up fiction about how random mutation of RNA molecules and subsequent
unspecified events will automatically favor the strings of nucleotides that are more effective at
carrying out myriads of functions that are useful for progress towards the first prokaryote
and beyond.
Why do you say it is fiction? There is a great deal of evidence that
the combination of imperfect replication and natural selection leads to
more effective functions.
The only fiction I see is your calling the
idea a fiction.
But nobody seems able to describe an analogue of the natural selection in populations
of whole organisms that makes any sense. So it looks like these people are doing it to have
something to say.
I'm trying to find relevance again and failing.
Are you talking about
abiogenesis, stellar evolution, or the latest butterfly you happened to catch a glimpse of?
[snip more stuff like these that are completely unproductive of insight
into anything]
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is >>>> hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway?
By doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
And you honestly think abiogenesis researchers are more deficient in
that area than creationists are?
No, but I think the current crop of talk.origins anti-ID regulars is more deficient
than the best of them are: they are motivated to seek out the places where the
biggest problems are, and y'all are not.
I'll repeat, albeit in different words, that you are often unaware of
what problems are being addressed by the people you refer to.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 11:40:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/19/23 2:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:00:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>> On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope >>>> with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
You made an unmarked deletion at this point.
And I make it again, because the deleted part is irrelevant to the point.
What point? It certainly is relevant to the mistaken point [1] you made only a
day before you wrote this. It was:
"So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, " https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xD0QyTJpAwAJ
Jul 18, 2023, 10:45:45 AM
[1] Pun unintended: Mistaken Point is a coastal location in Cananda where
a treasure trove of Ediacaran fossils has been found and continues to be uncovered.
Anyway, I was telling you that "RNA World" is their main way of trying to cope,
and how inadequate it has been so far. I told you about how, in the 100 floor skyscraper
metaphor I use, RNA World starts at about the 20th floor with a crude method of
replicating long strings of RNA nucleotides inside lipid vesicles, and ends at about the 80th floor
with "life as we don't know it" in the form of cells very much like prokaryotes,
but using ribozymes instead of protein enzymes.
I might add that perhaps the most important floor, somewhere around the 40th,
was the one on which prebiotic evolution produced a ribozyme
that could replicate any molecule of RNA by producing the complementary molecule.
The next floor then would come when there were two such molecules in the right
environment for them duplicating each other.
Are you interested enough to think about what a momentous occasion that was?
We already know that the problem of abiogenesis is unsolved. The next question for you is: So what?
So, I've been trying to get people here interested in learning about RNA World,
but the only one so far is MarkE, and I think he came about this interest independently.
That is not a rhetorical question. So what?
And this is not a rhetorical answer: just this week, I expressed the hope that Athel, who wrote a book on biochemistry in evolution,
would turn his talents to discussing RNA World with me.
But I think he is afraid he'd wind up admitting, in all kinds of ways,
just how little the best researchers know about it.
I think you want to say, So divine intervention!
WRONG!!!!!
but realize that
nothing anyone has said can support such a conclusion, so you keep stopping just short of saying that
WRONG!!!!!
and hope others will make that
mistake on their own.
WRONG!!!!!
I can hardly believe that you are so clueless about where I am coming from.
Especially since the two of us have known each other since 1997!
And all this time you've been unaware that
I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!
I'VE NEVER BEEN A CREATIONIST!
I wonder how many other talk.origins regulars are this clueless about me. Harshman used to suspect I was a creationist,
but he told me earlier this year that he no longer has that suspicion.
So? Would it "cope" better if it made something up some fiction just so >> it would have something to say?
People keep making up fiction about how random mutation of RNA molecules and subsequent
unspecified events will automatically favor the strings of nucleotides that are more effective at
carrying out myriads of functions that are useful for progress towards the first prokaryote
and beyond.
Why do you say it is fiction? There is a great deal of evidence that
the combination of imperfect replication and natural selection leads to more effective functions.
You are talking about biological evolution, of life as we know it, beginning with the
first free-living prokaryotes, which represent the roof of that metaphoric skyscraper. Until the "momentous occasion" I told you about, nothing resembling natural selection can operate.
The only fiction I see is your calling the
idea a fiction.
But nobody seems able to describe an analogue of the natural selection in populations
of whole organisms that makes any sense. So it looks like these people are doing it to have
something to say.
I'm trying to find relevance again and failing.
Are you having a problem comprehending
the paragraph to which you are responding?
You just got done calling what I was saying in the paragraph that preceded it "a fiction."
Yet it sounds like you are now unable to see the relevance of your own words.
Are you talking about
abiogenesis, stellar evolution, or the latest butterfly you happened to catch a glimpse of?
If you hadn't deleted what I wrote about RNA World, thinking it irrelevant, you might know that I was talking about abiogenesis.
[snip more stuff like these that are completely unproductive of insight into anything]
The irony is priceless.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it isBy doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway? >>>
And you honestly think abiogenesis researchers are more deficient in
that area than creationists are?
No, but I think the current crop of talk.origins anti-ID regulars is more deficient
than the best of them are: they are motivated to seek out the places where the
biggest problems are, and y'all are not.
I'll repeat, albeit in different words, that you are often unaware of
what problems are being addressed by the people you refer to.
So tell me of someone in talk.origins who is addressing the
problem of abiogenesis at the 20th floor and beyond, besides myself.
Athel and Lawyer Daggett aren't interested, alas.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 10:40:51 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/24/23 1:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers ... Athel ... Öö Tiib ... Burkhard ... Dean ... jillery ... Ron ...
FYI, Peter, the behavior I highlight above is normal for you, but
abnormal for humans in general.
"FYI" should be spelled "IMHO", and that's giving you the benefit of the doubt.
You ought to heed Casanova's general claim that he made today.
He talked about how there seem to be those who think:
"that a doctorate in any discipline confers expertise in *all* disciplines, sort of an academic Dunning-Kruger Effect."
You don't have a doctorate in psychology, yet you
are of the opinion that it is nor normal to name so many
people in one post. And you undermined even this opinion
by listing two people of whose integrity I have a high regard.
And anyone with a doctorate in statistics or probability
would be ashamed to hint that it is common for me
("normal for you") to name so many people in one post.
What percentage of my posts do you think have me naming so many people?
On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 7:15:53 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 11:40:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/19/23 2:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:What point? It certainly is relevant to the mistaken point [1] you made only a
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:00:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>> On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>>> On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>>>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope >>>>>>> with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
You made an unmarked deletion at this point.
And I make it again, because the deleted part is irrelevant to the point. >>
day before you wrote this. It was:
"So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, "
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xD0QyTJpAwAJ
Jul 18, 2023, 10:45:45 AM
[1] Pun unintended: Mistaken Point is a coastal location in Cananda where
a treasure trove of Ediacaran fossils has been found and continues to be uncovered.
Anyway, I was telling you that "RNA World" is their main way of trying to cope,
and how inadequate it has been so far. I told you about how, in the 100 floor skyscraper
metaphor I use, RNA World starts at about the 20th floor with a crude method of
replicating long strings of RNA nucleotides inside lipid vesicles, and ends at about the 80th floor
with "life as we don't know it" in the form of cells very much like prokaryotes,
but using ribozymes instead of protein enzymes.
I might add that perhaps the most important floor, somewhere around the 40th,
was the one on which prebiotic evolution produced a ribozyme
that could replicate any molecule of RNA by producing the complementary molecule.
The next floor then would come when there were two such molecules in the right
environment for them duplicating each other.
Are you interested enough to think about what a momentous occasion that was? >>
We already know that the problem of abiogenesis is unsolved. The next
question for you is: So what?
So, I've been trying to get people here interested in learning about RNA World,
but the only one so far is MarkE, and I think he came about this interest independently.
That is not a rhetorical question. So what?
And this is not a rhetorical answer: just this week, I expressed the hope
that Athel, who wrote a book on biochemistry in evolution,
would turn his talents to discussing RNA World with me.
But I think he is afraid he'd wind up admitting, in all kinds of ways,
just how little the best researchers know about it.
I think you want to say, So divine intervention!
WRONG!!!!!
but realize that
nothing anyone has said can support such a conclusion, so you keep
stopping just short of saying that
WRONG!!!!!
and hope others will make that
mistake on their own.
WRONG!!!!!
I can hardly believe that you are so clueless about where I am coming from. >>
Especially since the two of us have known each other since 1997!
And all this time you've been unaware that
I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!
I'VE NEVER BEEN A CREATIONIST!
I wonder how many other talk.origins regulars are this clueless about me.
Harshman used to suspect I was a creationist,
but he told me earlier this year that he no longer has that suspicion.
So? Would it "cope" better if it made something up some fiction just so >>>>> it would have something to say?
People keep making up fiction about how random mutation of RNA molecules and subsequent
unspecified events will automatically favor the strings of nucleotides that are more effective at
carrying out myriads of functions that are useful for progress towards the first prokaryote
and beyond.
Why do you say it is fiction? There is a great deal of evidence that
the combination of imperfect replication and natural selection leads to
more effective functions.
You are talking about biological evolution, of life as we know it, beginning with the
first free-living prokaryotes, which represent the roof of that metaphoric >> skyscraper. Until the "momentous occasion" I told you about, nothing
resembling natural selection can operate.
The only fiction I see is your calling the
idea a fiction.
But nobody seems able to describe an analogue of the natural selection in populations
of whole organisms that makes any sense. So it looks like these people are doing it to have
something to say.
I'm trying to find relevance again and failing.
Are you having a problem comprehending
the paragraph to which you are responding?
You just got done calling what I was saying in the paragraph that preceded it "a fiction."
Yet it sounds like you are now unable to see the relevance of your own words.
Are you talking about
abiogenesis, stellar evolution, or the latest butterfly you happened to
catch a glimpse of?
If you hadn't deleted what I wrote about RNA World, thinking it irrelevant, >> you might know that I was talking about abiogenesis.
[snip more stuff like these that are completely unproductive of insight
into anything]
The irony is priceless.
What better way to do justice to a hard problem than to note that it is >>>>>>> hard, note that it is unsolved, and keep trying to solve it anyway? >>>>>>By doing a better job figuring out where the main problems lie.
And you honestly think abiogenesis researchers are more deficient in >>>>> that area than creationists are?
No, but I think the current crop of talk.origins anti-ID regulars is more deficient
than the best of them are: they are motivated to seek out the places where the
biggest problems are, and y'all are not.
I'll repeat, albeit in different words, that you are often unaware of
what problems are being addressed by the people you refer to.
So tell me of someone in talk.origins who is addressing the
problem of abiogenesis at the 20th floor and beyond, besides myself.
Athel and Lawyer Daggett aren't interested, alas.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
I am not especially interested for a few reasons.
1, above you act like a 10 year old in the sandbox quipping that Athel
is _afraid_ to engage you. Child's play indeed.
2, your model of a 100 foot skyscraper is very misguided and the process
of disabusing you of it would almost certainly involve quibbling and sophistry on your part that I have little patience for.
3 your knowledge of biochemistry is weak but you are unaware of
how weak it is. I can't help but cite your expressed belief that the
mRNA vaccine would hang about in cells for 3 months. This is not
some sort of irrelevant trivia but rather goes towards understanding foundational chemistry necessary to produce the required
chemical hypercycles.
4 you have a history of beginning these things then dropping them
when you spot a pretty butterfly, then subsequently making odd
claims of victory.
5 as in your text above, you can't even imagine how the mechanism
of natural selection could come into play short of the equivalent
of a RNA world equivalent of a prokaryote.
6 you take the whole RNA world model too literally which I think
demonstrates an inability to think beyond snippets you've read.
You won't like reading that but you keep moaning about how people
won't engage you so you've effectively asked for the explanation.
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 11:40:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/19/23 2:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023 at 12:00:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/18/23 10:37 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 10:45:45 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>> On 7/17/23 10:24 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:15:40 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>>>>> On 7/14/23 4:11 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This applies *a fortiori* to the widespread definition of "evolution" as "change of frequency
of alleles in a population." Moreover, we might as well go beyond the case of the Cambrian
explosion to the grand panoply of organisms that are the result of over 3 billion years
of evolution in the more common meaning of the word, the one that creationists cannot cope with.
The bottom line here is that modern evolutionary theory cannot cope with it either,
making biologists powerless to explain mega-evolution that involves such huge transitions as the
one from fully aquatic fish to fully land-based reptiles in the short time it took.
Define "cope."
It means being able to go beyond the widespread definition I quoted in explaining how life on
earth got to be the fantastically varied thing it is. Trying to use that definition, or the Modern Synthesis
(a.k.a. neo-Darwinism) to explain it is like trying to explain everything we do, including this
intelligent conversation we are having, in terms of cell-to-cell chemical signaling.
So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope >>>>>> with abiogenesis, but evolution narrowly construed cannot.
No, it's WORSE where abiogenesis is concerned. It has no theory, not even one as primitive as neo-Darwinism.
You made an unmarked deletion at this point.
And I make it again, because the deleted part is irrelevant to the point.
What point? It certainly is relevant to the mistaken point [1] you made only a
day before you wrote this. It was:
"So, if I understand you, the scientific field of abiogenesis can cope
with abiogenesis, " https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xD0QyTJpAwAJ
Jul 18, 2023, 10:45:45 AM
[1] Pun unintended: Mistaken Point is a coastal location in Cananda where
a treasure trove of Ediacaran fossils has been found and continues to be uncovered.
Anyway, I was telling you that "RNA World" is their main way of trying to cope,
and how inadequate it has been so far. I told you about how, in the 100 floor skyscraper
metaphor I use, RNA World starts at about the 20th floor with a crude method of
replicating long strings of RNA nucleotides inside lipid vesicles, and ends at about the 80th floor
with "life as we don't know it" in the form of cells very much like prokaryotes,
but using ribozymes instead of protein enzymes.
I might add that perhaps the most important floor, somewhere around the 40th,
was the one on which prebiotic evolution produced a ribozyme
that could replicate any molecule of RNA by producing the complementary molecule.
The next floor then would come when there were two such molecules in the right
environment for them duplicating each other.
Are you interested enough to think about what a momentous occasion that was?
We already know that the problem of abiogenesis is unsolved. The next
question for you is: So what?
So, I've been trying to get people here interested in learning about RNA World,
but the only one so far is MarkE, and I think he came about this interest independently.
That is not a rhetorical question. So what?
And this is not a rhetorical answer: just this week, I expressed the hope that Athel, who wrote a book on biochemistry in evolution,
would turn his talents to discussing RNA World with me.
But I think he is afraid he'd wind up admitting, in all kinds of ways,
just how little the best researchers know about it.
I think you want to say, So divine intervention!
WRONG!!!!!
but realize that
nothing anyone has said can support such a conclusion, so you keep
stopping just short of saying that
WRONG!!!!!
and hope others will make that
mistake on their own.
WRONG!!!!!
I can hardly believe that you are so clueless about where I am coming from.
Especially since the two of us have known each other since 1997!
And all this time you've been unaware that
I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!
I'VE NEVER BEEN A CREATIONIST!
I wonder how many other talk.origins regulars are this clueless about me.
People keep making up fiction about how random mutation of RNA molecules and subsequent
unspecified events will automatically favor the strings of nucleotides that are more effective at
carrying out myriads of functions that are useful for progress towards the first prokaryote
and beyond.
Why do you say it is fiction? There is a great deal of evidence that
the combination of imperfect replication and natural selection leads to
more effective functions.
You are talking about biological evolution, of life as we know it, beginning with the
first free-living prokaryotes, which represent the roof of that metaphoric skyscraper. Until the "momentous occasion" I told you about, nothing resembling natural selection can operate.
The only fiction I see is your calling the
idea a fiction.
But nobody seems able to describe an analogue of the natural selection in populations
of whole organisms that makes any sense. So it looks like these people are doing it to have
something to say.
I'm trying to find relevance again and failing.
Are you having a problem comprehending
the paragraph to which you are responding?
You just got done calling what I was saying in the paragraph that preceded it "a fiction."
Yet it sounds like you are now unable to see the relevance of your own words.
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >religion.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:29:31 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" ><[email protected]> wrote:
Also someone with a shallow commitment to the Catholic Church's pro-life doctrines.
Even while he was his much more reasonable alter ego, AlwaysAskingQuestions, >>he admitted that the main reason he voted against liberalizing Ireland's >>abortion laws was that he didn't like going with the tide [not his exact words,
but I think I have captured their spirit] of people around him.
Cite please - I don't recall ever making any statement about my
attitude to abortion or Ireland's laws about it.
(Note to onlookers: I'm pretty sure I know where Peter's confusion is
coming from but I want him to work it out for himself as a learning
exercise and whether he has the decency to withdraw a blatantly false >statement.)
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>> responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its "undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University is hardly a "rare creationist source".
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>> responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its "undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >> >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >> >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >> >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >> >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >> >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >> >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >> >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >> >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >> >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >> >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >> >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
The question was about evolution, not "social Darwinism.
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
I'll take it as a given that it's a rare (and defective) bird who will >defend confusion over the is/ought problem to defend that the
science of evolution supports the Morality of Social Darwinism
(it doesn't, by logic disjoint from acceptance or rejection of
evolutionary theory).
Now the anticipated retort is "but Scientist X advocated for
Policy Y", as an asserted equivalence to "but Priest X advocated
for Policy Z". I challenge that as an equivalence.
But let's back up for added context.
One question was, is evolution innately "atheistic"? But that
wording is wrong, hiding misbegotten premises. It seems to
get used to actually mean one or more of a multitude including,
but not limited to "does acceptance of evolution
lead to/require/promote/advocate (other?)
either a loss of belief in a god or gods, or an affirmative belief
that their are no gods.
I very purposefully make a distinction between those last two,
as I find it to be a common point of miscommunication about
what people mean by atheism/atheist.
So at this point, one would almost require a table to organize
answers lead to/require/promote/advocate versus the distinct
interpretations of atheism. But it can be simplified.
Whether accepting evolution "leads to" either branding of atheism
is an observational thing, independent of why it did or didn't.
For "require/promote/advocate", the answer is NO.
That's true regardless of what individual scientists may claim
because scientists aren't priests, and it's a mistake to mistake that.
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
On 7/25/23 7:01 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 10:40:51 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/24/23 1:24 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers ... Athel ... Öö Tiib ... Burkhard ... Dean ... jillery ... Ron ...
FYI, Peter, the behavior I highlight above is normal for you, but
abnormal for humans in general.
"FYI" should be spelled "IMHO", and that's giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Nope.
See below.
You ought to heed Casanova's general claim that he made today.
He talked about how there seem to be those who think:
"that a doctorate in any discipline confers expertise in *all* disciplines, sort of an academic Dunning-Kruger Effect."
You don't have a doctorate in psychology, yet you
are of the opinion that it is nor normal to name so many
people in one post. And you undermined even this opinion
by listing two people of whose integrity I have a high regard.
And anyone with a doctorate in statistics or probability
would be ashamed to hint that it is common for me
("normal for you") to name so many people in one post.
What percentage of my posts do you think have me naming so many people?
I collected statistics for a month once. For everyone else, the number
of people mentioned in a post, besides the person the post was
responding to, averaged less than one, with a standard deviation also
near one. (I think two people besides you got above 1). For you, the
average was around 4.
This is from memory, so the numbers may be off a
bit, but it was obvious without even calculating the statistics that
your behavior was an outlier.
My expertise in psychology is not great enough to understand why you
should think one needs expertise in psychology to notice such a pattern.
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett <[email protected]> wrote:religious training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >> >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >> >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >> >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >> >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >> >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >> >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >> >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >> >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >> >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >> >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >> >>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >> >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >> >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >> >> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >> >> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >> >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >> >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >> >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
The question was about evolution, not "social Darwinism.
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
I'll take it as a given that it's a rare (and defective) bird who will >defend confusion over the is/ought problem to defend that the
science of evolution supports the Morality of Social Darwinism
(it doesn't, by logic disjoint from acceptance or rejection of >evolutionary theory).
Now the anticipated retort is "but Scientist X advocated for
Policy Y", as an asserted equivalence to "but Priest X advocated
for Policy Z". I challenge that as an equivalence.
But let's back up for added context.
One question was, is evolution innately "atheistic"? But that
wording is wrong, hiding misbegotten premises. It seems to
get used to actually mean one or more of a multitude including,
but not limited to "does acceptance of evolution
lead to/require/promote/advocate (other?)
either a loss of belief in a god or gods, or an affirmative belief
that their are no gods.
I very purposefully make a distinction between those last two,
as I find it to be a common point of miscommunication about
what people mean by atheism/atheist.
So at this point, one would almost require a table to organize
answers lead to/require/promote/advocate versus the distinct >interpretations of atheism. But it can be simplified.
Whether accepting evolution "leads to" either branding of atheism
is an observational thing, independent of why it did or didn't.
For "require/promote/advocate", the answer is NO.
That's true regardless of what individual scientists may claim
because scientists aren't priests, and it's a mistake to mistake that.
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate >towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to dropShort version:
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett <[email protected]> wrote:
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate >towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:Short version:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" >>>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>>>>> Martin Harran wrote:
.....On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw asI'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>>>>>> responded to it.
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth. >>>>>>>>>>>
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many
deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know >>>>>>>>> are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to
religious documents (often as part of religious training)
actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off >>>>>>>>> by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made
headlines.
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of
religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108 >>>>>>>>>
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them >>>>>>>>> to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to
reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, >>>>>>>>> followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is where the textual
criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), >>>>>>>>> and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in >>>>>>>>> gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral
discomfort with the behavior of some religious leaders, or with >>>>>>>>> anti-LGBT positions that most younger people do not share but >>>>>>>>> which have become central issues in some churches, and discomfort with the
politicization of religion. So while there are some people who >>>>>>>>> leave Christianity specifically because of evolution, it does not >>>>>>>>> seem to be one of the main reasons.
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>>>>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>>>>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>>>>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>>>>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >>>>>>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>>>>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the >>>>>>>> scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>>>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>>>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >>>>> religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >>>>> claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument. >>>> Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for >>>> the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer >>>> could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
The question was about evolution, not "social Darwinism.
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
I'll take it as a given that it's a rare (and defective) bird who will
defend confusion over the is/ought problem to defend that the
science of evolution supports the Morality of Social Darwinism
(it doesn't, by logic disjoint from acceptance or rejection of
evolutionary theory).
Now the anticipated retort is "but Scientist X advocated for
Policy Y", as an asserted equivalence to "but Priest X advocated
for Policy Z". I challenge that as an equivalence.
But let's back up for added context.
One question was, is evolution innately "atheistic"? But that
wording is wrong, hiding misbegotten premises. It seems to
get used to actually mean one or more of a multitude including,
but not limited to "does acceptance of evolution
lead to/require/promote/advocate (other?)
either a loss of belief in a god or gods, or an affirmative belief
that their are no gods.
I very purposefully make a distinction between those last two,
as I find it to be a common point of miscommunication about
what people mean by atheism/atheist.
So at this point, one would almost require a table to organize
answers lead to/require/promote/advocate versus the distinct
interpretations of atheism. But it can be simplified.
Whether accepting evolution "leads to" either branding of atheism
is an observational thing, independent of why it did or didn't.
For "require/promote/advocate", the answer is NO.
That's true regardless of what individual scientists may claim
because scientists aren't priests, and it's a mistake to mistake that.
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:. . .
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to dropShort version:
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
Peter Nyikos
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live
up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman,
that women should not
be priests, etc.
And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it?
Burkhard wrote:speculations about the motives of the people who make them. Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post. Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild
I did _not_ intend this as impugning Darwin's character.
However, ifAttributes of the Deity in order to graduate.
his intent was to write
Paley's God out of the picture, then he succeeded. As a atheist, one
should appreciate Darwin
for this.
But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and
The Evidences had stopped being part of the mandatory curriculum in Cambridge over a decade before Darwin studied there, Darwin had to read Moral and Political Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity ,
neither of which was about biology.
This is what Darwin wrote in his autobiography (quote) "In order to pass
the B.A. examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley’s ‘Evidences of Christianity,’ and his ‘Moral Philosophy.’ ... The logic
of this book and as I may add of his ‘Natural Theology’ gave me as much delight as did Euclid...." https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/science/a-creationists-influence-on-darwin.html
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you., ... It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...
I'm a big boy, I cannot be persecuted! I
I'm mistaken, I sincerely appreciate being _shown_ where I am.
know that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem that delayed the publication of his work.A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
And here the lies start in earnest. And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated. But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit. And I quote you:
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his<
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the scientific method" comment.
I read a lot more and I have changed my mind.
Natural Theology – Paley and Darwin
Posted on 04/01/2012 by Jon Garvey
(quote) "My main impression, though, is of the great similarity between
the book and Darwin’s Origin. I came away with the strong impression
that the later work was largely intended as a rebuttal of Paley’s book. This close literary relationship would hardly be surprising, since
Darwin always acknowledged his early dependence on Natural Theology. " https://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2012/01/04/natural-theology-paley-and-darwin/
There is more than this, but it should suffice.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just that
Science is supposed to be objective, independent, impersonal and indifferent. Why are you emotional?
Fact of the matter, so far I've justified my argument!
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence
that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained >> away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. >> Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends
with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to
support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ >>> Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I >>>> live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >>>> for going into town.....
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as >>> much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On 27/07/2023 20:22, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
Peter Nyikos
Stunningly witty is one of the 3 classic categories. Being intended as humour is not disqualifying.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
. . .On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
Can't fool you, you got it.
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:religious training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >> >> >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >> >> >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >> >> >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >> >> >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >> >> >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >> >> >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >> >> >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of
this is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (
Short version:
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >> >> >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >> >> >>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >> >> >> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >> >> >> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >> >> >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >> >> >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >> >> >religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >> >> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >> >> >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument. >> >> Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for >> >> the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer >> >> could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
The question was about evolution, not "social Darwinism.
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
I'll take it as a given that it's a rare (and defective) bird who will
defend confusion over the is/ought problem to defend that the
science of evolution supports the Morality of Social Darwinism
(it doesn't, by logic disjoint from acceptance or rejection of
evolutionary theory).
Now the anticipated retort is "but Scientist X advocated for
Policy Y", as an asserted equivalence to "but Priest X advocated
for Policy Z". I challenge that as an equivalence.
But let's back up for added context.
One question was, is evolution innately "atheistic"? But that
wording is wrong, hiding misbegotten premises. It seems to
get used to actually mean one or more of a multitude including,
but not limited to "does acceptance of evolution
lead to/require/promote/advocate (other?)
either a loss of belief in a god or gods, or an affirmative belief
that their are no gods.
I very purposefully make a distinction between those last two,
as I find it to be a common point of miscommunication about
what people mean by atheism/atheist.
So at this point, one would almost require a table to organize
answers lead to/require/promote/advocate versus the distinct
interpretations of atheism. But it can be simplified.
Whether accepting evolution "leads to" either branding of atheism
is an observational thing, independent of why it did or didn't.
For "require/promote/advocate", the answer is NO.
That's true regardless of what individual scientists may claim
because scientists aren't priests, and it's a mistake to mistake that.
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 4:40:54?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >> > On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
. . .
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Can't fool you, you got it.I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking. >> >Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large >> > > crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible >> > > of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows
for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
By the guy who designed the car? Sure, we all run into examples of highly unintelligent
design. Like the people who installed our washing machine by connecting
the cold water tap to the hot water intake on the machine, and vice versa.
Or the people who designed Canon and even Nikon digital cameras
worth 1 grand or more, but didn't put in a workable manual focus or an override
of the averaging of pixels. I could tell you about some masterpieces of natural
beauty whose pictures got ruined by the imposed averaging.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the kind of ID that Behe
talks about, you are still telling a joke. Do you realize that?
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 4:40:54 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
. . .On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
Can't fool you, you got it.By the guy who designed the car? Sure, we all run into examples of highly unintelligent
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
design. Like the people who installed our washing machine by connecting
the cold water tap to the hot water intake on the machine, and vice versa.
Or the people who designed Canon and even Nikon digital cameras
worth 1 grand or more, but didn't put in a workable manual focus or an override
of the averaging of pixels. I could tell you about some masterpieces of natural
beauty whose pictures got ruined by the imposed averaging.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the kind of ID that Behe
talks about, you are still telling a joke. Do you realize that?
Speaking of outliers...
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 11:30:54 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live
up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that
homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be
denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman,
Now comes the outlier:
> that women should not
be priests, etc.
Pope JPII put it this way: God has not authorized the Church to make women priests.
The reasoning is this: Jesus authorized the apostles to forgive sins,
and to turn bread and wine into his body and blood [1].
These powers have been passed on in an unbroken line to
to their successors, the bishops, and delegated by them to the priests.
Such extraordinary powers cannot exist without divine authorization.
I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>from their
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first
time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced
themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told >> was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful
drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and
Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference
between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are
no better than Joseph Smith?
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55â¯AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or> suppress>
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful
design> for a purpose or a function.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists. I
promise you, none of them goes to work in the morning thinking, "Damn,
if I can just crack the origin of life, I can put that whole God
business to rest." You may see the question of evolution as central to
the question of God's existence, but most working biologists do not.
Lots of them are atheists, for sure, but not, in my experience, because
they think there are natural pathways for the evolution of the
mammalian eye. The theory of evolution is only a threat to belief in
God to the extent that one thinks God's job is to stand as the
explanation for a whole bunch of different observations in the world -
the values of the physical constants, the origin of life, the bacterial flagellum, the mammalian eye, etc. Once you start pounding the table
and saying "There's no explanation for X except God," then you put your
faith at risk as evidence for a natural explanation of X accumulates.
And, as in your case, you begin to convince yourself that the people
whose work involves figuring out a natural explanation for X are only
doing so because they have a philosophical commitment to "putting this
whole God business to rest." But it's all a problem of your own making
- plenty of people who accept evolution are Christians or other sorts
of theists. There is no need to die on this hill.
Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he just rejects
the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution implies atheism
and his pre-existing worldview is theistic") and it ends in stalemate.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
Martin Harran wrote:.....................................
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>> write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller, Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for
a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or suppress
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design for a purpose or a function.
isThe founder of Christianity seems to have made a number of rather strong claims for himself, even stronger than those made by Joseph Smith. Or maybe he didn't make those claims himself, but the words were put in his mouth by those of his followers who
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>from their
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
I said I was not _very_ committed. That does not mean I had absolutely no religious beliefs. I had a mother that regularly carried me to Church
and religious events, such as Bible school, Sunday school. But again
I was not very committed, especially when I discovered girls. When I
started at my university I became disenchanted with religion, but I
never thought of myself as an atheist. I learned about evolution and
I "fell back" on this. I thought it was logical and rational and I never questioned it until.......
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >> time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >> themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day >> Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned >> was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are
no better than Joseph Smith?
After I wrote that, and some feed back, from people such as you,
I contemplated the possibility that I used that as an excuse, not to participate in organized religion. But I reassessed my views and I
came to this: Joseph Smith made _major_ claims for himself: a
personal calling and the appointment as Prophet, Seer and Revelation.
And these claims are essential to this religion.
So, the difference is, none of the founders of these denominations made
any specific, personal claims, for themselves, as far as I know or I could determine and this is important.
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron DeanAs I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
[...]As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>> write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer.
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 18:47:31 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 4:40:54?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:. . .
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Can't fool you, you got it.I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large >> > > crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible >> > > of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows >> > > for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
By the guy who designed the car? Sure, we all run into examples of highly unintelligent
design. Like the people who installed our washing machine by connecting >the cold water tap to the hot water intake on the machine, and vice versa.
Or the people who designed Canon and even Nikon digital cameras
worth 1 grand or more, but didn't put in a workable manual focus or an override
of the averaging of pixels. I could tell you about some masterpieces of natural
beauty whose pictures got ruined by the imposed averaging.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the kind of ID that Behe
talks about, you are still telling a joke. Do you realize that?
Your examples above *are* the kind of ID that Behe and other cdesign proponentsists talk about.
They explicitly use human-manufactured
objects and processes as examples to infer design in nature.
Not sure
how even you don't understand this.
On 7/27/23 10:46 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron DeanAs I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >> believers are devout Christians.� I think this is called theistic
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
[...]As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer.
I think the primary reason for the rejection of design is the mechanism >(effectively: magic) proposed for how God implements it. The supporters
of design limit God by insisting that He is unable to work by creating a >long-lasting process. They also imply that not-designed-looking things,
such as a gust of wind, could not be considered as coming from God,
because God=designer, and there is no need for God in such things.
You worry about falling away from God towards atheism. That's what >intelligent design theory encourages.
On 7/27/23 2:03 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to continue it.
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 07:30:08 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak
<[email protected]>:
On 7/27/23 10:46 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
[...]
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and
believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer.
I think the primary reason for the rejection of design is the mechanism >(effectively: magic) proposed for how God implements it. The supporters
of design limit God by insisting that He is unable to work by creating a >long-lasting process.
They also imply that not-designed-looking things,
such as a gust of wind, could not be considered as coming from God, >because God=designer, and there is no need for God in such things.
You worry about falling away from God towards atheism. That's what >intelligent design theory encourages.
Exactly. I've reposted this quote a couple of times in
threads where "God can't do that!" has appeared; it was
originally posted in t.o by Louann Miller sometime in 2000:
"Any deity worthy of a graven image can cobble up a working
universe complete with fake fossils in under a week
- hey, if you're not omnipotent, there's no real point in being a god.
But to start with a big ball of elementary particles
and end up with the duckbill platypus without constant
twiddling requires a degree of subtlety and the ability to
Think Things Through: exactly the qualities I'm looking for
when I'm shopping for a Supreme Being." - Lee DeRaud
While it's phrased facetiously, I believe it contains a
valid truth regarding actual belief as contrasted with blind
acceptance of specific (possibly mistranslated) words in a
particular text (i.e., "Bible worship").
Just my 20 mills; YMMV.
--
Bob C.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55 AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....................................
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and
believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be
designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for >> a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obscure or
suppress
any observation that could, ordinarily be seen as deliberate, wilful design
for a purpose or a function.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists.
I said absolutely nothing about the motives of evolution ary biologist.
I promise you, none of them goes to work in the morning thinking, "Damn,See above. Of course you implied it.
if I can just crack the origin of life, I can put that whole God
business to rest."
<
Where did this come from? Ceraainly this was not a claim I made or implied.
You may see the question of evolution as central to the question of
God's existence, but most working biologists do not. Lots of them are atheists, for sure, but not, in my experience, because they think there
are natural pathways for the evolution of the mammalian eye. The theory
of evolution is only a threat to belief in God to the extent that one
thinks God's job is to stand as the explanation for a whole bunch of different observations in the world - the values of the physical
constants, the origin of life, the bacterial flagellum, the mammalian
eye, etc. Once you start pounding the table and saying "There's no explanation for X except God," then you put your faith at risk as
evidence for a natural explanation of X accumulates.
This is never my argument. It's my contention that most highly
complexities that we observe in the natural world, the better
explanation for what we see, is deliberate, purposeful design. This
design
implies a designer, which may or may not be the God of the Bible. There
is no scientific or empirical evidence pointing to the identity of the designer. This means that belief that the designer is the God
of the Bible, is strictly a matter of faith, not evidence.
And, as in your case, you begin to convince yourself that the people
whose work involves figuring out a natural explanation for X are only
doing so because they have a philosophical commitment to "putting this
whole God business to rest."
PNo, this is over-kill! Probably, only when actually confronted by the observation of what seems to be prospective evidence of design in
nature, does this come to the fore.
But it's all a problem of your own making - plenty of people who accept evolution are Christians or other sorts of theists. There is no need to
die on this hill.
Frankly, I was going strictly from the way many people on TO come across
to me.
theistic") and it ends in stalemate.Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he just rejects the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution implies atheism and his pre-existing worldview is
who wrote the gospels. And If St. Peter did not himself make the claim that Jesus said "You are Peter (the rock) and on this rock I found my Church," he and his successors mentioned the claim pretty often.
is
I said I was not _very_ committed. That does not mean I had absolutely no >> religious beliefs. I had a mother that regularly carried me to ChurchFor every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>> >from their
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me >>>> during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
and religious events, such as Bible school, Sunday school. But again
I was not very committed, especially when I discovered girls. When I
started at my university I became disenchanted with religion, but I
never thought of myself as an atheist. I learned about evolution and
I "fell back" on this. I thought it was logical and rational and I never >> questioned it until.......
After I wrote that, and some feed back, from people such as you,
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >>>> time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >>>> themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith >>>> etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned >>>> was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist, >>>> married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men >>>> he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset >>>> me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was >>>> advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and >>>> we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular >>>> church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful
drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St. >>>> Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other >>>> religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and
Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference
between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are >>> no better than Joseph Smith?
I contemplated the possibility that I used that as an excuse, not to
participate in organized religion. But I reassessed my views and I
came to this: Joseph Smith made _major_ claims for himself: a
personal calling and the appointment as Prophet, Seer and Revelation.
And these claims are essential to this religion.
So, the difference is, none of the founders of these denominations made >> any specific, personal claims, for themselves, as far as I know or I could
determine and this is important.
The founder of Christianity seems to have made a number of rather strong claims for himself, even stronger than those made by Joseph Smith. Or maybe he didn't make those claims himself, but the words were put in his mouth by those of his followers
Who was the founder of Christianity? I think the founders were certain
Old Testament
prophets and the 12 Apostles.
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55 AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....................................
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >> believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be
designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for >> a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obscure or
suppress
any observation that could, ordinarily be seen as deliberate, wilful design >> for a purpose or a function.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists.
PNo, this is over-kill! Probably, only when actually confronted by the observation of what seems to be prospective evidence of design in
Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he just rejects the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution implies atheism and his pre-existing worldview istheistic") and it ends in stalemate.
wrote the gospels. And If St. Peter did not himself make the claim that Jesus said "You are Peter (the rock) and on this rock I found my Church," he and his successors mentioned the claim pretty often.
is
I said I was not _very_ committed. That does not mean I had absolutely noFor every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
religious beliefs. I had a mother that regularly carried me to Church
and religious events, such as Bible school, Sunday school. But again
I was not very committed, especially when I discovered girls. When I
started at my university I became disenchanted with religion, but I
never thought of myself as an atheist. I learned about evolution and
I "fell back" on this. I thought it was logical and rational and I never
questioned it until.......
After I wrote that, and some feed back, from people such as you,
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >>>> time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >>>> themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day >>>> Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned >>>> was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men >>>> he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful
drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and
Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference
between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are
no better than Joseph Smith?
I contemplated the possibility that I used that as an excuse, not to
participate in organized religion. But I reassessed my views and I
came to this: Joseph Smith made _major_ claims for himself: a
personal calling and the appointment as Prophet, Seer and Revelation.
And these claims are essential to this religion.
So, the difference is, none of the founders of these denominations made
any specific, personal claims, for themselves, as far as I know or I could >> determine and this is important.
The founder of Christianity seems to have made a number of rather strong claims for himself, even stronger than those made by Joseph Smith. Or maybe he didn't make those claims himself, but the words were put in his mouth by those of his followers who
On 2023-07-28 11:33:53 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55â¯AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[ … ]
So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or> suppress>
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful
design> for a purpose or a function.
I know Ron doesn't believe in providing evidence for his claims, but it
would still be nice to see an example of a biologist (let alone "most")
going to "great lengths to obsequre or suppress any observation that
could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design for a purpose or a function." This is just something he has made up.
(I changed Ron's "evolutionist" to "biologist" because his word is just
an insulting way of referring to biologists).
While he's at it he can explain why God screwed up so badly in designing
the process for converting procollagen to collagen, as most (96% in the
case of the heart) of the molecules produced need to be scrapped
immediately as faulty [Mays P K, McAnulty R J, Campa J S and Laurent G J (1991) Age-related changes in collagen synthesis and degradation in rat tissues. Importance of degradation of newly synthesized collagen in regulating collagen production; Biochem. J. 276 307–313]. This not a trivial problem because collagen is the most abundant protein in the
human body, so an awful lot of it needs to be scrapped.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists. I
promise you, none of them goes to work in the morning thinking, "Damn,
if I can just crack the origin of life, I can put that whole God
business to rest." You may see the question of evolution as central to
the question of God's existence, but most working biologists do not.
Yes
Lots of them are atheists, for sure, but not, in my experience,
because they think there are natural pathways for the evolution of the
mammalian eye. The theory of evolution is only a threat to belief in
God to the extent that one thinks God's job is to stand as the
explanation for a whole bunch of different observations in the world -
the values of the physical constants, the origin of life, the
bacterial flagellum, the mammalian eye, etc. Once you start pounding
the table and saying "There's no explanation for X except God," then
you put your faith at risk as evidence for a natural explanation of X
accumulates. And, as in your case, you begin to convince yourself that
the people whose work involves figuring out a natural explanation for
X are only doing so because they have a philosophical commitment to
"putting this whole God business to rest." But it's all a problem of
your own making - plenty of people who accept evolution are Christians
or other sorts of theists. There is no need to die on this hill.
Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's
hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he
just rejects the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution
implies atheism and his pre-existing worldview is theistic") and it
ends in stalemate.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55 AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....................................
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and
believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be
designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for >> a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obscure or
suppress
any observation that could, ordinarily be seen as deliberate, wilful design
for a purpose or a function.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists.
I said absolutely nothing about the motives of evolution ary biologist.
I promise you, none of them goes to work in the morning thinking, "Damn,
if I can just crack the origin of life, I can put that whole God
business to rest."
Where did this come from? Ceraainly this was not a claim I made or implied.
You may see the question of evolution as central to the question of
God's existence, but most working biologists do not. Lots of them are atheists, for sure, but not, in my experience, because they think there
are natural pathways for the evolution of the mammalian eye. The theory
of evolution is only a threat to belief in God to the extent that one
thinks God's job is to stand as the explanation for a whole bunch of different observations in the world - the values of the physical
constants, the origin of life, the bacterial flagellum, the mammalian eye, etc.
Once you start pounding the table and saying "There's no
explanation for X except God," then you put your faith at risk as
evidence for a natural explanation of X accumulates.
This is never my argument. It's my contention that most highly
complexities that we observe in the natural world, the better
explanation for what we see, is deliberate, purposeful design.
This design implies a designer, which may or may not be the God of the Bible.
There is no scientific or empirical evidence pointing to the identity of the designer. This means that belief that the designer is the God
of the Bible, is strictly a matter of faith, not evidence.
And, as in your case, you begin to convince yourself that the people[end of Bill's words]
whose work involves figuring out a natural explanation for X are only
doing so because they have a philosophical commitment to "putting this
whole God business to rest."
No, this is over-kill! Probably, only when actually confronted by the observation of what seems to be prospective evidence of design in
nature, does this come to the fore.
But it's all a problem of your own making - plenty of people who accept evolution are Christians or other sorts of theists. There is no need to[end of Bill's under-attributed words]
die on this hill.
Frankly, I was going strictly from the way many people on TO come acrosstheistic") and it ends in stalemate.
to me.
Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he just rejects the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution implies atheism and his pre-existing worldview is
who wrote the gospels. And If St. >>Peter did not himself make the claim that Jesus said "You are Peter (the rock) and on this rock I found my Church," he and his successors >>mentioned the claim pretty often.I said I was not _very_ committed. That does not mean I had absolutely no >> religious beliefs. I had a mother that regularly carried me to ChurchYou say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you readFor every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>> >from their
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me >>>> during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
and religious events, such as Bible school, Sunday school. But again
I was not very committed, especially when I discovered girls. When I
started at my university I became disenchanted with religion, but I
never thought of myself as an atheist. I learned about evolution and
I "fell back" on this. I thought it was logical and rational and I never >> questioned it until.......
After I wrote that, and some feed back, from people such as you,
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >>>> time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced >>>> themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith >>>> etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned >>>> was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist, >>>> married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men >>>> he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told
was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset >>>> me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was >>>> advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and >>>> we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular >>>> church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful
drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St. >>>> Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other >>>> religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and
Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference
between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are >>> no better than Joseph Smith?
I contemplated the possibility that I used that as an excuse, not to
participate in organized religion. But I reassessed my views and I
came to this: Joseph Smith made _major_ claims for himself: a
personal calling and the appointment as Prophet, Seer and Revelation.
And these claims are essential to this religion.
So, the difference is, none of the founders of these denominations made >> any specific, personal claims, for themselves, as far as I know or I could
determine and this is important.
The founder of Christianity seems to have made a number of rather strong claims for himself, even stronger than those made by Joseph Smith. >>Or maybe he didn't make those claims himself, but the words were put in his mouth by those of his followers
Who was the founder of Christianity? I think the founders were certain
Old Testament
prophets and the 12 Apostles.
Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:.......
On 2023-07-28 11:33:53 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55 AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[ … ]
So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or> suppress>
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful
design> for a purpose or a function.
I know Ron doesn't believe in providing evidence for his claims, but it would still be nice to see an example of a biologist (let alone "most")
You are reading something into what I wrote that I did not intend. It's assumptions on your part. I wrote most (not all) evolutionist, (not necessarily
biologist) You see it on TO.
going to "great lengths to obsequre or suppress any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design for a purpose or a function." This is just something he has made up.
It's that which I observe when I point out examples I observe as evidence of design here on TO. For example: the origin of life can certainly be seen as purposeful design, given the fact that life comes only from life, has never been observed as coming from natural processes. I think that life through natural processes is as likely as perpetual motion.
(I changed Ron's "evolutionist" to "biologist" because his word is just
an insulting way of referring to biologists).
You had _no_ right to do that! Because I did not mention biologist. I was referring to virtually anyone who takes exception purposeful design in nature.
While he's at it he can explain why God screwed up so badly in designing the process for converting procollagen to collagen, as most (96% in the case of the heart) of the molecules produced need to be scrapped immediately as faulty [Mays P K, McAnulty R J, Campa J S and Laurent G J (1991) Age-related changes in collagen synthesis and degradation in rat tissues. Importance of degradation of newly synthesized collagen in regulating collagen production; Biochem. J. 276 307–313]. This not a trivial problem because collagen is the most abundant protein in the
human body, so an awful lot of it needs to be scrapped.
You are incorrect about the motives of evolutionary biologists. I
promise you, none of them goes to work in the morning thinking, "Damn,
if I can just crack the origin of life, I can put that whole God
business to rest." You may see the question of evolution as central to
the question of God's existence, but most working biologists do not.
Yes
Lots of them are atheists, for sure, but not, in my experience,
because they think there are natural pathways for the evolution of the
mammalian eye. The theory of evolution is only a threat to belief in
God to the extent that one thinks God's job is to stand as the
explanation for a whole bunch of different observations in the world -
the values of the physical constants, the origin of life, the
bacterial flagellum, the mammalian eye, etc. Once you start pounding
the table and saying "There's no explanation for X except God," then
you put your faith at risk as evidence for a natural explanation of X
accumulates. And, as in your case, you begin to convince yourself that
the people whose work involves figuring out a natural explanation for
X are only doing so because they have a philosophical commitment to
"putting this whole God business to rest." But it's all a problem of
your own making - plenty of people who accept evolution are Christians
or other sorts of theists. There is no need to die on this hill.
Finally, this business of arguing based on the other guy's
hypothetical motives is pointless. The other guy can do it to you ("he
just rejects the evidence for evolution because he thinks evolution
implies atheism and his pre-existing worldview is theistic") and it
ends in stalemate.
--
athel cb : Biochemical Evolution, Garland Science, 2016
On 2023-07-27 10:04 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:03 PM, [email protected] wrote:
[snip to get to the point where I wish to comment]
I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
As a friend has noted re: at a Jewish wedding
At an Orthodox congregation, the mother of the bride is pregnant.
At a Conservative congregation, the bride is pregnant.
At a Reform congregation, the Rabbi is pregnant.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to continue it.
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 3:45:55?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Where did this come from? Ceraainly this was not a claim I made or implied.
If you will look at Bill's post, you will see that he has a long, multiline >paragraph because he does not hit the "Enter" key for a long time.
You interrupted that paragraph at the end of the first sentence,
and Usenet only puts one attribution line at the beginning of
such "monsters" and does not put in another one until a typed
linebreak comes along.
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of >contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be >designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for
a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or >suppress
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design >for a purpose or a function.
Ron, you've said this before "Life has never been observed as coming from natural processes." Fine, but by the same token, life has never been observed as coming from a designer, either. If you demand direct observation as your standard of evidence fornatural processes, then you need to demand the same standard of evidence for designers.
Let me turn your own argument on its head. We've seen lots of designers design things, cars, computers, cathedrals, claviers, clothes, but we have never ever seen a designer build a living thing from scratch. In fact, we have never seen a designerremotely capable of such a thing. Since there's no evidence for a designer capable of such a thing, the only possible alternative is natural processes. And we know that natural processes can produce lots of things designers cannot, stars, galaxies, black
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 10:20:54?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 18:47:31 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 4:40:54?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote: >> >> >. . .
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Can't fool you, you got it.I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted
themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows >> >> > > for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely
they reference him along the way.
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
By the guy who designed the car? Sure, we all run into examples of highly unintelligent
design. Like the people who installed our washing machine by connecting
the cold water tap to the hot water intake on the machine, and vice versa. >> >
Or the people who designed Canon and even Nikon digital cameras
worth 1 grand or more, but didn't put in a workable manual focus or an override
of the averaging of pixels. I could tell you about some masterpieces of natural
beauty whose pictures got ruined by the imposed averaging.
You and I don't talk below about the fallacy in Lawyer Daggett's joke, jillery.
I'll address that in direct reply to him.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the kind of ID that Behe
talks about, you are still telling a joke. Do you realize that?
You talk below about a sideshow, jillery, while ignoring the main event.
Your examples above *are* the kind of ID that Behe and other cdesign
proponentsists talk about.
You really need to get over your love affair with that 1987 misprint, >jillery van Winkle. You are now more than about 7 years past the record Rip set.
I'm referring to the publication of _Darwin's_Black_Box_, [DBB]which made
a decisive break with creationism, by endorsing common descent.
In his next book, _The_Edge_of_Evolution_, [TEoE] he even risked a big drop in >sales to creationists, by giving examples that are evidence for common descent.
They explicitly use human-manufactured
objects and processes as examples to infer design in nature.
The use of carefully chosen examples is mainly to make the concept of >irreducible complexity understandable to reasonably intelligent people. >Behe's example of the mousetrap is much easier to understand than
the two examples I gave, whose parts would take much longer to describe.
Unfortunately, he overestimated the IQ of some people posting to talk.origins.
From time to time, one of them posts the claim that irreducible complexity >was described by Hermann Muller long before Behe described it --1918.
What Muller described were systems where SOME parts are necessary for a biological system
to perform its essential function.
Behe's definition of irreducible complexity is that EACH AND EVERY part is necessary
for the system to produce the specified function. Unfortunately, he didn't >spell it out quite so starkly when he defined the term on p. 39 of DBB, but it's all there.
Not sure
how even you don't understand this.
I understand this educational sideshow better than you,
who confuse it with part of the main event, which is to show that there
are serious deficiencies in the current version of the theory of evolution, >known variously as The Modern Synthesis and neo-Darwinism;
and to propose an supplementary model, ID, for macroevolution and mega-evolution.
Specifically, the part you are confusing it with is the main focus of DBB. >This is the explanation of how irreducible complexity (IC) poses a problem for Darwin's gradualism,
by decreasing the probability of a system evolving by chance mutation and natural selection.
As the number of parts to an irreducibly complex system increases,
this probability correspondingly decreases. [DBB, p. 40]
But Behe didn't stop there. He continued the main event in
TEoE and in _Darwin_Devolves_, not even mentioning IC again,
but coming up with new evidence on how neo-Darwinism needs
to be supplemented. His way is Intelligent Design, but I'm still
very much into mainstream ways of doing it, by working towards
a coherent theory of mega-evolution.
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:58:53 -0400, Ron Deanline.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be justQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>>
In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
If you were an engineer, I would hope you found yourself out of a job
if you said or implied you don't believe in thermodynamics.
..
<snip>
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 01:46:05 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >> believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be
designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for >> a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or
suppress
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design >> for a purpose or a function.
Not sure why you continue to pretend that you know what other people
think better than they do.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 9:50:54 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 4:40:54 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:25:54 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:05:55 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 2:10:54 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
. . .On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:29:37 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
Short version:
Evolution is to atheism as auto repair is to atheism.
That is an absolutely horrible analogy. Anyone who has contorted themselves to reach a largely unreachable exhaust manifold
bolt, bashing their knuckles, dusting their eyes with a rain of large
crusty flakes of rust, only to ultimately have that most inaccessible
of bolts snap off still holding the manifold firmly in place, knows for a FACT that there is no god, no matter how loud and intensely they reference him along the way.
I'd nominate this for a Chez Watt, but it's obvious that you are joking.
Can't fool you, you got it.
It is, however, very sincerely, proof against the existence of intelligent design.
By the guy who designed the car? Sure, we all run into examples of highly unintelligent
design. Like the people who installed our washing machine by connecting the cold water tap to the hot water intake on the machine, and vice versa.
Or the people who designed Canon and even Nikon digital cameras
worth 1 grand or more, but didn't put in a workable manual focus or an override
of the averaging of pixels. I could tell you about some masterpieces of natural
beauty whose pictures got ruined by the imposed averaging.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the kind of ID that Behe
talks about, you are still telling a joke. Do you realize that?
Dang. I was all set to make a post acknowledging what I am hoping
I'm observing as a significant effort on your part to be less pugilistic. And I still think I sense that, and commend you for it. But that last
line!
No, I'm too stupid to understand how one example of bad design
isn't a universal comment on all designs or the assertions about
a need for purposeful designing intervention to account for
observed biochemical systems. By the way, that should be
tripping your sarcasm meters, as should this.
But beyond that, OMG, if my mother or father, or any of my grandparents caught me paying somebody else to install a washing machine, I
would have been excommunicated from the family. And if I whined
about how they did a poor job, I would get 6 pairs of boots taking
turns kicking my backside.
Then, if I spent a grand on a digital camera and hadn't first
figured out what sort of setting were available to control the
hardware, I'd be thumped on the noggin and told it's a damned
CCD array fool but you obviously need to be able to control how
the images are processed, and certainly not settle for an appliance
that has been dumbed down so that idiots can use it without
understanding anything. You seriously bought one without a
manual over-rides?
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 14:14:01 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:for natural processes, then you need to demand the same standard of evidence for designers.
Ron, you've said this before "Life has never been observed as coming from natural processes." Fine, but by the same token, life has never been observed as coming from a designer, either. If you demand direct observation as your standard of evidence
remotely capable of such a thing. Since there's no evidence for a designer capable of such a thing, the only possible alternative is natural processes.Let me turn your own argument on its head. We've seen lots of designers design things, cars, computers, cathedrals, claviers, clothes, but we have never ever seen a designer build a living thing from scratch. In fact, we have never seen a designer
And we know that natural processes can produce lots of things designers cannot, stars, galaxies, black holes, so if something (like the origin of life) so clearly exceeds the capabilities of designers, the only reasonable explanation is naturalprocesses. I think that life being designed from scratch is as likely as perpetual motion.
What you describe above is a common problem among cdesign
proponentsists, where they apply very different standards to their opposition to evolution in contrast to their support of a purposeful intelligent designer.
Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2023-07-28 11:33:53 +0000, [email protected] said:
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 1:50:55â¯AM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[ … ]
So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or> suppress>
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful
design> for a purpose or a function.
I know Ron doesn't believe in providing evidence for his claims, but it
would still be nice to see an example of a biologist (let alone "most")
You are reading something into what I wrote that I did not intend. It's assumptions on your part. I wrote most (not all) evolutionist, (not necessarily
biologist) You see it on TO.
going to "great lengths to obsequre or suppress any observation that
could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design for a purpose or
a function." This is just something he has made up.
It's that which I observe when I point out examples I observe as evidence of design here on TO. For example: the origin of life can certainly be seen as purposeful design, given the fact that life comes only from life, has never been observed as coming from natural processes. I think that life through natural processes is as likely as perpetual motion.
(I changed Ron's "evolutionist" to "biologist" because his word is just
an insulting way of referring to biologists).
You had _no_ right to do that!
Because I did not mention biologist.
I was
referring to virtually anyone who takes exception purposeful design in nature.
While he's at it he can explain why God screwed up so badly in
designing the process for converting procollagen to collagen, as most
(96% in the case of the heart) of the molecules produced need to be
scrapped immediately as faulty [Mays P K, McAnulty R J, Campa J S and
Laurent G J (1991) Age-related changes in collagen synthesis and
degradation in rat tissues. Importance of degradation of newly
synthesized collagen in regulating collagen production; Biochem. J. 276
307–313]. This not a trivial problem because collagen is the most
abundant protein in the human body, so an awful lot of it needs to be
scrapped.
jillery wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:58:53 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be justQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>>>
in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds >>>> of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian
community), somebody might snark at you on-line.
Indeed, you can criticize the US President, the members of the supreme
court, Jesus Christ, the Bible even God himself. But Darwin is greater.
He is treated as if he were sacred.
Consequently, you criticize Darwin and you can consider yourself
lucky, if you are not beaten with a thousand
word lashes.
In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
jillery wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 01:46:05 -0400, Ron DeanI don't! I just go by what they write down.
<[email protected]> wrote:
As I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >>> believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be
designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for >>> a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or
suppress
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design >>> for a purpose or a function.
Not sure why you continue to pretend that you know what other people
think better than they do.
jillery wrote:line.
On Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:58:53 -0400, Ron Dean
<[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 12:15:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip to focus on one point.
It might be justQuite silly. In China, if you criticize the government, you'll end up in a prison camp. In the US if you criticize Darwin (outside the bounds of the very large and politically powerful evangelical Christian community), somebody might snark at you on-
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this? A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen >>>>
Indeed, you can criticize the US President, the members of the supreme >court, Jesus Christ, the Bible even God himself. But Darwin is greater.
He is treated as if he were sacred. Consequently, you criticize Darwin
and you can consider yourself lucky, if you are not beaten with a thousand >word lashes.
Of course you know, I never said that.In you are a biologist in the US you can find yourself out of a Job if
you say or imply not to believe in evolution.
If you were an engineer, I would hope you found yourself out of a job
if you said or implied you don't believe in thermodynamics.
In fact, if your idea or planned
design conflicts with the 2/ND
law, there is nothing in store for you, but failure. Actually this
applies to the origin of the first living organism. If or wherever
there is a decrease in entropy, there is an increase in entropy lsewhere.
On Friday, July 28, 2023 at 7:10:55?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:for natural processes, then you need to demand the same standard of evidence for designers.
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 14:14:01 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
Ron, you've said this before "Life has never been observed as coming from natural processes." Fine, but by the same token, life has never been observed as coming from a designer, either. If you demand direct observation as your standard of evidence
remotely capable of such a thing. Since there's no evidence for a designer capable of such a thing, the only possible alternative is natural processes.
Let me turn your own argument on its head. We've seen lots of designers design things, cars, computers, cathedrals, claviers, clothes, but we have never ever seen a designer build a living thing from scratch. In fact, we have never seen a designer
Bill keeps deteriorating. Building a living thing from scratch used to be the pipe
dream of thousands over the centuries. However, in the 1950's, serious scientists
began to dream about building living cells from scratch. The subsequent decades showed
how formidable the biochemical difficulties were.
Still, jillery [Bill has me killfiled, so I'm talking to you] I believe that it can
be done, even if it takes a century or two. People like Szostak are showing one way.
It's in the video you found for us, >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
At one point in the film, between the ca. 13:00 minute point and the ca. 13:50 point, Szostak
described an experiment where he temporarily abandoned the project of trying to re-create prebiotic conditions
or simulating something like natural selection, but the experiment was very good for something else.
He and his co-experimenters engineered an unspecified number of "generations" of RNA molecules in the laboratory,
in which these human experimenters carefully select the mutants that were in the direction of
"molecules that do uh what we want okay."
The "what we want" was to bind an ATP molecule, and they succeeded in finding one
that did a passably good job of it. The lesson is that you don't just blindly produce
random sequences, you watch carefully what seems to go in the direction you >want it to go.
processes. I think that life being designed from scratch is as likely as perpetual motion.And we know that natural processes can produce lots of things designers cannot, stars, galaxies, black holes, so if something (like the origin of life) so clearly exceeds the capabilities of designers, the only reasonable explanation is natural
Bill is being rather simple-minded here, and if he is to wake up from
these dogmatic slumbers, you need to show him how, jillery.
This may necessitate getting him out of his comfort zone.
You are just pushing him deeper into it with lullabies like the following:
What you describe above is a common problem among cdesign
proponentsists, where they apply very different standards to their
opposition to evolution in contrast to their support of a purposeful
intelligent designer.
Do tell us what you think those standards are,
and why you think Behe applies one set and not another.
The purpose of this challenge is *not* to identify your presumptive
designer. Instead, the purpose *is* to identify an objective basis to >distinguish things which might plausibly have been designed from
things which might plausibly be not designed. Failure to meet this
challenge makes it impossible to do even this necessary first step. ***************************************************
But keep in mind, Behe is not opposed to evolution, but to the
way people refuse to try to show how "natural processes"
might have done it.
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 18:50:30 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:[...]
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?Yet again, you try to imply character deficiencies in Burkhard due to
You really make me wonder whether they do.
his German ethnicity. Another reminder, as if one were needed, of just
how obnoxious a piece of shit you really are.
[...]
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:
<snip>
This is just incredible....Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post, about two hours ago:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.Get real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the actual examples are different.
And you did that to me recently. You confidently asserted that I reported
a student for cheating because it was my duty to do so. Yet this was
way back in the 1980's, before I even became aware of any such requirement.
In fact, we faculty were given wide leeway in judging for ourselves how serious an infraction was, and to assign a penalty accordingly.
The accused party had a right to appeal, but they almost never did out
of fear that they might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
The truth is that I reported students for the reason I gave: they were giving
themselves an unfair advantage over others -- an explanation that
your bureaucratic mentality evidently made you disbelieve
Here a case in point, impugning Darwin's professional character by wild speculations about his motives. So at the very least, you are a hypocrite.Where's your evidence that Darwin only came by his skepticism
about God after he made his discoveries? In my own reply
to Ron, I merely reminded him of the way Wallace was NOT
swayed by his discoveries.
Attributes of the Deity in order to graduate. The Evidences had stopped being part of the mandatory curriculum in Cambridge over a decade before Darwin studied there, Darwin had to read Moral and Political Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity ,But it does not stop there. Pretty every single point you make to support your speculation is provably wrong, as a matter of historical record. Here the first one.Darwin did not have to read Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and
Books are full of inaccurate information about famous people, and many people
are unfortunate enough to have been taught out of them or come across them rather than across books with accurate information. There is a famous example about
Hannibal supposedly being made by his father to swear to be an eternal enemy of Rome. That is because countless books rely on Livy's version, rather than the very different version given by Polybius, who was reporting a personal interview he had with Hannibal.
Do Germans have a concept equivalent to giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt?
You really make me wonder whether they do.
This work impressed him; he claimed, there were portions
he could recite from memory. It might be just
be wild speculation on my part, but I cannot refrain from
questioning Darwin, but how safe is this?
Oh poor persecuted you....Inappropriate preamble, akin to Harshman's perennial abuse of the meaning of the word "paranoid".
It is of course perfectly safe to question Darwin. What you risk of course if if you make up stuff and tell lies, people will call you out for them ...Your aggressive attacks belie both halves of this comment, the second being baseless innuendo at this point.
A Chinese scientist,
during a lecture in California was warned about the direction
he seemed to be going.
To which he remarked, "in China we can criticize Darwin, but
you better not criticize the government. But in the US you
can criticize the government, but you better not criticize Darwin".- Chen
I think you are not interpreting the context properly. Ron began with a suspicion, and his intended meaning was that IF his suspicionAt the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as evidence of God.And here the lies start in earnest.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural selection became his God replacement
is correct, THEN Darwin needed an instrument...
And I don't use that term lightly, and not just for people who are more than unusual ignorant or undereducated.Bill Rogers made a serious misrepresentation of something Ron had supposedly been *repeatedly* told,
and he used it to come down just as hard on Ron as you are doing now.
Unlike Bill, you do give documentation below, but you overplay your hand.
delayed the publication of his work.But we have been over this before, less than two years ago. From his diaries and correspondence, we know that he started t think along these lines long before he lost his faith, and that far from motivating him, it was for him a serious problem that
And you know all this, because we go over this pretty much every 2 years or so: yo post your provably false claims, they get refuted, you seem to accept this, just to post the very same falsehoods a few years later again - here an example form 2017This is redundant evidence: you simply repeated here what you wrote there, without
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/ZeYE62JZtGo/m/B-SOOtSQAwAJ
any documentation of your claims.
By the way, I saw no sign that Ron was aware of this 2021 post of yours. You really ought to date your references. The following was from 2018:
And you even accepted that every single part of your speculation was made up shit.Your talents as a pejorative-loving spin doctor are impressive.
Only someone with
an agenda similar to that which Ron suspected Darwin of would behave like you do here.
And I quote you:
"I can acknowledge that Darwin did not, at the beginning set out to undermine and discredit Paley's views. Since, this was _not_ his
objective initially, then I was wrong regarding the "outside the scientific method" comment.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/XU6CFmjsavg/m/FwKW-LxJBAAJ
And yet, here we are again, you engaging in the same character assassination, even though you know that these claims are factually wqromg. Do you intend to male IDlers/creationists look bad? Because you do a sterling job of achieving just thatYou lack a sense of proportion. I could document far worse behavior by Harshman
and jillery, but I suspect you would live up to a nickname that I gave Harshman about
a decade ago, one he lives up to all the time:
Don'tWanna HearAboutIt.
Peter Nyikos
PS you had nothing to say about what I kept in below, but I corrected several parts of what Dean wrote there t without engaging in character assassination like you did above.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
If in searching for supporting evidence the searcher comes across evidence
that does not align with their goal. It's seen as "no data" or explained away.
And where does this leave the search for truth?
This certainly can apply to the "flat earth" proponents. They start
out with a
goal or and objective. Then they set out to prove their objective.
And like evolutionist they start from the beginning with a goal in mind. Prove
the earth is flat. IOW real science starts with observation, then ends with a conclusion.
It does not start with a conclusion, then set out to find evidence to support the
conclusion. I do not believe this is science.
-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U841Zrd4C5g
between ca. 13 and 13.5 minutes into the video
This video is being discussed by me in a thread where the video was introduced in the OP by jillery:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/zLkSPbLfklc/m/kDJB_bJBAgAJ Re: Szostak on abiogenesis
I was rather complimentary, and am saving the above bombshell for a later post.
I looked up this book on amazon. For a book, it's just too expensive. I
John Harshman loves to claim that the best book on the Cambrian
explosion is the one by Erwin and Valentine, but it only gives more details
than Meyer's book about the events of the explosion, and doesn't attempt
to explain how it occurred nor why nothing remotely like it has happened since then.
live about 30 miles from the library, so unless I have another reason >> for going into town.....
I bought a copy as a present for my brother-in-law, who loves science as
much as I do, but made a point to read most of it before giving it to him.
Concluded in another post to this thread, to be done later today if time permits;
if not, then Monday.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 2:50:46 AM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote:No, you mistake his point. He's criticizing you for saying bad things
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post,
about two hours ago:
So with other words no real evidence, just the vague promise of some,
as usual? Go figure, in the light of what you write below about
:"evidence" and "benefit of the doubt" And only for a radical ethical nihilist like you does the question whether Ron Dean's behaviour is
OK depend on what John H may or may not have done in a totally
different context. Or do you generally think that, say, assaulting
someone is OK because others even get away with murder?
side about their motives, which inevitably interprets everything they say from the start in the worst possible light, and in defiance of the plain text, as in herehttps://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.Get real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the >> actual examples are different.
And what does what these may or may not do have to do with what Ron is doing here? What a hypocrite you are though. You constantly accuse others of lying, with either no evidence, or "evidence" that in turn results in confabulated specualtions on your
On 7/29/23 10:40 AM, Burkhard wrote:your side about their motives, which inevitably interprets everything they say from the start in the worst possible light, and in defiance of the plain text, as in here
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 2:50:46 AM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post, >> about two hours ago:
So with other words no real evidence, just the vague promise of some,No, you mistake his point. He's criticizing you for saying bad things
as usual? Go figure, in the light of what you write below about :"evidence" and "benefit of the doubt" And only for a radical ethical nihilist like you does the question whether Ron Dean's behaviour is
OK depend on what John H may or may not have done in a totally
different context. Or do you generally think that, say, assaulting
someone is OK because others even get away with murder?
about Ron without also saying bad things about a much worse person, me.
This is a moral failing on your part.
Incidentally, if you read Lawyer Daggett's recent post on line lengths
and quotes, you appear to be one of the major offenders. I had to rewrap your stuff above to get it to work. I won't rewrap the next bit to show
you the difference.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.Get real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the
actual examples are different.
And what does what these may or may not do have to do with what Ron is doing here? What a hypocrite you are though. You constantly accuse others of lying, with either no evidence, or "evidence" that in turn results in confabulated specualtions on
See? That can make it hard to read, and it gets worse when quoted.
On 7/29/23 10:40 AM, Burkhard wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 2:50:46 AM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote: >>> On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:No, you mistake his point. He's criticizing you for saying bad things
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46 PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about
your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post. >>> I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post, >>> about two hours ago:
So with other words no real evidence, just the vague promise of some,
as usual? Go figure, in the light of what you write below about
:"evidence" and "benefit of the doubt" And only for a radical ethical
nihilist like you does the question whether Ron Dean's behaviour is
OK depend on what John H may or may not have done in a totally
different context. Or do you generally think that, say, assaulting
someone is OK because others even get away with murder?
about Ron without also saying bad things about a much worse person, me.
This is a moral failing on your part.
Incidentally, if you read Lawyer Daggett's recent post on line lengths
and quotes, you appear to be one of the major offenders. I had to rewrap
your stuff above to get it to work. I won't rewrap the next bit to show
you the difference.
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermineGet real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the
arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the
people who make them.
actual examples are different.
And what does what these may or may not do have to do with what Ron is
doing here? What a hypocrite you are though. You constantly accuse
others of lying, with either no evidence, or "evidence" that in turn
results in confabulated specualtions on your side about their motives,
which inevitably interprets everything they say from the start in the
worst possible light, and in defiance of the plain text, as in here
See? That can make it hard to read, and it gets worse when quoted.
On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 10:45:57 PM UTC+1, John Harshman wrote:
Incidentally, if you read Lawyer Daggett's recent post on line lengths
and quotes, you appear to be one of the major offenders. I had to rewrap your stuff above to get it to work. I won't rewrap the next bit to show you the difference.
See? That can make it hard to read, and it gets worse when quoted.mhh, that's strange, it looks totally different when I post. Something seems not to read
my line breaks
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 2:50:46?AM UTC+1, [email protected] wrote:Dean's behaviour is OK depend on what John H may or may not have done in a totally different context. Or do you generally think that, say, assaulting someone is OK because others even get away with murder?
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 6:45:46?PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 5:15:46?PM UTC+1, Ron Dean wrote:Yes, but also for reasons to which you are oblivious, Burkhard.
<snip>
This is just incredible....
I think John Harshman has him beat by a country mile in that regard.I had some thoughts of Darwin and the scientific method.
The science is suppose to be indifferent, impersonal
non-emotional and objective. The scientific method as I
understand is observation, hypothesism experimentation,
and finally a conclusion. If it's a failure, then a new
hypothesis etc.. if experiment successful a theory
explains it! And if it's a legitimate scientific hypothesis
it's falsifiable.
Which brings me to Darwin and his motivation. In order to
graduate, Darwin had to read Wm. Paley's "Evidences.... "
OK, first point: You frequently complain that people speculate about your motives rather than the objective evidence that you (think you) post.
If you have doubts, I can give you at least three examples just from this thread.
I alluded to one of them in the reply I did to him in my preceding post,
about two hours ago:
So with other words no real evidence, just the vague promise of some, as usual? Go figure, in the light of what you write below about :"evidence" and "benefit of the doubt" And only for a radical ethical nihilist like you does the question whether Ron
side about their motives, which inevitably interprets everything they say from the start in the worst possible light, and in defiance of the plain text, as in here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/xHlFy-ITBgAJ
Yet it is consistently you and you alone who tries to undermine arguments and evidence by wild speculations about the motives of the people who make them.Get real. What I said above about Harshman also applies to jillery; only the
actual examples are different.
And what does what these may or may not do have to do with what Ron is doing here? What a hypocrite you are though. You constantly accuse others of lying, with either no evidence, or "evidence" that in turn results in confabulated specualtions on your
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/pktmtajSCOU/m/l2V-dDEaBwAJTO. Contrary to you e.g., I never had any reasons to think that Ray Martinez lied - the "benefit of the doubt" easily allowed to interpret his posts as ill-informed, but sincere. By contrast here we have one of the rare situations were the case is in
or here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/YD3qo80w6ic/m/ibFKI6HiAAAJ
or here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/UyETkw4gf78/m/W2bcCGaQAQAJ
or here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/D_QCRraJXgE/m/DwANYq21BQAJ
or here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/nmTq1MCK3hg/m/TXqGvtSxAQAJ
or here
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/D_QCRraJXgE/m/AgyutApBBQAJ
.or here >https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/D_QCRraJXgE/m/hZdLNDZaBAAJ...
In all of these cases, "at worst" the other person disagrees with you over an evaluation of something, but you accuse them lying, and often there is even less substance to your allegations.
You'll be hard pressed to find examples of me accusing some one of a lie, precisely because I'd only consider this if I have evidence that not only what is said is wrong, but the utterer knows it to be wrong - something which is very difficult to do on
The picture jillery links below shows a cliff with a vague statue-like object in front of it, but nary a sign of such an upright enclosing structure. This makes the above claim an outright lie by jillery.*******************************
<https://unsplash.com/photos/73VqaZbb2C8>
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 07:30:08 -0700, the following appeared--
in talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak
<[email protected]>:
On 7/27/23 10:46 PM, Ron Dean wrote:Exactly. I've reposted this quote a couple of times in
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron DeanAs I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >>> believers are devout Christians.� I think this is called theistic
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
[...]As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer.
I think the primary reason for the rejection of design is the mechanism >>(effectively: magic) proposed for how God implements it. The supporters
of design limit God by insisting that He is unable to work by creating a >>long-lasting process. They also imply that not-designed-looking things, >>such as a gust of wind, could not be considered as coming from God,
because God=designer, and there is no need for God in such things.
You worry about falling away from God towards atheism. That's what >>intelligent design theory encourages.
threads where "God can't do that!" has appeared; it was
originally posted in t.o by Louann Miller sometime in 2000:
"Any deity worthy of a graven image can cobble up a working
universe complete with fake fossils in under a week - hey,
if you're not omnipotent, there's no real point in being a
god. But to start with a big ball of elementary particles
and end up with the duckbill platypus without constant
twiddling requires a degree of subtlety and the ability to
Think Things Through: exactly the qualities I'm looking for
when I'm shopping for a Supreme Being." - Lee DeRaud
While it's phrased facetiously, I believe it contains a
valid truth regarding actual belief as contrasted with blind
acceptance of specific (possibly mistranslated) words in a
particular text (i.e., "Bible worship").
Just my 20 mills; YMMV.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >> >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >> >
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in aeven an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says -
Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor
dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On
the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence,
for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged
biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that
is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to
evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having
consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock'
but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat
and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of
considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat
and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
Maybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one. It isas though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined with organic
goes about looking for what those circumstances are.seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell you nothing
I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main
argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity
actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about
how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers
yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements
in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is. It
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally sorespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to >> >> >> answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have >> >> >> been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics >> >> >> you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> >> >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> >> >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >> >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >> >
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1U
if you don't appreciate it all, skip to 2 minutes
I fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll come back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
And again
Not to make light of more formal philosophy,
but it's a mistake to ignore message in music and song.
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 5:30:51?PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
You submit a post that's 95+% personal attacks and you wonder why the
other boys don't want to come out and play with you?
I never wonder about boys like you and Harran, who frequently do 100% attack >posts in reply to me, including the very one to which I am replying. In fact, rare is
the Harran reply to me or *about me that isn't 100% attack.
100% attack posts on Glenn are quite common, especially by jillery. >Hemidactylus used to revel in them, but he seems to have restrained himself of late.
Have you ever wondered why, your insincere spiel here notwithstanding,
Harran has several boys playing "See no evil, hear no evil speak no evil" >with him, including yourself?
It's like, self-appointed enmity against Peter Nyikos and Glenn covers
a multitude of sins in this topsy-turvy forum, talk.origins.
Your very first reply to me, years ago, bristled with unprovoked enmity,
and it got immediate appreciation from John Harshman, who responded,
"Nobody better mess with Lawyer Daggett. He has True Grit."
[Quoted from memory, but it's at least as close to the original
as the quotes from Chen about Darwin and government are to each other]
.
Some people prefer to discuss ideas.
I more so than you, especially with largely guileless people like Ron Dean, >or basically sincere and honest people like �� Tiib. Neither of them ever gets
personal attacks from me, but lots of ideas, even though Tiib
can be nasty to people like Dean and (especially) Glenn and even, rarely, tp me.
No wonder Martin Harran lied to him (also to Bill Rogers, even more so)
about what manner of man I am, as seen here:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/xqiemRxP0mI/m/zJ8rzQ7uAAAJ
Re: A thread about banning, paradoxically about stopping discussion of banning >Jun 9, 2023, 7:05:49?PM
You're not their cup of tea.
Might as well ask why an art lover doesn't want to get into an
up close staring contest with a spitting cobra. Crikey.
Transparently insincere use of the word "Crikey" noted.
Your whole post is stereotyped mass of insincerity,
showing no more originality than very similar posts
that I get about once a year on average. But only about
half of them pretend to be surprised at the fiction they've concocted,
with a word like "Crikey".
Peter Nyikos
PS Rest assured: if Martin Harran shows no signs of being aware of this post >on his return from Bristol, I will let him know about it.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:33:45 -0700 (PDT), Burkharddoing a lot of work here, and you risk setting up a strawperson.
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 12:25:49?PM UTC+1, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
What other mechanism do you propose?I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning >> >> >Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must >> >> have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence >> >> which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown >> >
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
I'd say you are trying here to defend a reasonable position with rather problematic arguments. The first is a problematic formulation of the problem, when you write "I don't think can be explained as just the products of evolution". The "just" is
I don't think that really stands up. My use of the word "just" was
clearly recognising that evolution has played a role but that it
evolution on its own is not sufficient - to be clear, I am talking
about *biological* evolution here which materialists seem to generally
argue is enough to explain the development of consciousness.
constraints- what sounds we can distinguish, how we process symbols, how memory works etc, but I don't think anyone would claim that "just" these are sufficient for an adequate theory of poetry or music.Lots of things can't be explained "just" by evolution - Jazz, or Haikus for instance (as stand -ins for lots and lots of cultural expressions of course. Some of the underlying aspects can be "explained" in varying degrees by evolved biological
No argument about *underlying aspects* (more on that further down) but underlying aspects are far from an explanation of the "hard problem".
disadvantage at least for the material aspect of an organisms to have. In most, and most certainly all the more scientifically minded ones, including panpsychist-leaning theories such as IIT, focus on the advantages for an organism to have a unified andAnd from the other end, you get the opposite issue. I don't know of any theory of consciousness, from the most of fashioned religious ones to the most recent (quasi) scientific ones where "experiencing consciousness" would be an evolutionary
have sex that leads to a child, the throw resulting child from a cliff, report your feelings during sex and cliff-throwing and compare) The most obvious explanation assumes that subjective and internal experience of pleasure/revulsion causallyconsiders foundational, the ToE only provides some constraints.
Not sure what, if anything, we are disagreeing on here. I believe that answers will come from other disciplines - FWIW, I think neuroscience
is making very little real progress, my own 'favourite' for potential answers is the field of AI/machine learning. My issue is with those
who argue that ToE is sufficient, essentially arguing that
consciousness is advantageous and therefore *must* have somehow been a straightforward product of evolution and that neuro research backs
that up.
In fact, my own favourite argument for (a form of property) dualism comes directly from the ToE: for evolutionary old traits, we subjectively experience evolutionary harmful actions as revolting, those enhancing fitness as pleasurable (scientific test:
from the cycle of rebirth etc) - there is a fascinating fictional account of this in the context of AI and if robots are enlightened by design, in the second story within Doomsday Book, the South Korean movie that also has an...interesting take on the(bit of an interlude: Some form of "illusionist" accounts of consciousness in Mahayana Buddhism and similar traditions may postulate that (self)consciousness is harmful for enlightenment, and therefore possibly in the "very long run" (i.e. as seen
Similarly, we have a wealth of data how physical interference such as drugs, hormone injection, electroshocks etc causally impact on your consciousness. And we can also predict, with varying degrees of accuracy, from the fmri images that show brainetc)
So for any reasonable interpretation of "just", I don't think you get much purchase out of your approach, the ToE explains those and only those parts one would it expect to explain "just fine".
You have similar problems with the other part of your post: " I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in it"
Here "link" too does way too much work, or else seriously, underestimates the insights that link biology to consciousness, and that includes also the more scientifically minded versions of modern panpsychism, such as IIT.
Some of is is so trivial that you probably don't even think about it - but there is a wealth of studies how different injuries to your physical brain (and/or the sensors connected to it) impact both our conscious experience and our self-awareness.
I addressed this in a post a few weeks ago in the thread "Where does
"self" reside in the brain?" https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/K_Ovur6h6d4/m/aUhk37BvAAAJ
"This is a good example of genuine and worthwhile research being
overly hyped beyond any justification. Neuro research is extremely
valuable and may lead to improvements treatment of mental issues but identifying where activity takes place in the brain tells us nothing
at all about 'self '.
An electronics engineer with little knowledge of computing could
examine my PC and make a pretty good effort at identifying where
various electronic processes are taking place. With a bit of further training, he could probably work out how different applications are
using the various bits of hardware. None of that, however, would tell
him anything about the thought processes that I am employing to use my
PC to write this argument.
It is the same with the brain - understanding the neural activities
tells us nothing about what 'self' is as a concept, let alone where it
comes from."
In regard to the effect of brain injury on behaviour, it reminds me of
a coffee incident with my keyboard a while back which resulted in keys producing wrong letters and symbols. - when I tried to type anything
it came out as scrambled garbage. That doesn't mean that my underlying thoughts and ideas were garbage.
for philosophers than scientists.So there is rather clearly a causal pathway from biological states to consciousness, and any theory of consciousness that denies it is I'd say dead in the water.
I fully accept there is a pathway but your use of 'causal' bothers me
just as much as my use of the word "just" bothers you.
And causal pathways are of course the type of link science is interested in. That does not mean that consciousness can necessarily be "reduced" to the biological substratum, but "full reduction" is jut sone type of link, and one that is more a concern
and kicking: manageable sub-problems are identified, testable hypothesis formulated, observations done - which then leads to new data, and refined ideas. The do it again with the new data. And again...Beyond these obvious links, you also underestimate the progress that consciousness studies as a field is making - as a scientific endeavour it is very much alive and kicking, in the same way as lots of "hard" scientific research paradigms are alive
deep-dive in consciousness studies is just what we need for a project that tries to tell autonomous vehicles not to break road traffic laws, but have been travelling too much as it is this year, so only followed as much as I could online.Over the last few weeks, Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness held its annual conference in New York - I was terribly tempted to use an underspend in one of my research project to go there, and somehow explain to our funders that a
impressive was that they did not just read out their latest papers, but really showed how their mainstream neuroscience/AI research is linked to more foundational questions in consciousness. So e.g. Doris Tsao's connected in her talk her older work onI thought in particular that the keynotes by May-Britt Moser, Doris Tsao and Yoshua Bengio were all brilliant and massively stimulating. (we are talking here after all a Nobel prize winner, a NAS member and a Turing Award winner). What I found most
prior to any sensory experience - so if you like, the Kantian view that we are born with spatial priors gets empirical support - IF you accept the standard evolutionary model that is needed to make insights from the brain of rats relevant to humans.Even more interesting for people who want to combine traditional philosophy with hard empirical science, Mat-Brit Moser's talk was about her studies on baby rats that showed that the grid cell system taht is needed for spatial processing is formed
theories of consciousness, the concept of limited-capacity workspace in the Dehaene-Changeux model (a.k.a. global workspace theory or GWT) as neurocomputational basis of conscious experienceThe third keynote was by Yoshua Bengio (https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06403) and his idea of how attractor dynamics in working memory lead to phenomenological ineffability, and he then linked this to one of the current "hot topic" neuro-philosophical
provisional and preliminary to boot, another small brick in the wall of data. (same attitude we see on TO with abiogenesis research)These were just the keynotes, I also followed some of the other talks, and pretty much all of it I could recommend for follow ups and tracing down the papers of the speakers, or the tutorials https://theassc.org/assc-26/#program
Now, some people will inevitably say that none of this "solves" what consciousness "really is" - fine, they are new piecemeal theories of specific aspects of consciousness, some very specific features it "has", but not what is "is", and all of it
(possibly for evolutionary reasons :o) ) difficult to get out of our system, but that is what modern science does - we are happy to describe the movement of the Sun through the causal laws of gravity, or the laws that govern fusion, but that might beI'd say that simply shows that the field is getting emancipated from philosophy and becomes a proper science.
I'm glad to hear that and hope it achieves that. I noted recently that despite many scientists discounting philosophy, they inevitably trot
out philosophers, not scientists when there is a debate about
consciousness!
Scientists might indeed argue that the perception of a "hard problem" is to a degree a hangover from pre-modern times - the idea that explanations are in the form of the "essence" of an object rather than its causal relations. Essentialist thinking is
But we have figured out the "essence" of the sun, it's nothing more
than a burning mass of gases but the key thing is that we have shown
that through science. I don't think we are anywhere near showing that consciousness is nothing more than a bunch of neural processes.
So for me dissatisfaction with the scientific study of consciousness are a violation of the demarcation borders between the magisteria - the attempt to ask for a philosophical explanation from a scientific
discipline, or vice versa.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried toWe're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have >> >> been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics >> >> you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron DeanAs I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >believers are devout Christians. I think this is called theistic
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of >>>>> for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>> write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of >contention
for me.
Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off
and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer. And since design strongly implies a designer,
it's necessary to deny, explain away or ignore, whatever appears to be >designed.
It's their paradigm that where there is _no_ design - there is no need for
a designer. So, most evolutionist go to great lengths to obsequre or
suppress
any observation that could, ordenarly be seen as deliberate, wilful design >for a purpose or a function.
is
I said I was not _very_ committed. That does not mean I had absolutely no >religious beliefs. I had a mother that regularly carried me to ChurchFor every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>from their
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator. In fact this happened to me
during the years
I was in college. But I will admit I was not very committed to any
religion.
That last bit "I was not very committed to any religion" means that
you didn't really "fall away" from anything. Do you know anyone who
was committed to religion who fell away because of evolution?
and religious events, such as Bible school, Sunday school. But again
I was not very committed, especially when I discovered girls. When I
started at my university I became disenchanted with religion, but I
never thought of myself as an atheist. I learned about evolution and
I "fell back" on this. I thought it was logical and rational and I never >questioned it until.......
After I wrote that, and some feed back, from people such as you,
After reading
the book "evolution, a Theory in Crisis" by a Dr. Denton. For the first >>> time, I began
questioning
A decade my wife and I were called on by two missionaries who announced
themselves as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day >>> Saints
(Mormon). We listen to their spiel, about their Prophet Joseph Smith
etc.etc. So, I
decided to look into this, independent of their sources. What I learned
was not in
keeping with what they were claiming, Joseph Smith was a polygamist,
married
a 14 year old child and dozen of other women. some of the wives of men
he sent
away on missions. Everything I learned from anti-Mormon sources, I was told >>> was a lie. I could not bend their way, so they left.
However, they later called on my wife, without my knowledge, and
finally she converted.
This sneaking around, calling on my wife, in my absence, really upset
me, which she
understood, but it did not matter she was committed. Finally, she was
advised by the
"elders" (19 -22)) to leave me. So, I conceded, I still loved her and
we had three children.
After decades, she is still a member of this sect. But not a regular
church-goer. And
are still together.
Clearly, you had a bad personal experience but you should be careful
drawing broad conclusions from one such experience - what
statisticians refer to as a "sample of one".
.
As far as religions are concern; Mormons have their Joseph Smith,
Lutherans have
their Martin Luther, Methodist their Westley, and Catholics their St.
Peter and the
Pope. So, to me, there is little difference in of these or any other
religions.
Yet again, you label a whole bunch of people without anything to
support it. How much have you studied Lutheranism, Methodism and
Catholicism that you can confidently say there is little difference
between them and Mormonism or any other religion? On what grounds do
you suggest that Martin Luther, John Wesley, St Peter and the Pope are
no better than Joseph Smith?
I contemplated the possibility that I used that as an excuse, not to >participate in organized religion. But I reassessed my views and I
came to this: Joseph Smith made _major_ claims for himself: a
personal calling and the appointment as Prophet, Seer and Revelation.
And these claims are essential to this religion.
So, the difference is, none of the founders of these denominations made
any specific, personal claims, for themselves, as far as I know or I could >determine and this is important.
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 12:25:49?PM UTC+1, Martin Harran wrote:doing a lot of work here, and you risk setting up a strawperson.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
I'd say you are trying here to defend a reasonable position with rather problematic arguments. The first is a problematic formulation of the problem, when you write "I don't think can be explained as just the products of evolution". The "just" is
Lots of things can't be explained "just" by evolution - Jazz, or Haikus for instance (as stand -ins for lots and lots of cultural expressions of course. Some of the underlying aspects can be "explained" in varying degrees by evolved biologicalconstraints- what sounds we can distinguish, how we process symbols, how memory works etc, but I don't think anyone would claim that "just" these are sufficient for an adequate theory of poetry or music.
And from the other end, you get the opposite issue. I don't know of any theory of consciousness, from the most of fashioned religious ones to the most recent (quasi) scientific ones where "experiencing consciousness" would be an evolutionarydisadvantage at least for the material aspect of an organisms to have. In most, and most certainly all the more scientifically minded ones, including panpsychist-leaning theories such as IIT, focus on the advantages for an organism to have a unified and
considers foundational, the ToE only provides some constraints.
In fact, my own favourite argument for (a form of property) dualism comes directly from the ToE: for evolutionary old traits, we subjectively experience evolutionary harmful actions as revolting, those enhancing fitness as pleasurable (scientific test:have sex that leads to a child, the throw resulting child from a cliff, report your feelings during sex and cliff-throwing and compare) The most obvious explanation assumes that subjective and internal experience of pleasure/revulsion causally
(bit of an interlude: Some form of "illusionist" accounts of consciousness in Mahayana Buddhism and similar traditions may postulate that (self)consciousness is harmful for enlightenment, and therefore possibly in the "very long run" (i.e. as seen fromthe cycle of rebirth etc) - there is a fascinating fictional account of this in the context of AI and if robots are enlightened by design, in the second story within Doomsday Book, the South Korean movie that also has an...interesting take on the
etc)Similarly, we have a wealth of data how physical interference such as drugs, hormone injection, electroshocks etc causally impact on your consciousness. And we can also predict, with varying degrees of accuracy, from the fmri images that show brain
So for any reasonable interpretation of "just", I don't think you get much purchase out of your approach, the ToE explains those and only those parts one would it expect to explain "just fine".
You have similar problems with the other part of your post: " I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in it"
Here "link" too does way too much work, or else seriously, underestimates the insights that link biology to consciousness, and that includes also the more scientifically minded versions of modern panpsychism, such as IIT.
Some of is is so trivial that you probably don't even think about it - but there is a wealth of studies how different injuries to your physical brain (and/or the sensors connected to it) impact both our conscious experience and our self-awareness.
So there is rather clearly a causal pathway from biological states to consciousness, and any theory of consciousness that denies it is I'd say dead in the water.
And causal pathways are of course the type of link science is interested in. That does not mean that consciousness can necessarily be "reduced" to the biological substratum, but "full reduction" is jut sone type of link, and one that is more a concernfor philosophers than scientists.
Beyond these obvious links, you also underestimate the progress that consciousness studies as a field is making - as a scientific endeavour it is very much alive and kicking, in the same way as lots of "hard" scientific research paradigms are alive andkicking: manageable sub-problems are identified, testable hypothesis formulated, observations done - which then leads to new data, and refined ideas. The do it again with the new data. And again...
Over the last few weeks, Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness held its annual conference in New York - I was terribly tempted to use an underspend in one of my research project to go there, and somehow explain to our funders that adeep-dive in consciousness studies is just what we need for a project that tries to tell autonomous vehicles not to break road traffic laws, but have been travelling too much as it is this year, so only followed as much as I could online.
I thought in particular that the keynotes by May-Britt Moser, Doris Tsao and Yoshua Bengio were all brilliant and massively stimulating. (we are talking here after all a Nobel prize winner, a NAS member and a Turing Award winner). What I found mostimpressive was that they did not just read out their latest papers, but really showed how their mainstream neuroscience/AI research is linked to more foundational questions in consciousness. So e.g. Doris Tsao's connected in her talk her older work on
Even more interesting for people who want to combine traditional philosophy with hard empirical science, Mat-Brit Moser's talk was about her studies on baby rats that showed that the grid cell system taht is needed for spatial processing is formedprior to any sensory experience - so if you like, the Kantian view that we are born with spatial priors gets empirical support - IF you accept the standard evolutionary model that is needed to make insights from the brain of rats relevant to humans.
The third keynote was by Yoshua Bengio (https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06403) and his idea of how attractor dynamics in working memory lead to phenomenological ineffability, and he then linked this to one of the current "hot topic" neuro-philosophicaltheories of consciousness, the concept of limited-capacity workspace in the Dehaene-Changeux model (a.k.a. global workspace theory or GWT) as neurocomputational basis of conscious experience
These were just the keynotes, I also followed some of the other talks, and pretty much all of it I could recommend for follow ups and tracing down the papers of the speakers, or the tutorials https://theassc.org/assc-26/#programprovisional and preliminary to boot, another small brick in the wall of data. (same attitude we see on TO with abiogenesis research)
Now, some people will inevitably say that none of this "solves" what consciousness "really is" - fine, they are new piecemeal theories of specific aspects of consciousness, some very specific features it "has", but not what is "is", and all of it
I'd say that simply shows that the field is getting emancipated from philosophy and becomes a proper science.
Scientists might indeed argue that the perception of a "hard problem" is to a degree a hangover from pre-modern times - the idea that explanations are in the form of the "essence" of an object rather than its causal relations. Essentialist thinking is (possibly for evolutionary reasons :o) ) difficult to get out of our system, but that is what modern science does - we are happy to describe the movement of the Sun through the causal laws of gravity, or the laws that govern fusion, but that might be
So for me dissatisfaction with the scientific study of consciousness are a violation of the demarcation borders between the magisteria - the attempt to ask for a philosophical explanation from a scientific
discipline, or vice versa.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried toWe're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:27:12 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in a
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological >> >> explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area >> >> of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> >> it.
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
"Soul" immediately introduces religious overtones and I think that
just distracts from the debate.
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says -
Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor
dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On
the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence,
for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged
biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that
is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to
evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having
consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock'
but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat
and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of
considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat
and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
The key difference that I see is that he is not restricting
consciousness to our physical bodies which is what materialists
generally do.
as though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined with organicMaybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one. It is
seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell you nothinggoes about looking for what those circumstances are.
I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main
argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity
actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about
how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers
yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements
in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is. It
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
I agree with those "hows" but I do not think that we are making any
great headway in answering them. Identifying *where* in the brain that activity occurs does not tell us anything about *how* in the sense you
use it above.
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so >> >> indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over >> >> 80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on >> >> >> gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been >> >> >> repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
In regard to the effect of brain injury on behaviour, it reminds me of
a coffee incident with my keyboard a while back which resulted in keys producing wrong letters and symbols. - when I tried to type anything
it came out as scrambled garbage. That doesn't mean that my underlying thoughts and ideas were garbage.
On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 09:10:30 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <[email protected]>:
Care to address this, Ron?
--On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 07:30:08 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak >><[email protected]>:
On 7/27/23 10:46 PM, Ron Dean wrote:Exactly. I've reposted this quote a couple of times in
Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 13:46:42 -0400, Ron DeanAs I understand it, there is a school of thought that accept evolution and >>>> believers are devout Christians.� I think this is called theistic
<[email protected]> wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:
[...]As I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>>> write God out of the picture?
That reply suggests that there is something dishonest about Miller,
Collins and myself. I find that offensive.
evolution.
I have no problem with this. In fact, this has never been a point of
contention
for me. Quite the contrary, my issue is with the people who, write off >>>> and object to design in nature. I think the primary reason for the
rejection
of design is their philosophical world view, which rejects the very
existence of a designer.
I think the primary reason for the rejection of design is the mechanism >>>(effectively: magic) proposed for how God implements it. The supporters >>>of design limit God by insisting that He is unable to work by creating a >>>long-lasting process. They also imply that not-designed-looking things, >>>such as a gust of wind, could not be considered as coming from God, >>>because God=designer, and there is no need for God in such things.
You worry about falling away from God towards atheism. That's what >>>intelligent design theory encourages.
threads where "God can't do that!" has appeared; it was
originally posted in t.o by Louann Miller sometime in 2000:
"Any deity worthy of a graven image can cobble up a working
universe complete with fake fossils in under a week - hey,
if you're not omnipotent, there's no real point in being a
god. But to start with a big ball of elementary particles
and end up with the duckbill platypus without constant
twiddling requires a degree of subtlety and the ability to
Think Things Through: exactly the qualities I'm looking for
when I'm shopping for a Supreme Being." - Lee DeRaud
While it's phrased facetiously, I believe it contains a
valid truth regarding actual belief as contrasted with blind
acceptance of specific (possibly mistranslated) words in a
particular text (i.e., "Bible worship").
Just my 20 mills; YMMV.
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>>>>> evidence of God.I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>>>> responded to it.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth. >>>>>>>>>
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >>>>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>>>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live
up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that >homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not
be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of >Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it?
On 23/07/2023 09:44, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so >>>>>> far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as >>>>>>>> evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as >>>>>>>> did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural >>>>>>>> selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science >>>>>>> to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes >>>>>>> of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How >>>>>>> do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but >>>>>>> at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to >>>>>>> write God out of the picture?
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still >>>>>>> highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away" >>>>>> from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior of
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this is
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil
Religion claims revealed knowledge. Religion claims moral authority.
When people speaking for a religion use that authority to advocate for
evil, then a number of possible conclusions come to mind.
1) They're lieing. In which case the credibility of other claims to
revealed knowledge are undermined. => atheism
2) The religion actually entails those claims.
2a) The claims are false. In which case revealed knowledge can be
inferred as a invalid epistemology. => atheism.
2b) The claims are true. => mysterious ways or maltheism
Mysterious ways leads you into theodicy. And I suspect that people have >internalised that claims of divine benevolence to a degree that atheism
is found more plausible that maltheism.
The Gospel of Matthew offers an experimental test (Matthew 7:16-23).
Strictly speaking it applies to individuals, rather than the institution
and doctrines, but it's like UFOs - when you eliminate the errors and
hoaxes there might a residue of genuine alien spaceships, but that's not
the way most people would bet.
On the other hand, I doubt that it is common for people to directly
deconvert because the argument "religion leads to evil therefore
religion is false" - rather they ask "how can this (the religion) be
true?" and in doing so discover that their religious belief lacked firm >empirical or logical foundations.
Not everyone goes all the way to atheism. Some adopt an amorphous deism, >pantheism, or ietsism.
I don't consider religious evil a especially good (logically) reason to >conclude atheism - as with theodicy maltheism is an alternative, and
there is also possibility of a corrupt institution with a core of truth
in its doctrines - but it leads to questioning, and questioning leads to
the issues of divine hiddenness and the contradictory content of
revealed knowledge.
*Lies* about evolution would have contributed into that
pattern, but as I recall, evolution wasn't one of my interests yet.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >> >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >> >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >> >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >> >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >> >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >> >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >> >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >> >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >> >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Well, the first question is "what are the morals defined in Christian teachings?" There's hardly a single, clear answer to that. But certainly here are things I disagree with.
Jesus clearly prohibited divorce and remarriage.
That's nonsense to me. There are plenty of good reasons for dissolving a marriage and no good ones for taking that as a reason never to marry again.Oddly the folks who say that are not keen on atheists who "Respect the believer; mock the belief."
Jesus advocated pacifism. I think that is not morally correct. There are unfortunately times when you have to go to war (of course most Christians recognize this and find ways to get around Jesus' words on the matter).
Lots of (very aggressive) Christians think homosexual sex is immoral. I find that absurd. It leads, often enough, to angry homophobia and sometimes to physical attacks. The most accommodation offered is something like "Love the sinner; hate the sin."
Jesus offered a moral equivalence between mental states and actions (wrt sexual fantasy and adultery, and anger and murder). Focusing on mental states trivializes the consequences of actual actions and undermines a healthy moral reasoning along thelines of "If I do this thing, who might get hurt?"
Well, that's a start (and that's without going into the Old Testament). Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a way tointerpret away the offending passages; that's why most churches allow divorce and remarriage (and even the Catholic church has the annulment loophole), lots of churches perform same sex marriages, very few denominations demand strict pacifism, etc.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
Sure he's serious. And I agree. I've not once heard a contemporary geneticist argue that the theory of evolution implied one should adopt eugenicist policies.
It's certainly true that some scientists in the 19th century made that argument. They lost, sufficiently decisively that "the specter of eugenics" you see hanging over all of modern genetics is simply the extra care that geneticists now take to makeclear that their findings do not support eugenics. On the other hand religiously motivated attacks, both rhetorical and physical, on LGBT people are out there all the time and getting worse.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale
University is hardly a "rare creationist source".
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:30:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses words in a
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:27:12 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological >> >> >> explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need >> >> >> to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area >> >> >> of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in >> >> >> it.
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged >> >> >> >> them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
"Soul" immediately introduces religious overtones and I think that
just distracts from the debate.
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism says -
Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor
dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On
the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence,
for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged
biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that
is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to
evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having
consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock'
but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat
and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of
considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat
and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
The key difference that I see is that he is not restricting
consciousness to our physical bodies which is what materialists
generally do.
Could you expand on that a bit more? What does it mean to restrict consciousness to our bodies. Do you mean Goff claims that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter?
Or do you mean that even if consciousness is tightly linked to matter, a complete description of everything material going on in a conscious animal would miss the essence of consciousness?is as though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined with organic
Maybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one. It
seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell you nothinggoes about looking for what those circumstances are.
I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main
argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity
actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about
how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers
yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements
in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is. It
andorientation in space - and how uncomfortable it is when those things do not line up, or how the brain decides whether it is or is not responsible for something going on nearby. These are all very hard problems considering you want to know what different
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
I agree with those "hows" but I do not think that we are making any
great headway in answering them. Identifying *where* in the brain that
activity occurs does not tell us anything about *how* in the sense you
use it above.
I think there's been plenty of progress in understanding, for example, how the brain produces a useful visual model of the world starting from light hitting the retina, how it integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs to figure out its
about what consciousness really is. So without giving any real answer, what sort of answer to the question "what is consciousness , really?" would you find satisfying?
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all.
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so >> >> >> indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over >> >> >> 80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on >> >> >> >> gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been >> >> >> >> repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >> >>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised
a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >> >>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >> >>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >> >>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >> >>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >> >>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >> >>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >> >>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >> >>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
The question was about evolution, not "social Darwinism.
( ... I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
I'll take it as a given that it's a rare (and defective) bird who will
defend confusion over the is/ought problem to defend that the
science of evolution supports the Morality of Social Darwinism
(it doesn't, by logic disjoint from acceptance or rejection of
evolutionary theory).
Now the anticipated retort is "but Scientist X advocated for
Policy Y", as an asserted equivalence to "but Priest X advocated
for Policy Z". I challenge that as an equivalence.
But let's back up for added context.
One question was, is evolution innately "atheistic"? But that
wording is wrong, hiding misbegotten premises. It seems to
get used to actually mean one or more of a multitude including,
but not limited to "does acceptance of evolution
lead to/require/promote/advocate (other?)
either a loss of belief in a god or gods, or an affirmative belief
that their are no gods.
I very purposefully make a distinction between those last two,
as I find it to be a common point of miscommunication about
what people mean by atheism/atheist.
So at this point, one would almost require a table to organize
answers lead to/require/promote/advocate versus the distinct
interpretations of atheism. But it can be simplified.
Whether accepting evolution "leads to" either branding of atheism
is an observational thing, independent of why it did or didn't.
For "require/promote/advocate", the answer is NO.
That's true regardless of what individual scientists may claim
because scientists aren't priests, and it's a mistake to mistake that.
On the corollary question of "what does cause people to drop
their belief(s) in god(s), Priests and other representatives of
various religions do matter. This is true to the extent that they
claim authority over those beliefs. Perceptions of failures, not
just in individuals but in the structures those individuals advocate
towards is observed to be a major source of disillusionment
and loss of belief. Certainly there are alternative reconciliations,
but from a phenomenological perspective, it happens.
More to write/clarify, but too long already.
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:15:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:33:45 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<[email protected]> wrote:
is (possibly for evolutionary reasons :o) ) difficult to get out of our system, but that is what modern science does - we are happy to describe the movement of the Sun through the causal laws of gravity, or the laws that govern fusion, but that might beScientists might indeed argue that the perception of a "hard problem" is to a degree a hangover from pre-modern times - the idea that explanations are in the form of the "essence" of an object rather than its causal relations. Essentialist thinking
.........................................of the sun? The model of the sun as a bunch of (mostly) hydrogen atoms undergoing nuclear fusion provides a good explanation for lots of observations of the sun's behavior. But why cannot someone complain that a detailed explanation of observations of
But we have figured out the "essence" of the sun, it's nothing more
than a burning mass of gases but the key thing is that we have shown
that through science. I don't think we are anywhere near showing that
consciousness is nothing more than a bunch of neural processes.
A couple of things. When you say we have figured out the essence of the sun and add "it's nothing more than a burning mass of gases..." There is a strong value judgement in the phrase "nothing more than." Why should someone accept that as the "essence"
My guess is that many people are willing to let go of the idea of there being some deeper question as to "what the sun really is" because they do not in any way feel diminished personally by the phrase "nothing more than a bunch of burning gas." That'sdifferent from consciousness, where many people would find even a complete, detailed explanation of the behavior (from internal, microscopic to external
macroscopic) lacking in that it doesn't get at **what consciousness really is**. And I think that the tendency to be unsatisfied with such an explanation is not unrelated to the lurking phrase "nothing more than," which many people would feel as adiminishing of themselves.
So I guess my question would be not what you think the answer to the "hard problem" of consciousness is, but what form you think that answer should take. It seems like the answer you would want would not be of the form "such and such a structure in suchand such a brain region records a model of the position of the body in space and continuously updates and corrects that model based on input from visual, vestibular and proprioceptive inputs," and "such and such a structure in the speech centers takes
you find satisfying?
This is where I think panpsychism, even emergent panpsychism, is sort of selling a bill of goods.
All it does, to my mind, is take a basically materialist model and change the names. There's nothing different that's observable, it's just a way of burying that uncomfortable phrase "nothing more than" under more appealing language.
Since the "nothing more than" does not bother me, panpsychism does not attract me. I just look at it as "Wow, matter is amazing - in the right structure and under the right conditions it can produce the St. Matthew Passion, and even tears in itslisteners." If I fell in love with my wife because her body odor subconsciously suggested a microbial flora whose composition reflected a sufficiently different set of HLA (immune response) genes that our offspring would be resistant to a broad range of
So for me dissatisfaction with the scientific study of consciousness are a violation of the demarcation borders between the magisteria - the attempt to ask for a philosophical explanation from a scientific
discipline, or vice versa.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried toWe're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have >> >> >> been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics >> >> >> you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is >> >> >> a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with >> >> >> them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:religious training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >> >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >> >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >> >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >> >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >> >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >> >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >> >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >> >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >> >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
Oddly the folks who say that are not keen on atheists who "Respect the believer; mock the belief."
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >> >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >> >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >> >>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >> >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >> >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >> >> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >> >> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >> >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >> >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Well, the first question is "what are the morals defined in Christian teachings?" There's hardly a single, clear answer to that. But certainly here are things I disagree with.
Jesus clearly prohibited divorce and remarriage.
Not quite; in Matthew 19:9, he says "except for sexual immorality".
The verse is arguably one of the ones where translations most very,
with 'sexual immorality' being worded as a range of things from 'fornication' to 'illicit'. And yes, I know my own Catholic Church has strict views on divorce but that is one of a number of areas where I disagree with them. That does not in wany way undermine my Faith.
That's nonsense to me. There are plenty of good reasons for dissolving a marriage and no good ones for taking that as a reason never to marry again.
Jesus advocated pacifism. I think that is not morally correct. There are unfortunately times when you have to go to war (of course most Christians recognize this and find ways to get around Jesus' words on the matter).
Lots of (very aggressive) Christians think homosexual sex is immoral. I find that absurd. It leads, often enough, to angry homophobia and sometimes to physical attacks. The most accommodation offered is something like "Love the sinner; hate the sin."
lines of "If I do this thing, who might get hurt?"Jesus offered a moral equivalence between mental states and actions (wrt sexual fantasy and adultery, and anger and murder). Focusing on mental states trivializes the consequences of actual actions and undermines a healthy moral reasoning along the
to interpret away the offending passages; that's why most churches allow divorce and remarriage (and even the Catholic church has the annulment loophole), lots of churches perform same sex marriages, very few denominations demand strict pacifism, etc.Well, that's a start (and that's without going into the Old Testament). Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a way
You disagree with the above teachings. In some cases, I agree with you
but I would regard them mostly as a combination of bad interpretation
or fuzzy thinking, not necessarily what I would regard as "immoral".
I don't see any of them as a particular justification for atheism.
clear that their findings do not support eugenics. On the other hand religiously motivated attacks, both rhetorical and physical, on LGBT people are out there all the time and getting worse.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >> >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
Sure he's serious. And I agree. I've not once heard a contemporary geneticist argue that the theory of evolution implied one should adopt eugenicist policies.
And I never said anything about *contemporary geneticists*.
It's certainly true that some scientists in the 19th century made that argument. They lost, sufficiently decisively that "the specter of eugenics" you see hanging over all of modern genetics is simply the extra care that geneticists now take to make
The National Human Genome Research Institute don't seem to agree with
you that it is all in the past:
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
"Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s,
leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and
policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of
these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.
The genomics communities continue to work to scientifically debunk
eugenic myths and combat modern-day manifestations of eugenics and scientific racism, particularly as they affect people of color, people
with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale
University is hardly a "rare creationist source".
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 05:03:13 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:is (possibly for evolutionary reasons :o) ) difficult to get out of our system, but that is what modern science does - we are happy to describe the movement of the Sun through the causal laws of gravity, or the laws that govern fusion, but that might be
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:15:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:[ snip for focus]
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:33:45 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<[email protected]> wrote:
Scientists might indeed argue that the perception of a "hard problem" is to a degree a hangover from pre-modern times - the idea that explanations are in the form of the "essence" of an object rather than its causal relations. Essentialist thinking
of the sun? The model of the sun as a bunch of (mostly) hydrogen atoms undergoing nuclear fusion provides a good explanation for lots of observations of the sun's behavior. But why cannot someone complain that a detailed explanation of observations of.........................................
But we have figured out the "essence" of the sun, it's nothing more
than a burning mass of gases but the key thing is that we have shown
that through science. I don't think we are anywhere near showing that
consciousness is nothing more than a bunch of neural processes.
A couple of things. When you say we have figured out the essence of the sun and add "it's nothing more than a burning mass of gases..." There is a strong value judgement in the phrase "nothing more than." Why should someone accept that as the "essence"
Now you are starting to sound a bit like the other Bill who seems tos different from consciousness, where many people would find even a complete, detailed explanation of the behavior (from internal, microscopic to external
have left the stage! I can't think of any aspect of the Sun for which
we don't have a detailed scientific explanation; can you suggest any?
My guess is that many people are willing to let go of the idea of there being some deeper question as to "what the sun really is" because they do not in any way feel diminished personally by the phrase "nothing more than a bunch of burning gas." That'
diminishing of themselves.macroscopic) lacking in that it doesn't get at **what consciousness really is**. And I think that the tendency to be unsatisfied with such an explanation is not unrelated to the lurking phrase "nothing more than," which many people would feel as a
such and such a brain region records a model of the position of the body in space and continuously updates and corrects that model based on input from visual, vestibular and proprioceptive inputs," and "such and such a structure in the speech centersSo I guess my question would be not what you think the answer to the "hard problem" of consciousness is, but what form you think that answer should take. It seems like the answer you would want would not be of the form "such and such a structure in
would
you find satisfying?I think my answer in another reply a few minutes ago covers that. (I'm catching up after a week away and trying to reply to posts more or
less in order so there may be some overlapping).
This is where I think panpsychism, even emergent panpsychism, is sort of selling a bill of goods.It is in a way but I see it more a case of "the goods you are
currently using don't seem to give the result you want; here are some
other goods you might try." I'm not arguing that these goods are
indeed better, simply criticising the fact that people are dismissing
the goods without even trying them. When I first discussed Goff's book
some time ago and referred to work he described going on with plants,
some people here seemed to dismiss out of hand the very idea of 'plant consciousness'.
All it does, to my mind, is take a basically materialist model and change the names. There's nothing different that's observable, it's just a way of burying that uncomfortable phrase "nothing more than" under more appealing language.OK, my phrase "nothing more than" was very loose.
What I was really
getting at is those who insist that consciousness, however you define
it, is simply an emergent property of *biological* evolution and
cannot exist outside the human body (at least not in the advanced
state that we observe in humans.)
listeners." If I fell in love with my wife because her body odor subconsciously suggested a microbial flora whose composition reflected a sufficiently different set of HLA (immune response) genes that our offspring would be resistant to a broad range ofSince the "nothing more than" does not bother me, panpsychism does not attract me. I just look at it as "Wow, matter is amazing - in the right structure and under the right conditions it can produce the St. Matthew Passion, and even tears in its
So for me dissatisfaction with the scientific study of consciousness are a violation of the demarcation borders between the magisteria - the attempt to ask for a philosophical explanation from a scientific
discipline, or vice versa.
respect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to >> >> >> answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here isWe're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so >> >> indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over >> >> 80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on >> >> >> gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been >> >> >> repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 05:18:27 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:says - all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:30:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:27:12 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of >> >> a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it >> >> as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because >> >> of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
"Soul" immediately introduces religious overtones and I think that
just distracts from the debate.
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism
Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor >> >> dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On >> >> the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence, >> >> for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged >> >> biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that >> >> is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to >> >> evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having >> >> consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock' >> >> but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat >> >> and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of
considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat >> >> and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
The key difference that I see is that he is not restricting
consciousness to our physical bodies which is what materialists
generally do.
Could you expand on that a bit more? What does it mean to restrict consciousness to our bodies. Do you mean Goff claims that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter?It's a while since I read him but I don't recall him saying that,
simply that *all* matter contains consciousness. That's why he argued
that the investigation of consciousness beyond the human body should
be open to science.
is as though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined with organicOr do you mean that even if consciousness is tightly linked to matter, a complete description of everything material going on in a conscious animal would miss the essence of consciousness?
Maybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one. It
seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell you nothinggoes about looking for what those circumstances are.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is. ItI know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main
argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity >> >> actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about >> >> how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers >> >> yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements >> >> in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches. >> >
orientation in space - and how uncomfortable it is when those things do not line up, or how the brain decides whether it is or is not responsible for something going on nearby. These are all very hard problems considering you want to know what differentand
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
I agree with those "hows" but I do not think that we are making any
great headway in answering them. Identifying *where* in the brain that
activity occurs does not tell us anything about *how* in the sense you
use it above.
I think there's been plenty of progress in understanding, for example, how the brain produces a useful visual model of the world starting from light hitting the retina, how it integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs to figure out its
about what consciousness really is. So without giving any real answer, what sort of answer to the question "what is consciousness , really?" would you find satisfying?I don't think there is any one answer to that, the best I can do is
give examples of things where I'd like to see some sort of scientific explanation.
One example that I gave a long time ago is why do I listen to Jimi
Hendrix and hear what I regard as some of the best ever guitar playing
but my wife only hears a discordant din?
Another example is human ability to plan ahead. A squirrel will hide a
store of nuts for the winter but there is no sign of conscious
behaviour that we would regard as planning; on the other hand, I am
going somewhere tomorrow so I will check the weather forecast and see
if I should carry an umbrella. What is the difference between the
squirrel's mind and mine?
One area that has always intrigued me is human ability to use things
that don't even exist. Negative numbers is one particular example -
they drive our whole financial and trading world yet they don't
physically exist. How do we do that?
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all. >> >> >
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally sorespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters. >> >> >> >it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak ><[email protected]> wrote:training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>>>> Martin Harran wrote:
.....On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw asI'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >>>>>>>>>> responded to it.
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >>>>>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture. >>>>>>>>>>> Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >>>>>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's >>>>>>>>>>> followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >>>>>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth. >>>>>>>>>>
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >>>>>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you >>>>>>>>>> see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >>>>>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >>>>>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >>>>>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully >>>>>>>>>> accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >>>>>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence >>>>>>>>>> for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >>>>>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of religious
is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the behavior
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (this
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >>>>>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had >>>>>>> to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >>>>>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall >>>>>>> away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >>>>>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they >>>>>>> were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the >>>>>>> scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >>>>>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>>>>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >>up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that >>homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >>denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not
be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by >>Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of >>Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it?
No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists, >>>>>> and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live
up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that
homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be
denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not
be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of
Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it?
No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
This is my second and final reply to your post here, Ron.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful >>>> design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
<snip of things covered in first reply>
where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with
only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this one.
I looked at Stephen Meyer's breakdown of phyla, and you aren't quite as far off
as I thought you were.
Meyer lists 36 phyla, of which 27 are known from fossils, 9 not.
Of the ones known from fossils:
3 are modern phyla from the pre-Cambrian: Porifera for sure, Mollusca and Cnidaria probably;
4 are modern phyla with first known fossils from well after the Cambrian.
The remaining 20 are known first from the Cambrian, but three are extinct. There is a fourth
about which there was some controversy at the time the book was written of whether
it is a separate phylum or a subphylum of Mollusca.
I'm at my office, so I can't be much more detailed until I get home.
Harshman might have a list from the Erwin and Valentine book that may
give slightly different numbers.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
There may be an exception or two among the "small shellies," but
they are too fragmentary to bear the load of 20 phyla.
I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex
animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive
erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial
subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Trivia: this was published two years to the day (!) before you cited it in your post.
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>> distinct modern phyla.
That's a slight exaggeration, but by using the word "intermediates" rather than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
has long been recognized that in no case is a morphological continuum found across a broad range of body plan morphologies nor do phyla resemble each other more closely during their early fossil histories (Valentine 2004). Simply there are morphologicalBill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation, as the following excerpt from the article you linked shows:
"Disparity is the diversity of animal forms or body plans, which can be measured by use of Linnaean ranks and a variety of quantitative approaches (Erwin 2007). Each body plan or a high-rank clade, e.g., a phylum, has a set of distinctive features. It
"By the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna, Gould (1989: fig. 3.72) suggested a pattern of rapid, maximal disparity in the early history followed by later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves large morphological gapsamong high-rank clades. This pattern is applicable to high-rank clades and metazoans as a whole. Particularly, he argued that that the morphological disparity of arthropods at a single locality (Burgess Shale) surpassed all extant arthropods, which
"Subsequent quantitative studies have shown that most clades achieved their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during a short time interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record in the early Cambrian (see a review in Erwin 2007;Hughes et al. 2013). A more recent study by mapping of fossil and living metazoan morphospace demonstrated that the majority of phylum-level clades achieved maximal initial disparity in the Cambrian and that the overall disparity was already very broad
I've put in two paragraph breaks. The middle paragraph especially puts the lie to what Bill Rogers wrote, with:
"later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves large morphological gaps among high-rank lades."
What little remains of fossils of those stem groups is almost all in the "small shellies,"
and most of those are too fragmentary to classify them.
Are you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered progenitors
of Cambrian Phyla?
Considered by anti-ID zealots, yes, but most of it is wishful thinking.
According to this::
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
You never finished your sentence, confusing John Harshman no end.
I wasn't able to access anything but the abstract. It mentions a lot of species but gives no
hint of where they fit into the tree leading from the LCA of the novel Cambrian phyla to the
phyla themselves.
Since the article was written three years before the Springer article from which
I quoted, I'd say the burden of proof of rescuing Bill Rogers from an outright
lie is on your critics.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS Stephen Meyer goes into a lot of detail about homeobox genes in his book _Darwin's Doubt_. If Erwin and Valentine go into more detail, I'd like to
see Harshman show that. I've left in what you wrote about them below.
I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionary development
This is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
in biology is called the 3/rd field of biology is said by biologist,
Amoung the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll it as evidence proving common
descent beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping with his own world
view. These master control genes because of their ancient appearance,
their highly conserved nature throughout time and the universality of
this family of genes throughout time and the animal kingdom could
certainly be interpreted as evidence of design.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed
each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions
years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs and
organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is demonstrated by
this one organ (the eye) experiment.
file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html
<file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html>
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 5:55:59?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:says - all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 05:18:27 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:30:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:27:12 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of
evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of >> >> >> a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it >> >> >> as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because >> >> >> of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
"Soul" immediately introduces religious overtones and I think that
just distracts from the debate.
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism
you mean by consciousness. I am sure that you could come up with a behavioral definition of consciousness that would be broad enough to include plants and maybe even bacteria (they do respond to population density and nutrient gradients). As long as youIt's a while since I read him but I don't recall him saying that,Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor >> >> >> dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I
actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On >> >> >> the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence, >> >> >> for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged >> >> >> biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it
using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that >> >> >> is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to >> >> >> evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having >> >> >> consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock' >> >> >> but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an
inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat >> >> >> and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of
considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat >> >> >> and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert
object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
The key difference that I see is that he is not restricting
consciousness to our physical bodies which is what materialists
generally do.
Could you expand on that a bit more? What does it mean to restrict consciousness to our bodies. Do you mean Goff claims that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter?
simply that *all* matter contains consciousness. That's why he argued
that the investigation of consciousness beyond the human body should
be open to science.
I would suspect that most materialists would think that consciousness can exist outside the human body, in a chimpanzee body, a Rhesus monkey body, probably a crow body, too. If you get to plants and bacteria then you will, I am afraid, have to say what
But if you meant consciousness beyond all material bodies whatever they are, I'm not sure how science could even begin to address that.It is as though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined with
Or do you mean that even if consciousness is tightly linked to matter, a complete description of everything material going on in a conscious animal would miss the essence of consciousness?
Maybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one.
It seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell yougoes about looking for what those circumstances are.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is.I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for
getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main
argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity >> >> >> actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about >> >> >> how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers >> >> >> yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for
example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am
not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements >> >> >> in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced
but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches. >> >> >
tractable,orientation in space - and how uncomfortable it is when those things do not line up, or how the brain decides whether it is or is not responsible for something going on nearby. These are all very hard problems considering you want to know what different
and
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
I agree with those "hows" but I do not think that we are making any
great headway in answering them. Identifying *where* in the brain that
activity occurs does not tell us anything about *how* in the sense you
use it above.
I think there's been plenty of progress in understanding, for example, how the brain produces a useful visual model of the world starting from light hitting the retina, how it integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs to figure out its
importantthat that sort of behavior in the squirrel is on a continuum with human planning even if pretty far away on that continuum, just as I think a bacterium moving up a nutrient gradient is on a continuum with a human deciding to go out for lunch, just even
about what consciousness really is. So without giving any real answer, what sort of answer to the question "what is consciousness , really?" would you find satisfying?I don't think there is any one answer to that, the best I can do is
give examples of things where I'd like to see some sort of scientific
explanation.
One example that I gave a long time ago is why do I listen to Jimi
Hendrix and hear what I regard as some of the best ever guitar playing
but my wife only hears a discordant din?
Another example is human ability to plan ahead. A squirrel will hide a
store of nuts for the winter but there is no sign of conscious
behaviour that we would regard as planning; on the other hand, I am
going somewhere tomorrow so I will check the weather forecast and see
if I should carry an umbrella. What is the difference between the
squirrel's mind and mine?
One area that has always intrigued me is human ability to use things
that don't even exist. Negative numbers is one particular example -
they drive our whole financial and trading world yet they don't
physically exist. How do we do that?
All of those are good questions, certainly. I don't know the answers. I'm not sure I entirely agree about the squirrel - what sorts of signs of conscious planning would you expect to see in a non-verbal animal? The behavior is there. I would suspect
It's easy enough for me to imagine answers for things like musical taste, planning and abstraction, but I suspect it will be decades or centuries before we would have the technology that would allow the kind of detailed neuron by neuron untangling ofsuch complex activities in the brain. I don't see any reason to think there's anything non-physical going on. It's just that it's a bit like trying to figure out the whether by tracking the motions of individual oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all. >> >> >> >
We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally sorespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is
*frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way;
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, over
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters. >> >> >> >> >it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 5:30:59?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:religious training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[� snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw as
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence >> >> >>>>>>>> pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >> >> >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's >> >> >>>>>>>> theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth.
I'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you
responded to it.
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine >> >> >>>>>>> Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the >> >> >>>>>>> request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for >> >> >>>>>>> questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read >> >> >>>>>>> Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common >> >> >>>>>>> Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds >> >> >>>>>> evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of
this is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (
Oddly the folks who say that are not keen on atheists who "Respect the believer; mock the belief."
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away >> >> >>>> from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done >> >> >>>> some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left >> >> >>>> Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the
scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step. >> >> >>>>
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >> >> >>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >> >> >> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >> >> >> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >> >> >people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >> >> >their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Well, the first question is "what are the morals defined in Christian teachings?" There's hardly a single, clear answer to that. But certainly here are things I disagree with.
Jesus clearly prohibited divorce and remarriage.
Not quite; in Matthew 19:9, he says "except for sexual immorality".
The verse is arguably one of the ones where translations most very,
with 'sexual immorality' being worded as a range of things from
'fornication' to 'illicit'. And yes, I know my own Catholic Church has
strict views on divorce but that is one of a number of areas where I
disagree with them. That does not in wany way undermine my Faith.
That's nonsense to me. There are plenty of good reasons for dissolving a marriage and no good ones for taking that as a reason never to marry again.
Jesus advocated pacifism. I think that is not morally correct. There are unfortunately times when you have to go to war (of course most Christians recognize this and find ways to get around Jesus' words on the matter).
Lots of (very aggressive) Christians think homosexual sex is immoral. I find that absurd. It leads, often enough, to angry homophobia and sometimes to physical attacks. The most accommodation offered is something like "Love the sinner; hate the sin."
lines of "If I do this thing, who might get hurt?"
Jesus offered a moral equivalence between mental states and actions (wrt sexual fantasy and adultery, and anger and murder). Focusing on mental states trivializes the consequences of actual actions and undermines a healthy moral reasoning along the
to interpret away the offending passages; that's why most churches allow divorce and remarriage (and even the Catholic church has the annulment loophole), lots of churches perform same sex marriages, very few denominations demand strict pacifism, etc.
Well, that's a start (and that's without going into the Old Testament). Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a way
That's exactly what you do when you talk about "a combination of of bad interpretation or fuzzy thinking.," you use your moral common sense, and interpret the Bible so that it lines up with your moral common sense. That's a good thing. Religious people
You disagree with the above teachings. In some cases, I agree with you
but I would regard them mostly as a combination of bad interpretation
or fuzzy thinking, not necessarily what I would regard as "immoral".
I don't see any of them as a particular justification for atheism.
As I said immediately above " Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a way to interpret away the offending passages:.
I did not suggest any of those things were justifications for atheism. You asked about what I saw wrong in "morals defined by Christian teachings." I answered.making those attacks, are indeed consistent with Christian ideals. You write that off as "poor interpretation" on their part and don't let it bother your own faith, but not everybody, particularly friends and relatives of LGBT people, particularly in
It's not my argument that people are simply put off by the moral teachings of Christianity. It's true that in some cases this is exactly what's happening. There are all the attacks on LGBT people which, to a significant fraction of Christians who are
Then there are cases in which the misbehavior of leader of religious groups and institutions alienate people and drive them away. The Church, and a number of protestant sects, too, covering up sexual abuse, prominent evangelists shagging theirsecretaries, prosperity gospel preachers buying private jets with donations that are bankrupting poor people. Those things put some people off their feed, and it does not work to simply say "Well, we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God."
You asked how this differs from people using the theory of evolution to argue for eugenics. Biologists do not preach the theory of evolution as a religion or a guide to how to live a good, moral life. Religious leaders, on the other hand, do exactlythat. Biologists do not ask you to submit to their authority in the same way that religious leaders do, either. So when a religious leader or a religious institution falls short morally, it makes a bigger impression than it does when it turns out that
Remember, we were talking about what is driving people away from religion - you have not been driven away. Lots of people have not been driven away. We are not talking about your view of Christian morals, or how scandals among religious leaders do or donot affect your personal faith.
And speaking of why people are leaving churches (a slightly different question than why they might lose their faith). One overlooked factor in the U.S. may be that they are just too busy. Works schedules are unpredictable, as companies demand flexiblescheduling so that they adjust, in real time, how many workers are on site, so that they only pay when they absolutely need to, child care is poorly organized and expensive, as is elder care, there's enormous cultural pressure to be overworked to prove
hard), to find your purpose in life and your social network almost entirely at work. And once people are out of touch with the social and communal benefits of a faith community, their faith is liable to just gradually wither away.
clear that their findings do not support eugenics. On the other hand religiously motivated attacks, both rhetorical and physical, on LGBT people are out there all the time and getting worse.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >> >> >(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone
claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >> >> >this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
Sure he's serious. And I agree. I've not once heard a contemporary geneticist argue that the theory of evolution implied one should adopt eugenicist policies.
And I never said anything about *contemporary geneticists*.
It's certainly true that some scientists in the 19th century made that argument. They lost, sufficiently decisively that "the specter of eugenics" you see hanging over all of modern genetics is simply the extra care that geneticists now take to make
The National Human Genome Research Institute don't seem to agree with
you that it is all in the past:
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
"Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s,
leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and
policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of
these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.
The genomics communities continue to work to scientifically debunk
eugenic myths and combat modern-day manifestations of eugenics and
scientific racism, particularly as they affect people of color, people
with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals."
Racism is certainly not in the past. Racists (and homophobes) do sometimes use eugenics arguments. Geneticists bend over backwards these days to explain that their results do not support eugenics, as you can see from the citation you just made.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument.
Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for
the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits,
ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer
could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale
University is hardly a "rare creationist source".
[email protected] wrote:
This is my second and final reply to your post here, Ron.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39?AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
<snip of things covered in first reply>
I looked at Stephen Meyer's breakdown of phyla, and you aren't quite as far offwhere vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this one. >>
as I thought you were.
I hesitated to buy Meyer book, for this reason
A problem I often run into, and not to doubt others, do too, when
trying to make
a point this charge quickly occurs, "you got this from a fundamentalist >site", or this
is not from a reliable source. But it occurs to me that if you receive
your information
from just one source, knowing that there is two sides to every
controversy, how can
anyone come to be a honest and valid conclusion? if in a courtroom, the >judges says I
want to hear from the accuser, but not the defendant ever. How is this >different
it's one-sided? So, I'm reading the book.
Meyer lists 36 phyla, of which 27 are known from fossils, 9 not.
Of the ones known from fossils:
3 are modern phyla from the pre-Cambrian: Porifera for sure, Mollusca and Cnidaria probably;
4 are modern phyla with first known fossils from well after the Cambrian.
The remaining 20 are known first from the Cambrian, but three are extinct. There is a fourth
about which there was some controversy at the time the book was written of whether
it is a separate phylum or a subphylum of Mollusca.
Thanks for this!
I'm at my office, so I can't be much more detailed until I get home.I read about this, they are really mysterious. Not much is known
Harshman might have a list from the Erwin and Valentine book that may
give slightly different numbers.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
There may be an exception or two among the "small shellies," but
they are too fragmentary to bear the load of 20 phyla.
about them. But they became extinct without any known decedents.
This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex >>> animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive
erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial
subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Trivia: this was published two years to the day (!) before you cited it in your post.
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil >>>>> paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ >>>>> distinct modern phyla.
That's a slight exaggeration, but by using the word "intermediates" rather >> than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
has long been recognized that in no case is a morphological continuum found across a broad range of body plan morphologies nor do phyla resemble each other more closely during their early fossil histories (Valentine 2004). Simply there are morphologicalBill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation, as the following excerpt from >> the article you linked shows:
"Disparity is the diversity of animal forms or body plans, which can be measured by use of Linnaean ranks and a variety of quantitative approaches (Erwin 2007). Each body plan or a high-rank clade, e.g., a phylum, has a set of distinctive features. It
among high-rank clades. This pattern is applicable to high-rank clades and metazoans as a whole. Particularly, he argued that that the morphological disparity of arthropods at a single locality (Burgess Shale) surpassed all extant arthropods, which
"By the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna, Gould (1989: fig. 3.72) suggested a pattern of rapid, maximal disparity in the early history followed by later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves large morphological gaps
2007; Hughes et al. 2013). A more recent study by mapping of fossil and living metazoan morphospace demonstrated that the majority of phylum-level clades achieved maximal initial disparity in the Cambrian and that the overall disparity was already very
"Subsequent quantitative studies have shown that most clades achieved their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during a short time interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record in the early Cambrian (see a review in Erwin
Quite a bit of what I read is a bit confusing. I am not a biologist I
took a class in high
school, But some of the experiments sickened me, I decided I wanted
nothing more
in this. I became an electrical engineer.
I've put in two paragraph breaks. The middle paragraph especially puts the lie to what Bill Rogers wrote, with:
"later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves large morphological gaps among high-rank lades."
There is something that just came to me, that I've never read or heard >discussed.
And that pertains to the origin of organs and body parts. The human body has >numerous organs that's essential to life, such as the heart, kidneys, liver, >stomach, lungs and many more and the human body. Like the eye, it's
theorized that a spot of skin mutates and over vast spans of time and many >random mutations and natural selection the eye we see out of
evolved.
There is up to 100 organs and body parts and maybe more. In a depiction
of evolution from a Cambrian organism to a worm, to a fish to an ape to up
to a man. It occurred to me that
while the physical shape is undergoing change through random mutations and >natural selection, it doesn't take much imagination to comprehend this. But >random mutations in each of the organs and body parts are a bit more >difficult to imagine. For example:
A fish's organs and body parts and a mans are remarkable different. So,
if the 2 chambered heart of a fish and our predecessors, over time gets >countless
beneficial gene changes, unless there is corresponding beneficial gene
change in each of the other organs, the heart and the bodies cannot
function
and our lineage fails. So, does evolution in each organ and body part >change in
a sequential order, or do they change in a cooperative and parallel >evolution.
How does this happen?
Since beneficial mutations are rare, each organ and each body part has
to, in a
sequence have corresponding countless and interlinking beneficial >mutations.
Or there must must somehow be a cooperative and parallel evolution of each >organ and body part.
What is it that organizes and controls the required order, dependency
and interlinking
parts of each of the heart, lungs liver and other body parts during the >evolution of each
body part and organ?
But the first beneficial mutation for an organ could just disappear. >Supposedly, each beneficial mutation, bestows a better chance at
survival. But
beneficial mutations are rare and a time scale has to be involved as
well as natural
selection.
What little remains of fossils of those stem groups is almost all in the "small shellies,"
and most of those are too fragmentary to classify them.
Are you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered progenitors
of Cambrian Phyla?
Considered by anti-ID zealots, yes, but most of it is wishful thinking.
According to this::
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
You never finished your sentence, confusing John Harshman no end.
I wasn't able to access anything but the abstract. It mentions a lot of species but gives no
hint of where they fit into the tree leading from the LCA of the novel Cambrian phyla to the
phyla themselves.
There seems to be a lot of blowing smoke.
Since the article was written three years before the Springer article from which
I quoted, I'd say the burden of proof of rescuing Bill Rogers from an outright
lie is on your critics.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS Stephen Meyer goes into a lot of detail about homeobox genes in his book >> _Darwin's Doubt_. If Erwin and Valentine go into more detail, I'd like to
see Harshman show that. I've left in what you wrote about them below.
I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionary development
This is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
in biology is called the 3/rd field of biology is said by biologist,
Amoung the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll it as evidence proving common
descent beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping with his own world
view. These master control genes because of their ancient appearance,
their highly conserved nature throughout time and the universality of
this family of genes throughout time and the animal kingdom could
certainly be interpreted as evidence of design.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed
each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions
years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs and
organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is demonstrated by
this one organ (the eye) experiment.
file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html
<file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html>
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Tue, 1 Aug 2023 05:11:56 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:says - all bits of matter have the potential to produce consciousness, but to see that potential realized the matter has to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. It seems to me that the main advantage of panpsychism is that it uses
On Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 5:55:59?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 05:18:27 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 31, 2023 at 7:30:58?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:27:12 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, July 24, 2023 at 4:40:50?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 04:55:32 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, July 23, 2023 at 7:25:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote: >> >> >> >> On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:41:28 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"I'm not aware of anyone involved in research in this area making
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 10:02:19 +0100I don't know but all the efforts to link consciousness to a biological
Martin Harran <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 23:53:20 -0400, Ron Dean[]
<[email protected]> wrote:
I'm not familiar with Jonathan Wells. But I've found that questioning
Darwin does indeed bring down ire on a questioner.
If you think the response to you here amounts to 'ire' then you must
have been lucky to lead a very sheltered life!
I disagree with a number of aspects of the ToE and have challenged
them here, mainly around the areas of consciousness and intelligence
which I don't think can be explained as just the products of >> >> >> >> >> evolution. Most people here [*] disagree with me but they have shown
What other mechanism do you propose?
explanation have produced little or nothing so I really think we need
to look at other areas. There is interesting work going on in the area
of panpsychism; no real answers yet but I think there is potential in
it.
OK, I'll bite. Panpsychism seems to me virtually equivalent to materialism. Panpsychism claims that everything has a sort of soul,
claims about a "soul", can you identify any? In my own case as a
religious believer, I certainly see it as accommodating the concept of
a soul but I see that as neither a reason to accept it nor reject it
as scientific - it should be assessed on its own merits, not because
of its implications.
Soul, consciousness, spirit - whatever you want to call the psyche that is pan in panpsychism. I don't think the word choice is very important.
"Soul" immediately introduces religious overtones and I think that
just distracts from the debate.
even an individual atom floating in space, but that for the soul to be more like the sort of thing we mean by a soul, all those soulful atoms have to be organized into something more complex, like a brain. That's pretty much what materialism
what you mean by consciousness. I am sure that you could come up with a behavioral definition of consciousness that would be broad enough to include plants and maybe even bacteria (they do respond to population density and nutrient gradients). As long asIt's a while since I read him but I don't recall him saying that,Philip Goff is a leading proponent of panpsychism. In his book
Galileo's Error, he argues that panpsychism is neither materialism nor
dualism, that it is some sort of 'third way' (my words, not his). I >> >> >> actually think it embraces both, which is part of its appeal to me. On
the one hand, it does identify consciousness as a distinct existence,
for lack of a better word, not just 'something' that 'somehow' emerged
biologically. On the other hand, it allows us to try to research it >> >> >> using standard scientific techniques. Even if it has a separate
existence, it is clearly somehow intertwined with organic life as that
is the only place we see it active. In that way, it can be linked to
evolution as evolution has developed the vehicle through which
consciousness can be expressed.
Some people have an issue with the very idea of inert objects having
consciousness and scorn, for example, the idea of a 'conscious rock'
but I think that is tunnel vision. I think of it like a candle, an >> >> >> inert object that we would not usually describe as "containing" heat
and light. Yet, if we ignite the wick, it does become a source of >> >> >> considerable heat and light. If we cut off the oxygen supply, the heat
and light disappear and the candle returns to juust being an inert >> >> >> object.
I don't actually see much difference between a materialist saying that consciousness is an emerging property of certain arrangements of matter and what Goff seems to be saying.
The key difference that I see is that he is not restricting
consciousness to our physical bodies which is what materialists
generally do.
Could you expand on that a bit more? What does it mean to restrict consciousness to our bodies. Do you mean Goff claims that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter?
simply that *all* matter contains consciousness. That's why he argued
that the investigation of consciousness beyond the human body should
be open to science.
I would suspect that most materialists would think that consciousness can exist outside the human body, in a chimpanzee body, a Rhesus monkey body, probably a crow body, too. If you get to plants and bacteria then you will, I am afraid, have to say
It is as though you object to the idea that materialists might say that consciousness is "just" an emergent property of matter ("something","somehow"), while panpsychists say that consciousness is something really cool that is somehow entwined withBut if you meant consciousness beyond all material bodies whatever they are, I'm not sure how science could even begin to address that.
Or do you mean that even if consciousness is tightly linked to matter, a complete description of everything material going on in a conscious animal would miss the essence of consciousness?
Maybe the only difference is the tone of the words he uses to describe this emergent property. I don't really understand your objection to a materialist framing, since it does not seem to be, in practice, and different than this panpsychist one.
It seems to me that there's not that much difference between deciding how to define consciousness and figuring out what consciousness really is. Personally, I don't think there is anything that "consciousness really is" and that definitions tell yougoes about looking for what those circumstances are.
I know that when we debated consciousness before, one of your big >> >> >> issues was how we even define the term but I have no appetite for >> >> >> getting back into that debate which I think distracts from the main >> >> >> argument. I compare it to gravity; we don't really know what gravity
Note - that does not mean that materialism/panpsychism is the only alternative, there are certainly dualisms that are clearly not equivalent to materialism. But it's hard for me to see how panpsychism gets you anywhere.
actually is but we have been able to figure out a heck of a lot about
how it works. I'm not claiming that panpsychism has any great answers
yet but I think it is a more promising avenue of research than, for >> >> >> example, neurological research has provided. Just to be clear, I am >> >> >> not dismissing the value of neurological research or its achievements
in various areas or suggesting that it should be in any way reduced >> >> >> but I don't think it has told us anything at all about what
consciousness actually is and we should be open to other approaches.
I do not get this particular objection. On the one hand you say that getting into definitions of consciousness distracts from the main argument, but on the other you object that neurological research has not told us what consciousness really is.
its orientation in space - and how uncomfortable it is when those things do not line up, or how the brain decides whether it is or is not responsible for something going on nearby. These are all very hard problems considering you want to know whattractable,
and
involve taking the experience of conscious subjects seriously.
I agree with those "hows" but I do not think that we are making any
great headway in answering them. Identifying *where* in the brain that >> >> activity occurs does not tell us anything about *how* in the sense you >> >> use it above.
I think there's been plenty of progress in understanding, for example, how the brain produces a useful visual model of the world starting from light hitting the retina, how it integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive inputs to figure out
that that sort of behavior in the squirrel is on a continuum with human planning even if pretty far away on that continuum, just as I think a bacterium moving up a nutrient gradient is on a continuum with a human deciding to go out for lunch, just evenimportant
about what consciousness really is. So without giving any real answer, what sort of answer to the question "what is consciousness , really?" would you find satisfying?I don't think there is any one answer to that, the best I can do is
give examples of things where I'd like to see some sort of scientific
explanation.
One example that I gave a long time ago is why do I listen to Jimi
Hendrix and hear what I regard as some of the best ever guitar playing
but my wife only hears a discordant din?
Another example is human ability to plan ahead. A squirrel will hide a
store of nuts for the winter but there is no sign of conscious
behaviour that we would regard as planning; on the other hand, I am
going somewhere tomorrow so I will check the weather forecast and see
if I should carry an umbrella. What is the difference between the
squirrel's mind and mine?
One area that has always intrigued me is human ability to use things
that don't even exist. Negative numbers is one particular example -
they drive our whole financial and trading world yet they don't
physically exist. How do we do that?
All of those are good questions, certainly. I don't know the answers. I'm not sure I entirely agree about the squirrel - what sorts of signs of conscious planning would you expect to see in a non-verbal animal? The behavior is there. I would suspect
I don't think it really is a continuum as there are substantial
differences in the two behaviours. In regard to the squirrel's
behaviour, that is easily explained as the squirrel's genome reacting
to shortening days and/or reducing temperatures and switching on the
"let's store nuts" mode. Being explicable in the genome, that makes it
a fairly straightforward candidate for biological evolution. Where I
see the difference in my case regarding the need for an umbrella
tomorrow, are what I would consider as some of key characteristic of "planning":
1) I'm not just considering the "future" as some vague general
concept, I'm thinking about a very specific day - *tomorrow* which is
an abstract concept that probably doesn't exist anywhere outside the
human mind.
2) I'm not reacting to an external event, I'm working out what I
should do about something that doesn't even exist and might not happen
at all - I might die today so tomorrow might never exist for me, even
if I don't die, I might cancel my intended outing.
3) I'm working with theoretical probabilities; science can tell me
exactly what time the sun will rise tomorrow morning where I live but
the weather where I live cannot be predicted with any certainty. My
decision will be based on a balance between probabilities; if the forecasters say <5% chance of rain, then I will not bother with the umbrella, if they say 40% plus chance, then I will take my umbrella.
4) I will monitor my plan and revise it in response to my judgement
about what I see happening around me. If the forecasters say <5% rain
but, as I head out the door, I see a very dark cloud approaching, then
I will take my umbrella after all.
Unlike the squirrel's behaviour which can be easily explained in
genetic terms, I just don't know where we would even start to relate
those abstract features of my thinking to a genetic explanation.
such complex activities in the brain. I don't see any reason to think there's anything non-physical going on. It's just that it's a bit like trying to figure out the whether by tracking the motions of individual oxygen and nitrogen atoms in theIt's easy enough for me to imagine answers for things like musical taste, planning and abstraction, but I suspect it will be decades or centuries before we would have the technology that would allow the kind of detailed neuron by neuron untangling of
To me there's no "just something somehow" about those questions at all.
indulge ourselves. I do think, however, that Pareto applies here, overrespect for my views when I have explained my reasoning and tried to
answer their counter-arguments. What you are seeing here is >> >> >> >> >> *frustration*, not *ire* because you keep repeating claims that have
been shown to be wrong such as your claims about Darwin's views on
gradualism and refuse to explain further things that you have been
repeatedly asked to enlarge upon e.g. the qualities or characteristics
you would expect to see in an intelligent designer.
[*] Apart from a handful of nutjobs who think that personal attack is
a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with someone who disagrees with
them but you get them everywhere.
It seems a lot of regulars here indulge themselves in this way; >> >> >> >> We're all human and most of us including myself will occasionally so
80% of the bad behaviour comes from less than 20% of the posters.
it's
hardly likely to win people over though, is it?
On Tue, 1 Aug 2023 04:48:35 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:religious training) actually undermined their faith, or because they were turned off by the poor behavior of religious people they knew personally or who made headlines.
On Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 5:30:59?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:05:59 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]"
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 5:05:53?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 09:08:32 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/22/23 3:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT), "[email protected]" >> >> >>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 1:50:46?PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
Martin Harran wrote:.....
On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:12:54 -0400, Ron DeanAs I wrote, I _suspect_ it was the case. I can be proven wrong. But so
<[email protected]> wrote:
[… snip for focus]
At the time, Paley attributed the scientific observations, he saw asI'm fairly sure I asked you this before but I don't think you >> >> >>>>>>> responded to it.
evidence of God.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help, but suspect that Paley's evidence
pointing to God inspired Darwin to address scientific observations, as
did Paley, but with the purpose of writing God out of the picture.
Darwin needed an instrument to accomplish his goal. He devised >> >> >>>>>>>> a concept, where as nature, in the form random mutations and natural
selection became his God replacement.
I honesty think, it's been the objective and the goal of Darwin's
followers,
from the beginning, to _find_ supporting evidence for Darwin's
theory. Can this be objective?
And I think finding evidence to support evolution has been their goal of
for the past 150 years. If so, where does this leave truth. >> >> >>>>>>>
Ken Miller has arguably done more than anyone else to undermine
Intelligent Design. He is a seriously committed Catholic. How do you
see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project and retired from science
to develop his evangelical beliefs. He returned to science at the
request of Bill Clinton to become director of the National Institutes
of Health but is still totally committed to his Christian beliefs. How
do you see him wanting to write God out of the picture?
I wouldn't attempt to place myself on the level of those two guys but
at least I'm a committed Christian who is here and available for
questioning. Do you think my acceptance of ToE somehow means I want to
write God out of the picture?
far I've seen nothing that suggest otherwise.
You say you have read and continue to read widely. Have you read
Miller's book or Collins's book? They are a bit dated now but I still
highly recommend them to get the perspective of biologists who fully
accept the ToE but are committed religious believers.
Ken Miller: Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501
Francis Collins: The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence
for Belief
https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744
For every person you mention, there are people that have "fallen away"
from their
religious faith by their acceptance of evolution. In their minds
evolution is the explanation
which replaces their God as the creator.
I do not think that evolution is responsible for very many deconversions. My own experience has been that atheists I know are atheists because of theodicy , or because applying critical reading to religious documents (often as part of
this is where the textual criticism that you can get in a seminary may work against you), and to a lesser extent the idea that God had been used to fill in gaps in knowledge and is not helpful in that role. After that comes moral discomfort with the
There are beginning to be some studies about the process of religious deconversion (small and anecdotal, to be sure)
https://secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.108
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/handle/10504/64291
https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10034/622369/2Full%20text%20Lee%20%26%20Gubi%20Breaking%20up%20with%20Jesus.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Among many intellectual problems that people have that lead them to deconvert, the most common looks like theodicy - how to reconcile a beneficient, omnipotent God with suffering and evil, followed by skepticism about accepting the Bible (
" Oddly the folks who say that are not keen on atheists who "Respect the believer; mock the belief."
As noted in my reply to Ron, the things leading someone to fall away
from religious belief are dependent to some extent on how far they had
to fall. IME, those who fall away due to theodicy tend to have done
some serious thinking about the matter but less so for those who fall
away from other reasons. I know many people who claim to have left
Catholicism because of the child abuse scandals but by and large, they
were people who had effectively already walked away from it, the >> >> >>>> scandals were just a convenient hook for taking a public final step.
I've never known anyone who left because of evolution.
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people
who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that
some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be
inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also, >> >> >those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >> >> >religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >> >> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do >> >> you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
Well, the first question is "what are the morals defined in Christian teachings?" There's hardly a single, clear answer to that. But certainly here are things I disagree with.
Jesus clearly prohibited divorce and remarriage.
Not quite; in Matthew 19:9, he says "except for sexual immorality".
The verse is arguably one of the ones where translations most very,
with 'sexual immorality' being worded as a range of things from
'fornication' to 'illicit'. And yes, I know my own Catholic Church has
strict views on divorce but that is one of a number of areas where I
disagree with them. That does not in wany way undermine my Faith.
That's nonsense to me. There are plenty of good reasons for dissolving a marriage and no good ones for taking that as a reason never to marry again.
Jesus advocated pacifism. I think that is not morally correct. There are unfortunately times when you have to go to war (of course most Christians recognize this and find ways to get around Jesus' words on the matter).
Lots of (very aggressive) Christians think homosexual sex is immoral. I find that absurd. It leads, often enough, to angry homophobia and sometimes to physical attacks. The most accommodation offered is something like "Love the sinner; hate the sin.
lines of "If I do this thing, who might get hurt?"
Jesus offered a moral equivalence between mental states and actions (wrt sexual fantasy and adultery, and anger and murder). Focusing on mental states trivializes the consequences of actual actions and undermines a healthy moral reasoning along the
way to interpret away the offending passages; that's why most churches allow divorce and remarriage (and even the Catholic church has the annulment loophole), lots of churches perform same sex marriages, very few denominations demand strict pacifism, etc.
Well, that's a start (and that's without going into the Old Testament). Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a
That's exactly what you do when you talk about "a combination of of bad interpretation or fuzzy thinking.," you use your moral common sense, and interpret the Bible so that it lines up with your moral common sense. That's a good thing. Religious people
You disagree with the above teachings. In some cases, I agree with you
but I would regard them mostly as a combination of bad interpretation
or fuzzy thinking, not necessarily what I would regard as "immoral".
I don't see any of them as a particular justification for atheism.
As I said immediately above " Fortunately, lots of Christians have basic moral common sense and so when a teaching of Jesus or someone else in the Bible conflicts with that moral common sense, they find a way to interpret away the offending passages:.
making those attacks, are indeed consistent with Christian ideals. You write that off as "poor interpretation" on their part and don't let it bother your own faith, but not everybody, particularly friends and relatives of LGBT people, particularly inI did not suggest any of those things were justifications for atheism. You asked about what I saw wrong in "morals defined by Christian teachings." I answered.
It's not my argument that people are simply put off by the moral teachings of Christianity. It's true that in some cases this is exactly what's happening. There are all the attacks on LGBT people which, to a significant fraction of Christians who are
secretaries, prosperity gospel preachers buying private jets with donations that are bankrupting poor people. Those things put some people off their feed, and it does not work to simply say "Well, we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God."Then there are cases in which the misbehavior of leader of religious groups and institutions alienate people and drive them away. The Church, and a number of protestant sects, too, covering up sexual abuse, prominent evangelists shagging their
that. Biologists do not ask you to submit to their authority in the same way that religious leaders do, either. So when a religious leader or a religious institution falls short morally, it makes a bigger impression than it does when it turns out thatYou asked how this differs from people using the theory of evolution to argue for eugenics. Biologists do not preach the theory of evolution as a religion or a guide to how to live a good, moral life. Religious leaders, on the other hand, do exactly
do not affect your personal faith.Remember, we were talking about what is driving people away from religion - you have not been driven away. Lots of people have not been driven away. We are not talking about your view of Christian morals, or how scandals among religious leaders do or
scheduling so that they adjust, in real time, how many workers are on site, so that they only pay when they absolutely need to, child care is poorly organized and expensive, as is elder care, there's enormous cultural pressure to be overworked to proveAnd speaking of why people are leaving churches (a slightly different question than why they might lose their faith). One overlooked factor in the U.S. may be that they are just too busy. Works schedules are unpredictable, as companies demand flexible
playmake clear that their findings do not support eugenics. On the other hand religiously motivated attacks, both rhetorical and physical, on LGBT people are out there all the time and getting worse.
hard), to find your purpose in life and your social network almost entirely at work. And once people are out of touch with the social and communal benefits of a faith community, their faith is liable to just gradually wither away.
That's an interesting point but I'll reply to it separately as I want
to focus here on "the evil that men do ..."
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily
(like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >> >> >claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
Sure he's serious. And I agree. I've not once heard a contemporary geneticist argue that the theory of evolution implied one should adopt eugenicist policies.
And I never said anything about *contemporary geneticists*.
It's certainly true that some scientists in the 19th century made that argument. They lost, sufficiently decisively that "the specter of eugenics" you see hanging over all of modern genetics is simply the extra care that geneticists now take to
................
The National Human Genome Research Institute don't seem to agree with
you that it is all in the past:
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
"Eugenics is not a fringe movement. Starting in the late 1800s,
leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetuated eugenic beliefs and
policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Many of
these beliefs and policies still exist in the United States.
The genomics communities continue to work to scientifically debunk
eugenic myths and combat modern-day manifestations of eugenics and
scientific racism, particularly as they affect people of color, people
with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals."
Racism is certainly not in the past. Racists (and homophobes) do sometimes use eugenics arguments. Geneticists bend over backwards these days to explain that their results do not support eugenics, as you can see from the citation you just made.
As do many church leaders (not least the current Pope in my own
church) also work hard to overcome the evils done in the name of
religion. That, by the way, is an aspect that has been missing from
this debate - the good done by many religious people and their
leaders. I personally do not see that good on its own as being some
sort of evidence supporting religious belief but people attacking
religion for the bad things that come out of it seem to want this
argument to be a one-way street. If they want to get into that
argument, they should at least recognise that it is a two-way street,
good on one side, bad on the other.
In regard to LGBTQ+, Fr James J. Martin SJ, has had a high profile
role in reaching out to that community. His activity has drawn the ire
of some in the conservative side of the church but not Pope Francis
who appointed him as a consultant to the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication in 2019 and sent him a handwritten letter in 2021 saying "Thinking about your pastoral work, I see that you are continually
seeking to imitate this style of God".
Fr Martin is also editor of one of my favourite journals, 'America -
the Jesuit Review'. I have just read an article by him covering his
talk yesterday at World Youth Day in Lisbon, attended by Pope Francis, titled "'Does God exist?' and other FAQs about faith and religion".
Purely by coincidence, it touches on things we have been debating
here; the bit I am quoting below is a bit long but I think it worth
quoting in full as it closely echoes my own views and, in my opinion,
most Catholics today.
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/08/02/faqs-faith-james-martin-245770
<quote>
6. Why Be a Catholic?
So maybe you say: "Okay, I can accept that Jesus was divine and I
believe in the idea that the Christian religion has a lot to offer.
Why the Catholic Church? How can I want to be a part of the church
with all those sex abuse scandals? And the fact that women can't be ordained, what about that? Other Christian churches do that. Worst of
all, the way you treat L.G.B.T.Q. people. Aren't they supposed to be 'disordered'?"
These objections-not philosophical or theological questions-are the
main reasons that most people shy away from the Catholic church. And
let's be blunt: the visceral reactions to sex abuse scandals,
homophobia, misogyny aren't about being anti-Catholic; they are about
being a thinking and feeling person. Who wouldn't be offended by those things? As Pope Benedict XVI said in 2010, the greatest threat to the church, or what he called its greatest persecution, was from "sin
inside the church." Ten years earlier, in 2000, during the Jubilee
Year, St. John Paul II asked for forgiveness from God for a whole host
of sins: antisemitism, as well as sins committed against Christians of
other faiths, women, the poor and so on.
Beyond these scandals are other things that drive people away:
hypocritical bishops and priests who live what they perceive as lavish lifestyles, out-of-touch statements on sex, women, L.G.B.T. people,
and so on. And then something else we have to admit: priests, sisters, brothers, lay leaders, bishops, Catholic leaders of every type who
are, to use an underused word, mean. A lot of young people want
nothing to do with the Catholic Church, even if they believe in God,
love Jesus and see the need for religion.
So why belong? Well, let's start with why you would stay if you're
already Catholic. For me, baptism is a really important part of this.
And at your baptism, God called you into the church by name. Even in
the face of these scandals, you're called to stay. It's something like
your family. Your family isn't perfect, maybe dysfunctional, maybe
really messed up. But it's still your family and you love it. Or maybe
it's like your country. If you don't like whoever the president or
prime minister or even king is, that doesn't mean you pack up and
leave. Plus, the church needs you right now, to help it change and
grow. How can you leave if God has called you into the church?
Finally, if you're Catholic and believe in religion, to paraphrase
Peter, "Where else would we go?" The search for a religious community without sin is a search without end. So one reason to stay: God asks
you to.
Why join if you're not baptized? Well, you can just ask the tens of thousands of people who do join every year, and who know that it's a
sinful place, but also know it's the place where you still encounter
Jesus Christ in the Mass, still experience the Holy Spirit through the sacraments and still come to know who God is through the community.
But people join for many reasons: for the unbroken line of tradition
back to the apostles, for the great theological treasures of the
church, for the spiritualities of the religious orders, for Catholic
social teaching, for its work with the poor and many other personal
reasons. For in the midst of sinners you meet saints, both living and
dead, and encounter their stories.
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, a Catholic priest and sociologist once said,
"We've done our best to push people out, and they keep staying. Why?"
His answer: the stories. To begin with the stories of the saints and
the blesseds, who, as one of the Mass prefaces says, "by their way of
life offer us an example, by communion with them, give us
companionship, by their intercession sure support." As the Jesuit
theologian Karl Rahner said, the saints show us what it means to be Christian in this particular way. But we join not only for the stories
of the saints, but those of our fellow Catholics, one another, in whom
we encounter God and who lead us to God. In coming to know other
people, in their totality, as part of what Pope Francis calls the
"culture of encounter," seeing them face to face and hearing their
stories, which you're doing here at World Youth Day, we come to know
God better. That's part of what our church is.
And you can see that best from the inside. One of the most beautiful homilies I've ever heard was from Pope Benedict during his visit to
the United States in 2008. During his homily at St. Patrick's
Cathedral in New York, he used the image of stained glass to help us understand that:
"From the outside, those windows are dark, heavy, even dreary. But
once one enters the church, they suddenly come alive; reflecting the
light passing through them, they reveal all their splendor. Many writers-here in America we can think of Nathaniel Hawthorne-have used
the image of stained glass to illustrate the mystery of the Church
herself. It is only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see the Church as she truly is: flooded with
grace, resplendent in beauty, adorned by the manifold gifts of the
Spirit. It follows that we, who live the life of grace within the
Church's communion, are called to draw all people into this mystery of light."
</quote>
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/
<quote>
The specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary
developments in human genetics. Eugenics was rooted in the social
Darwinism of the late 19th century, a period in which notions of
fitness, competition, and biological rationalizations of inequality
were popular. At the time, a growing number of theorists introduced
Darwinian analogies of "survival of the fittest" into social argument. >> >> Many social Darwinists insisted that biology was destiny, at least for >> >> the unfit, and that a broad spectrum of socially deleterious traits, >> >> ranging from "pauperism" to mental illness, resulted from heredity.
The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by the English scientist
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, to promote the ideal of
perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its
"undesirables" while multiplying its "desirables" -- that is, by
encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and
discouraging that of the unfit. In Galton's day, the science of
genetics was not yet understood. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of
evolution taught that species did change as a result of natural
selection, and it was well known that by artificial selection a farmer >> >> could obtain permanent breeds of plants and animals strong in
particular characteristics. Galton wondered, "Could not the race of
men be similarly improved?"
</quote>
Daniel J. Kevles, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale
University is hardly a "rare creationist source".
I don't think it really is a continuum as there are substantial
differences in the two behaviours. In regard to the squirrel's
behaviour, that is easily explained as the squirrel's genome reacting
to shortening days and/or reducing temperatures and switching on the
"let's store nuts" mode. Being explicable in the genome, that makes it
a fairly straightforward candidate for biological evolution. Where I
see the difference in my case regarding the need for an umbrella
tomorrow, are what I would consider as some of key characteristic of "planning":
[email protected] wrote:
This is my second and final reply to your post here, Ron.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long
range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts:
shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time
(geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
<snip of things covered in first reply>
where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this
one.
I looked at Stephen Meyer's breakdown of phyla, and you aren't quite
as far off
as I thought you were.
I hesitated to buy Meyer book, for this reason
A problem I often run into, and not to doubt others, do too, when
trying to make
a point this charge quickly occurs, "you got this from a fundamentalist site", or this
is not from a reliable source. But it occurs to me that if you receive your information
from just one source, knowing that there is two sides to every
controversy, how can
anyone come to be a honest and valid conclusion? if in a courtroom, the judges says I
want to hear from the accuser, but not the defendant ever. How is this different
it's one-sided? So, I'm reading the book.
Meyer lists 36 phyla, of which 27 are known from fossils, 9 not.
Of the ones known from fossils:
3 are modern phyla from the pre-Cambrian: Porifera for sure, Mollusca
and Cnidaria probably;
4 are modern phyla with first known fossils from well after the Cambrian.
The remaining 20 are known first from the Cambrian, but three are
extinct. There is a fourth
about which there was some controversy at the time the book was
written of whether
it is a separate phylum or a subphylum of Mollusca.
Thanks for this!
I'm at my office, so I can't be much more detailed until I get home.I read about this, they are really mysterious. Not much is known
Harshman might have a list from the Erwin and Valentine book that may
give slightly different numbers.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
There may be an exception or two among the "small shellies," but
they are too fragmentary to bear the load of 20 phyla.
about them. But they became extinct without any known decedents.
This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex >>> animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive
erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial
subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Trivia: this was published two years to the day (!) before you cited
it in your post.
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no
fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these
30+
distinct modern phyla.
That's a slight exaggeration, but by using the word "intermediates"
rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
Bill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific
literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation, as the following excerpt
from
the article you linked shows:
"Disparity is the diversity of animal forms or body plans, which can
be measured by use of Linnaean ranks and a variety of quantitative
approaches (Erwin 2007). Each body plan or a high-rank clade, e.g., a
phylum, has a set of distinctive features. It has long been recognized
that in no case is a morphological continuum found across a broad
range of body plan morphologies nor do phyla resemble each other more
closely during their early fossil histories (Valentine 2004). Simply
there are morphological gaps between phyla. By analyzing the timing of
appearance of Linnaean rank taxa in the fossil record, paleontologists
realized that the limits on animal disparity were early in animal
evolutionary history (e.g., Erwin et al. 1987).
"By the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna, Gould (1989: fig.
3.72) suggested a pattern of rapid, maximal disparity in the early
history followed by later removal of most groups (stem groups) by
extinction that leaves large morphological gaps among high-rank
clades. This pattern is applicable to high-rank clades and metazoans
as a whole. Particularly, he argued that that the morphological
disparity of arthropods at a single locality (Burgess Shale) surpassed
all extant arthropods, which inspired considerable efforts to
understand disparity.
"Subsequent quantitative studies have shown that most clades achieved
their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during a short time
interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record in the
early Cambrian (see a review in Erwin 2007; Hughes et al. 2013). A
more recent study by mapping of fossil and living metazoan morphospace
demonstrated that the majority of phylum-level clades achieved maximal
initial disparity in the Cambrian and that the overall disparity was
already very broad in the early history of animal evolution, although
the envelope of disparity explored by the Metazoa has increased
through geological time (Deline et al. 2018). It is worth mentioning
that new discoveries of weird forms in Cambrian deposits would
increase the morphological breadth of Cambrian animals (e.g., Zeng et
al. 2020)."
Quite a bit of what I read is a bit confusing. I am not a biologist I
took a class in high
school, But some of the experiments sickened me, I decided I wanted
nothing more
in this. I became an electrical engineer.
I've put in two paragraph breaks. The middle paragraph especially puts
the lie to what Bill Rogers wrote, with:
"later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves
large morphological gaps among high-rank lades."
There is something that just came to me, that I've never read or heard discussed.
And that pertains to the origin of organs and body parts. The human body
has
numerous organs that's essential to life, such as the heart, kidneys,
liver,
stomach, lungs and many more and the human body. Like the eye, it's
theorized that a spot of skin mutates and over vast spans of time and many random mutations and natural selection the eye we see out of
evolved.
There is up to 100 organs and body parts and maybe more. In a depiction
of evolution from a Cambrian organism to a worm, to a fish to an ape to up
to a man. It occurred to me that
while the physical shape is undergoing change through random mutations and natural selection, it doesn't take much imagination to comprehend this. But random mutations in each of the organs and body parts are a bit more difficult to imagine. For example:
A fish's organs and body parts and a mans are remarkable different. So,
if the 2 chambered heart of a fish and our predecessors, over time gets countless
beneficial gene changes, unless there is corresponding beneficial gene change in each of the other organs, the heart and the bodies cannot
function
and our lineage fails. So, does evolution in each organ and body part change in
a sequential order, or do they change in a cooperative and parallel evolution.
How does this happen?
Since beneficial mutations are rare, each organ and each body part has
to, in a
sequence have corresponding countless and interlinking beneficial mutations.
Or there must must somehow be a cooperative and parallel evolution of each organ and body part.
What is it that organizes and controls the required order, dependency
and interlinking
parts of each of the heart, lungs liver and other body parts during the evolution of each
body part and organ?
But the first beneficial mutation for an organ could just disappear. Supposedly, each beneficial mutation, bestows a better chance at
survival. But
beneficial mutations are rare and a time scale has to be involved as
well as natural
selection.
What little remains of fossils of those stem groups is almost all in
the "small shellies,"
and most of those are too fragmentary to classify them.
Are you saying these small Shelly creatures are considered progenitors
of Cambrian Phyla?
Considered by anti-ID zealots, yes, but most of it is wishful thinking.
According to this::
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326486991_The_Cambrian_explosion_in_Iran_new_insights_from_small_shelly_fossils_of_the_Ediacaran-Cambrian_transition_in_the_Soltanieh_and_Alborz_Mountains
You never finished your sentence, confusing John Harshman no end.
I wasn't able to access anything but the abstract. It mentions a lot
of species but gives no
hint of where they fit into the tree leading from the LCA of the
novel Cambrian phyla to the
phyla themselves.
There seems to be a lot of blowing smoke.
Since the article was written three years before the Springer article
from which
I quoted, I'd say the burden of proof of rescuing Bill Rogers from an
outright
lie is on your critics.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
PS Stephen Meyer goes into a lot of detail about homeobox genes in his
book
_Darwin's Doubt_. If Erwin and Valentine go into more detail, I'd like to
see Harshman show that. I've left in what you wrote about them below.
I understand the "new science of evo devo", IE evolutionary development
This is where intelligent design, seems to be the best of the two
explanation. And especially from an engineers perspective.
There is a strong case to be made for this, but you need to keep
articulating it;
you've only made a start here.
in biology is called the 3/rd field of biology is said by biologist,
Amoung the first discovery of these homeopox genes (Hox)
genes were with fruit flies. Sean Carroll it as evidence proving common
descent beyond any challenge. But this is in keeping with his own world
view. These master control genes because of their ancient appearance,
their highly conserved nature throughout time and the universality of
this family of genes throughout time and the animal kingdom could
certainly be interpreted as evidence of design.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3650071/The-new-science-of-Evo-Devo.html>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAHDHvGBMug&t=14s
It was commonly believed that the various animal body were expressed
each by its own unique set of genes. Another case is the eye was
believed to have evolved about 40 times independently over millions
years of time. But this is challenged by the evo devo.
The evidence that the same Homeboy genes controls body form, limbs and
organs the development throughout the animal kingdom is demonstrated by
this one organ (the eye) experiment.
file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html
<file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/Evolution:%20Library:%20Walter%20Gehring:%20Master%20Control%20Genes%20and%20the%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Eye.html>
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On 8/1/23 1:58 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly >>>>>>> this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also, >>>>> those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >>>>> religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >>> up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that
homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be
denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not
be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of
Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >>>>> claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it? >>
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
Nor have I met a pedophile priest, but I have personally met at least
two people who have met (and been victimized) by one. I have never met >anyone who mentioned meeting a eugenecist.
More to the point, pedophile priests are not the only, and arguably not
the worst, problem spread by religion. As I said, religion is strongly >promoting hatred of homosexuals here in the US, a situation I hear about >almost daily. And Christian Nationalism also promotes racism and is a
major component of the January 6 insurrection.
What's even worse than that are all the religious people who see the
same things and don't loudly and constantly complain about it, who in
fact often don't complain at all. If it weren't for those people, I
could say that that the problem is not religion in general, but only
certain religions (albeit a sizeable minority). But then there are all
those people who seem to want to give it a pass because it is Christian,
and they implicitly make the problems a part of Christianity, or perhaps
all religion, in general. If one can't criticize a religion which one
is a part of, it is morally imperative to quit that religion.
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
This is my second and final reply to your post here, Ron.
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
<snip of things covered in first reply>
where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this >>>> one.
I looked at Stephen Meyer's breakdown of phyla, and you aren't quite
as far off
as I thought you were.
I hesitated to buy Meyer book, for this reason
A problem I often run into, and not to doubt others, do too, when
trying to make
a point this charge quickly occurs, "you got this from a fundamentalist site", or this
is not from a reliable source. But it occurs to me that if you receive your information
from just one source, knowing that there is two sides to every controversy, how can
anyone come to be a honest and valid conclusion? if in a courtroom, the judges says I
want to hear from the accuser, but not the defendant ever. How is this different
it's one-sided? So, I'm reading the book.
By that token, should you not also read Erwin & Valentine?
Meyer lists 36 phyla, of which 27 are known from fossils, 9 not.
Of the ones known from fossils:
3 are modern phyla from the pre-Cambrian: Porifera for sure, Mollusca
and Cnidaria probably;
4 are modern phyla with first known fossils from well after the Cambrian. >>
The remaining 20 are known first from the Cambrian, but three are
extinct. There is a fourth
about which there was some controversy at the time the book was
written of whether
it is a separate phylum or a subphylum of Mollusca.
Thanks for this!
Note that "the Cambrian" is not the same thing as "the Cambrian explosion".
I'm at my office, so I can't be much more detailed until I get home.I read about this, they are really mysterious. Not much is known
Harshman might have a list from the Erwin and Valentine book that may
give slightly different numbers.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
There may be an exception or two among the "small shellies," but
they are too fragmentary to bear the load of 20 phyla.
about them. But they became extinct without any known decedents.
Neither of these things is true.
Many of the small shellies can be
identified as relatives of taxa that appear as whole-body fossils later
on. They contain both stem-lophotrochozoans and stem-ecdysozoans.
This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex >>> animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive >>> erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial >>> subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Trivia: this was published two years to the day (!) before you cited
it in your post.
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no >>>>> fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these >>>>> 30+
distinct modern phyla.
That's a slight exaggeration, but by using the word "intermediates"
rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
On 8/3/23 9:24 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 18:33:53 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/1/23 1:58 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>>>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also, >>>>>>> those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>>>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >>>>>>> religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>>>>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs >>>>>> themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do >>>>>> you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >>>>> up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that >>>>> homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >>>>> denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not >>>>> be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of >>>>> Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>>>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >>>>>>> claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it? >>>>
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
Nor have I met a pedophile priest, but I have personally met at least
two people who have met (and been victimized) by one. I have never met
anyone who mentioned meeting a eugenecist.
More to the point, pedophile priests are not the only, and arguably not
the worst, problem spread by religion. As I said, religion is strongly
promoting hatred of homosexuals here in the US, a situation I hear about >>> almost daily. And Christian Nationalism also promotes racism and is a
major component of the January 6 insurrection.
What's even worse than that are all the religious people who see the
same things and don't loudly and constantly complain about it, who in
fact often don't complain at all. If it weren't for those people, I
could say that that the problem is not religion in general, but only
certain religions (albeit a sizeable minority). But then there are all
those people who seem to want to give it a pass because it is Christian, >>> and they implicitly make the problems a part of Christianity, or perhaps >>> all religion, in general. If one can't criticize a religion which one
is a part of, it is morally imperative to quit that religion.
I've covered most of the above in a response to Bill Rogers just a
short while ago and there's no point in repeating it here. In regard
to your final point, however, about not being able to criticize a
religion which one is a part, that is certainly not the case in the
Catholic Church nowadays.
And if the Catholic church nowadays was the only example of religion, I
would not have made my final point. Unfortunately, there are many other churches which see nothing wrong and everything right about preaching
how evil all those other people are (anyone outside their church,
especially minorities ripe for scapegoating). And I remember stories
from the days of Paul VI and John Paul II where accusations against
priests were met with, "Hush! You don't criticize the Church", not from
the pulpit, but from friends and relatives.
I applaud leaders such as Pope Francis. Still, my impression is that
Francis is an outlier in the centuries-long roll call of popes. I hope
he is able to achieve the substantial structural reform of the church necessary to continue such a trend.
On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 18:33:53 -0700, Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/1/23 1:58 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also, >>>>>> those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >>>>>> religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>>>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do >>>>> you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >>>> up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that
homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >>>> denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not >>>> be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of
Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >>>>>> claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside >>>>>> this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it? >>>
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
Nor have I met a pedophile priest, but I have personally met at least
two people who have met (and been victimized) by one. I have never met
anyone who mentioned meeting a eugenecist.
More to the point, pedophile priests are not the only, and arguably not
the worst, problem spread by religion. As I said, religion is strongly
promoting hatred of homosexuals here in the US, a situation I hear about
almost daily. And Christian Nationalism also promotes racism and is a
major component of the January 6 insurrection.
What's even worse than that are all the religious people who see the
same things and don't loudly and constantly complain about it, who in
fact often don't complain at all. If it weren't for those people, I
could say that that the problem is not religion in general, but only
certain religions (albeit a sizeable minority). But then there are all
those people who seem to want to give it a pass because it is Christian,
and they implicitly make the problems a part of Christianity, or perhaps
all religion, in general. If one can't criticize a religion which one
is a part of, it is morally imperative to quit that religion.
I've covered most of the above in a response to Bill Rogers just a
short while ago and there's no point in repeating it here. In regard
to your final point, however, about not being able to criticize a
religion which one is a part, that is certainly not the case in the
Catholic Church nowadays.
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Bill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific >>>> literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation, as the following excerpt
from
the article you linked shows:
"Disparity is the diversity of animal forms or body plans, which can
be measured by use of Linnaean ranks and a variety of quantitative
approaches (Erwin 2007). Each body plan or a high-rank clade, e.g., a
phylum, has a set of distinctive features. It has long been recognized
that in no case is a morphological continuum found across a broad
range of body plan morphologies nor do phyla resemble each other more
closely during their early fossil histories (Valentine 2004). Simply
there are morphological gaps between phyla. By analyzing the timing of
appearance of Linnaean rank taxa in the fossil record, paleontologists
realized that the limits on animal disparity were early in animal
evolutionary history (e.g., Erwin et al. 1987).
"By the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna, Gould (1989: fig.
3.72) suggested a pattern of rapid, maximal disparity in the early
history followed by later removal of most groups (stem groups) by
extinction that leaves large morphological gaps among high-rank
clades. This pattern is applicable to high-rank clades and metazoans
as a whole. Particularly, he argued that that the morphological
disparity of arthropods at a single locality (Burgess Shale) surpassed
all extant arthropods, which inspired considerable efforts to
understand disparity.
"Subsequent quantitative studies have shown that most clades achieved
their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during a short time
interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record in the
early Cambrian (see a review in Erwin 2007; Hughes et al. 2013). A
more recent study by mapping of fossil and living metazoan morphospace
demonstrated that the majority of phylum-level clades achieved maximal
initial disparity in the Cambrian and that the overall disparity was
already very broad in the early history of animal evolution, although
the envelope of disparity explored by the Metazoa has increased
through geological time (Deline et al. 2018). It is worth mentioning
that new discoveries of weird forms in Cambrian deposits would
increase the morphological breadth of Cambrian animals (e.g., Zeng et
al. 2020)."
Quite a bit of what I read is a bit confusing. I am not a biologist IYou should simply know that disparity within a phylum is not at all the
took a class in high
school, But some of the experiments sickened me, I decided I wanted nothing more
in this. I became an electrical engineer.
same thing as difference between phyla. So if you're interested in the second, the first is irrelevant.
I've put in two paragraph breaks. The middle paragraph especially puts
the lie to what Bill Rogers wrote, with:
"later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves
large morphological gaps among high-rank clades."
There is something that just came to me, that I've never read or heard discussed.
And that pertains to the origin of organs and body parts. The human body has
numerous organs that's essential to life, such as the heart, kidneys, liver,
stomach, lungs and many more and the human body. Like the eye, it's theorized that a spot of skin mutates and over vast spans of time and many random mutations and natural selection the eye we see out of
evolved.
There is up to 100 organs and body parts and maybe more. In a depiction
of evolution from a Cambrian organism to a worm, to a fish to an ape to up to a man. It occurred to me that
while the physical shape is undergoing change through random mutations and natural selection, it doesn't take much imagination to comprehend this. But
random mutations in each of the organs and body parts are a bit more difficult to imagine. For example:
A fish's organs and body parts and a mans are remarkable different. So, if the 2 chambered heart of a fish and our predecessors, over time gets countless
beneficial gene changes, unless there is corresponding beneficial gene change in each of the other organs, the heart and the bodies cannot function
and our lineage fails.
So, does evolution in each organ and body part
change in
a sequential order, or do they change in a cooperative and parallel evolution.
How does this happen?
Gradually. A change in one system makes a change in another
advantageous, so when one comes along it gets selected. In this way different organs co-evolve by small steps. For most of this, modern organisms are the data we have, because organs tend not to make good fossils. Still, there are plenty of intermediates between fish hearts
and mammal hearts. I presume you know of various amphibians and
reptiles, not to mention lungfish.
Since beneficial mutations are rare, each organ and each body part has
to, in a
sequence have corresponding countless and interlinking beneficial mutations.
Or there must must somehow be a cooperative and parallel evolution of each
organ and body part.
What is it that organizes and controls the required order, dependency
and interlinking
parts of each of the heart, lungs liver and other body parts during the evolution of each
body part and organ?
Natural selection. Why not?
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:This is my second reply to this post. The concluding reply will come
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
either tomorrow or early next week.
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
This is my second and final reply to your post here, Ron.I hesitated to buy Meyer book, for this reason
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>>>
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate,
purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting >>>>>>> up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian
<snip of things covered in first reply>
where vast numbers
of multicellular animal fossils are found in the strata. Almost all of >>>>>>> modern phyla are represented in fossils at this period of time, with >>>>>>> only a very few appearing later
... in the fossil record. Harshman didn't cut you any slack on this >>>>>> one.
I looked at Stephen Meyer's breakdown of phyla, and you aren't quite
as far off
as I thought you were.
A problem I often run into, and not to doubt others, do too, when
trying to make
a point this charge quickly occurs, "you got this from a fundamentalist >>> site", or this
is not from a reliable source. But it occurs to me that if you receive >>> your information
from just one source, knowing that there is two sides to every
controversy, how can
anyone come to be a honest and valid conclusion? if in a courtroom, the
judges says I
want to hear from the accuser, but not the defendant ever. How is this
different
it's one-sided? So, I'm reading the book.
By that token, should you not also read Erwin & Valentine?
Why, does it include the information about *Vernanimalcula* that
I gave your ardent fan Burkhard in the post I did less than half an hour ago?
For that matter, does it give any information on highly divergent ideas between professional specialists on which fossils are bilaterians and which are not?
Recall, for instance, how *Kimberella* was thought to be a cnidarian for quite a few years.
Meyer lists 36 phyla, of which 27 are known from fossils, 9 not.Thanks for this!
Of the ones known from fossils:
3 are modern phyla from the pre-Cambrian: Porifera for sure, Mollusca
and Cnidaria probably;
4 are modern phyla with first known fossils from well after the Cambrian. >>>>
The remaining 20 are known first from the Cambrian, but three are
extinct. There is a fourth
about which there was some controversy at the time the book was
written of whether
it is a separate phylum or a subphylum of Mollusca.
Note that "the Cambrian" is not the same thing as "the Cambrian explosion".
If he has read far enough, Ron can tell you about "the main pulse of the Cambrian
explosion," and how one researcher identified 16 new phyla in ca. 5 mya, while Erwin et al found 13 in a slightly different time period of ca. 6 mya. The information can be looked up on p. 73 of the book.
I'm at my office, so I can't be much more detailed until I get home.I read about this, they are really mysterious. Not much is known
Harshman might have a list from the Erwin and Valentine book that may
give slightly different numbers.
I know, but I'm unconvinced that that there is any reasonable
evolutionary pathway
back into the [first part of the] early Cambrian or the Ediacaran.
There may be an exception or two among the "small shellies," but
they are too fragmentary to bear the load of 20 phyla.
about them. But they became extinct without any known decedents.
Neither of these things is true.
I'll believe this when you give documentation, so we
can see what you are equivocating about below,
including the weasel word "Many".
Many of the small shellies can be
identified as relatives of taxa that appear as whole-body fossils later
on. They contain both stem-lophotrochozoans and stem-ecdysozoans.
You don't bother to give a single alleged genus. Were Burkhard not your admirer,
he might ask you to give one or more of them, along with documentation.
Were he as ill-disposed towards you as he has been towards Ron Dean ...
well, I'll let you do the extrapolation.
This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.I've recall the reasons
given of the virtual absence of ancestors of the Cambrian complex
animals, low oxygen, the environment wasn't conducive for highly complex >>>>> animals bodies. I've read ice sheets that covered the globe so massive >>>>> erosion occurred with the melting. I think this is a very controversial >>>>> subject.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12542-021-00568-5>
Trivia: this was published two years to the day (!) before you cited
it in your post.
These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no >>>>>>> fossil
paths or intermediates leading back to the common ancestor of these >>>>>>> 30+
distinct modern phyla.
That's a slight exaggeration, but by using the word "intermediates"
rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost >>>> all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
That depends completely on the picture you want to convey.
The one you tried to convey in your last reply on the "Szostak on abiogesis" thread has nothing to do with what Ron seems to be trying to convey
with "fossil paths."
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other?"
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
On 8/3/23 9:24 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 18:33:53 -0700, Mark Isaak
More to the point, pedophile priests are not the only, and arguably not >> the worst, problem spread by religion. As I said, religion is strongly
promoting hatred of homosexuals here in the US, a situation I hear about >> almost daily. And Christian Nationalism also promotes racism and is a
major component of the January 6 insurrection.
What's even worse than that are all the religious people who see the
same things and don't loudly and constantly complain about it, who in
fact often don't complain at all. If it weren't for those people, I
could say that that the problem is not religion in general, but only
certain religions (albeit a sizeable minority). But then there are all
those people who seem to want to give it a pass because it is Christian, >> and they implicitly make the problems a part of Christianity, or perhaps >> all religion, in general. If one can't criticize a religion which one
is a part of, it is morally imperative to quit that religion.
I've covered most of the above in a response to Bill Rogers just a
short while ago and there's no point in repeating it here. In regard
to your final point, however, about not being able to criticize a
religion which one is a part, that is certainly not the case in the Catholic Church nowadays.
And if the Catholic church nowadays was the only example of religion, I would not have made my final point. Unfortunately, there are many other churches which see nothing wrong and everything right about preaching
how evil all those other people are (anyone outside their church,
especially minorities ripe for scapegoating). And I remember stories
from the days of Paul VI and John Paul II where accusations against
priests were met with, "Hush! You don't criticize the Church", not from
the pulpit, but from friends and relatives.
I applaud leaders such as Pope Francis. Still, my impression is that
Francis is an outlier in the centuries-long roll call of popes. I hope
he is able to achieve the substantial structural reform of the church necessary to continue such a trend.
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This is my second reply to this post. The concluding reply will come
either tomorrow or early next week.
Bill Rogers claimed that you had been given links to the scientific >>>>>> literature
"describing just such fossils" but that was a blatant equivocation.
In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation, as the following excerpt
from
the article you linked shows:
"Disparity is the diversity of animal forms or body plans, which can
be measured by use of Linnaean ranks and a variety of quantitative
approaches (Erwin 2007). Each body plan or a high-rank clade, e.g., a
phylum, has a set of distinctive features. It has long been recognized >>>> that in no case is a morphological continuum found across a broad
range of body plan morphologies nor do phyla resemble each other more
closely during their early fossil histories (Valentine 2004). Simply
there are morphological gaps between phyla. By analyzing the timing of >>>> appearance of Linnaean rank taxa in the fossil record, paleontologists >>>> realized that the limits on animal disparity were early in animal
evolutionary history (e.g., Erwin et al. 1987).
"By the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna, Gould (1989: fig. >>>> 3.72) suggested a pattern of rapid, maximal disparity in the early
history followed by later removal of most groups (stem groups) by
extinction that leaves large morphological gaps among high-rank
clades. This pattern is applicable to high-rank clades and metazoans
as a whole. Particularly, he argued that that the morphological
disparity of arthropods at a single locality (Burgess Shale) surpassed >>>> all extant arthropods, which inspired considerable efforts to
understand disparity.
John, the word "disparity" and the way it is used here reminds me:
you seemed to be profoundly ignorant of studies comparing
various morphospaces of taxa on that Szostak thread.
In a thread from which you have have been mysteriously missing,
I quote from an abstract in my first post. You might find it to be a good starting point for dispelling your ignorance. The title of that thread is:
"On the origin of Ediacaran fauna"
I thought this issue was one of your big interests. Looks like I was wrong.
"Subsequent quantitative studies have shown that most clades achieved
their maximal disparity (or morphological breadth) during a short time >>>> interval close to their first appearance in the fossil record in the
early Cambrian (see a review in Erwin 2007; Hughes et al. 2013). A
more recent study by mapping of fossil and living metazoan morphospace >>>> demonstrated that the majority of phylum-level clades achieved maximal >>>> initial disparity in the Cambrian and that the overall disparity was
already very broad in the early history of animal evolution, although
the envelope of disparity explored by the Metazoa has increased
through geological time (Deline et al. 2018). It is worth mentioning
that new discoveries of weird forms in Cambrian deposits would
increase the morphological breadth of Cambrian animals (e.g., Zeng et
al. 2020)."
The above paragraph contains numerous reminders about the concept of morphospace. You dig?
Quite a bit of what I read is a bit confusing. I am not a biologist IYou should simply know that disparity within a phylum is not at all the
took a class in high
school, But some of the experiments sickened me, I decided I wanted
nothing more
in this. I became an electrical engineer.
same thing as difference between phyla. So if you're interested in the
second, the first is irrelevant.
I've put in two paragraph breaks. The middle paragraph especially puts >>>> the lie to what Bill Rogers wrote, with:There is something that just came to me, that I've never read or heard
"later removal of most groups (stem groups) by extinction that leaves
large morphological gaps among high-rank clades."
discussed.
And that pertains to the origin of organs and body parts. The human body >>> has
numerous organs that's essential to life, such as the heart, kidneys,
liver,
stomach, lungs and many more and the human body. Like the eye, it's
theorized that a spot of skin mutates and over vast spans of time and many >>> random mutations and natural selection the eye we see out of
evolved.
There is up to 100 organs and body parts and maybe more. In a depiction
of evolution from a Cambrian organism to a worm, to a fish to an ape to up >>> to a man. It occurred to me that
while the physical shape is undergoing change through random mutations and >>> natural selection, it doesn't take much imagination to comprehend this. But >>> random mutations in each of the organs and body parts are a bit more
difficult to imagine. For example:
A fish's organs and body parts and a mans are remarkable different. So, >>> if the 2 chambered heart of a fish and our predecessors, over time gets
countless
beneficial gene changes, unless there is corresponding beneficial gene >>> change in each of the other organs, the heart and the bodies cannot
function
and our lineage fails.
Ron seems to be thinking of the concept of irreducible complexity here.
The organs he describes are so tremendously far from being irreducibly complex,
that I wonder where he got the idea of our lineage failing with their evolution.
So, does evolution in each organ and body part
change in
a sequential order, or do they change in a cooperative and parallel
evolution.
How does this happen?
Your answer is elementary, but absolutely accurate as far as it goes.
Gradually. A change in one system makes a change in another
advantageous, so when one comes along it gets selected. In this way
different organs co-evolve by small steps. For most of this, modern
organisms are the data we have, because organs tend not to make good
fossils. Still, there are plenty of intermediates between fish hearts
and mammal hearts. I presume you know of various amphibians and
reptiles, not to mention lungfish.
Since beneficial mutations are rare, each organ and each body part has
to, in a
sequence have corresponding countless and interlinking beneficial
mutations.
Or there must must somehow be a cooperative and parallel evolution of each >>> organ and body part.
What is it that organizes and controls the required order, dependency
and interlinking
parts of each of the heart, lungs liver and other body parts during the
evolution of each
body part and organ?
Natural selection. Why not?
Because natural selection only applies within species. You might as well try to explain everything
everyone posts here by cell-to-cell signaling within individual organs of individual participants.
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 8:51:02 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:Rather than wait, I'm taking this opportunity to announce this here.
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:This is my second reply to this post. The concluding reply will come either tomorrow or early next week.
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
If you ever pull this crap on me again, chopping up a post and replying
to it in multiple parts, I won't respond. It's an obnoxious behavior laden with self-glorification on your part. So when you feel the need to spew
your nonsense and be assured I won't bother to debunk it, go ahead and
split up your response into multiple parts. But understand that just about nobody else does what you do, and you'll be discrediting yourself.
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 8:51:02?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:This is my second reply to this post. The concluding reply will come
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39?AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
either tomorrow or early next week.
Rather than wait, I'm taking this opportunity to announce this here.
If you ever pull this crap on me again, chopping up a post and replying
to it in multiple parts, I won't respond. It's an obnoxious behavior laden >with self-glorification on your part. So when you feel the need to spew
your nonsense and be assured I won't bother to debunk it, go ahead and
split up your response into multiple parts. But understand that just about >nobody else does what you do, and you'll be discrediting yourself.
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 6:26:02?PM UTC-7, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 8:51:02?PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >> > On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
Rather than wait, I'm taking this opportunity to announce this here.On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:This is my second reply to this post. The concluding reply will come
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39?AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
either tomorrow or early next week.
If you ever pull this crap on me again, chopping up a post and replying
to it in multiple parts, I won't respond. It's an obnoxious behavior laden >> with self-glorification on your part. So when you feel the need to spew
your nonsense and be assured I won't bother to debunk it, go ahead and
split up your response into multiple parts. But understand that just about >> nobody else does what you do, and you'll be discrediting yourself.
You discredit yourself. If you feel that Peter "spews nonsense" why do you read or respond at all?
And your juvenile claim about you not responding to partial replies to posts just adds more evidence of your immaturity.
On 8/3/23 9:24 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 18:33:53 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/1/23 1:58 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:28:51 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:No, I don't doubt it at all. In the same way, I, to the best of my
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
In my case, my falling away from religion was motivated by the people >>>>>>>>> who claimed to be doing hateful things in the name of religion. Mostly
this was blatant bigotry against homosexuals, other religions, atheists,
and women.
How does that differ from those who attack the ToE on the basis that >>>>>>>> some people used it to justify eugenics, claiming that shows it to be >>>>>>>> inherently evil?
Mostly because religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those >>>>>>> people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also, >>>>>>> those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of >>>>>>> their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that >>>>>>> religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>>>>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs >>>>>> themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do >>>>>> you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >>>>> up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that >>>>> homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >>>>> denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not >>>>> be priests, etc. And in their mind, those beliefs are defined by
Christian teachings. And when such things are taught from pulpits of >>>>> Christian churches, they would be right: All those things *are*
Christian teachings.
Finally, there is the scope. The people saying and doing
horrible things were (and are) common; I saw news stories almost daily >>>>>>> (like today) and met some of them in person. I have never met anyone >>>>>>> claiming evolution promotes eugenics, nor have I heard the claim outside
this newsgroup and rare creationist sources.
Are you serious?
[snip quote citing Francis Galton]
Yes, I am serious that I have never met Francis Galton. Do you doubt it? >>>>
knowledge, have never met a paedophile priest. Does that mean I can
just handwave away the issue of paedophile priests?
Nor have I met a pedophile priest, but I have personally met at least
two people who have met (and been victimized) by one. I have never met
anyone who mentioned meeting a eugenecist.
More to the point, pedophile priests are not the only, and arguably not
the worst, problem spread by religion. As I said, religion is strongly
promoting hatred of homosexuals here in the US, a situation I hear about >>> almost daily. And Christian Nationalism also promotes racism and is a
major component of the January 6 insurrection.
What's even worse than that are all the religious people who see the
same things and don't loudly and constantly complain about it, who in
fact often don't complain at all. If it weren't for those people, I
could say that that the problem is not religion in general, but only
certain religions (albeit a sizeable minority). But then there are all
those people who seem to want to give it a pass because it is Christian, >>> and they implicitly make the problems a part of Christianity, or perhaps >>> all religion, in general. If one can't criticize a religion which one
is a part of, it is morally imperative to quit that religion.
I've covered most of the above in a response to Bill Rogers just a
short while ago and there's no point in repeating it here. In regard
to your final point, however, about not being able to criticize a
religion which one is a part, that is certainly not the case in the
Catholic Church nowadays.
And if the Catholic church nowadays was the only example of religion, I >would not have made my final point. Unfortunately, there are many other >churches which see nothing wrong and everything right about preaching
how evil all those other people are (anyone outside their church,
especially minorities ripe for scapegoating). And I remember stories
from the days of Paul VI and John Paul II where accusations against
priests were met with, "Hush! You don't criticize the Church", not from
the pulpit, but from friends and relatives.
I applaud leaders such as Pope Francis. Still, my impression is that >Francis is an outlier in the centuries-long roll call of popes. I hope
he is able to achieve the substantial structural reform of the church >necessary to continue such a trend.
On 7/18/23 4:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
scientific literature describing just such fossils.And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla
links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided?
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*,
and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry independent of Bilaterians.
Namacalathus and Cloudina come to mind immediately.
Others are Cambrian
but before what Ron considers the explosion, i.e. the sudden appearance
of many fossil taxa around 520ma, in the Chengjiang fauna.
That, of course, is a taphonomic event, not an evolutionary one, but he takes the
fossil record at face value.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >> Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
It's usually considered a primitive lophotrochozoan, outside the extant phyla.
I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
If I recall correctly, the two places where *Kimberella* fossils have been found --
Australia and the White Sea -- were very distant from each other back then,
as they indeed are now. It was Austratlia where they were first found,
and for a while they were thought to be jellyfish -- whose symmetry is radial,
not bilateral!
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
At this point, Bill Rogers abruptly changed the whole topic, and so I will make a separate reply
after I get home -- it's already past my usual dinner time.
Sneak preview: you gave up WAY too easily. There were enough holes
in Bill's hackneyed "village atheist" level argument to sail a battleship through.
Everybody loves your little hints about how very clever and
knowledgeable you will be shown to be, and of course how very stupid and ignorant others will.
I've gotten badly sidetracked from this thread for a long time, and now I am starting toscientific literature describing just such fossils.
tie up loose ends. This one was on-topic all the way until Harshman
couldn't resist putting his foot in his mouth at the end--but only the end.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/18/23 4:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided? >>>
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology. >>>>>> So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the
meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*,
and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry >>> independent of Bilaterians.
Note the distinction here, John. I said it was the only bilateral Precambrian animal
of which I know, and your two examples do not qualify.
Namacalathus and Cloudina come to mind immediately.
What we have of Cloudina has radial symmetry, unless internal organs have been found since the article I saw on it.
Namacalathus has hexaradial symmetry in the most authoritative source
I could find; I believe it was you who called it to my attention last year.
Now, of course, these could be secondarily radial, like echinoderms,
but the membership in Bilateria needs additional evidence.
The article on Namacalathus cited a cladistic analysis using
numerous lophotrochozoans, and (surprise! surprise!) it found it
to be a stem lophotrochozoan.
I'm sure you will agree that this is NOT evidence of being a primitive lophotrochozoan.
Others are Cambrian
but before what Ron considers the explosion, i.e. the sudden appearance
of many fossil taxa around 520ma, in the Chengjiang fauna.
Can you name some examples?
That, of course, is a taphonomic event, not an evolutionary one, but he takes the
fossil record at face value.
There's an old Army saying, "We go with what we got."
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes and thus to the modern phyla descended from them, it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >>>> Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
It's usually considered a primitive lophotrochozoan, outside the extant
phyla.
I'd like to know some evidence for this.
I knew there were a few phyla after the Cambrian Explosion.
My only question is where were they first found.
In my searches I was unable to learn the answer to this.
If I recall correctly, the two places where *Kimberella* fossils have been found --
Australia and the White Sea -- were very distant from each other back then, >>> as they indeed are now. It was Austratlia where they were first found,
and for a while they were thought to be jellyfish -- whose symmetry is radial,
not bilateral!
What do find incorrect about the arguments for the paucity of fossils from >500 million years ago? Especially considering the sorts of organisms we are talking about.
At this point, Bill Rogers abruptly changed the whole topic, and so I will make a separate reply
after I get home -- it's already past my usual dinner time.
Sneak preview: you gave up WAY too easily. There were enough holes
in Bill's hackneyed "village atheist" level argument to sail a battleship through.
Everybody loves your little hints about how very clever and
knowledgeable you will be shown to be, and of course how very stupid and
ignorant others will.
Gratuitous, unsupported insult noted, while counting your chickens before they were hatched.
Once they did get hatched, you had nothing to say, because it turned out that they were
neither your chickens nor Bill's. I made a gift of them to Ron. Here is the data:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/gHNBS3R_BQAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
Jul 18, 2023, 9:25:44 PM
Note, *exactly* two hours after you made your gratuitous insult.
On 8/7/23 6:00 PM, [email protected] wrote:scientific literature describing just such fossils.
I've gotten badly sidetracked from this thread for a long time, and now I am starting to
tie up loose ends. This one was on-topic all the way until Harshman couldn't resist putting his foot in his mouth at the end--but only the end.
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/18/23 4:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>> [email protected] wrote:
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the
30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided? >>>
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit
due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back
this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered
is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify
as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*, >>> and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry >>> independent of Bilaterians.
Note the distinction here, John. I said it was the only bilateral Precambrian animal
of which I know, and your two examples do not qualify.
Glad to aid in your education.
Namacalathus and Cloudina come to mind immediately.
What we have of Cloudina has radial symmetry, unless internal organs have been found since the article I saw on it.
Cloudina is a skeleton or shell. The structure of the shell suggests
that it's a bilaterian.
And recent fossils showing the gut reinforce
that: Schiffbauer, James D. et al. 2020. Discovery of bilaterian-type through-guts in cloudinomorphs from the terminal Ediacaran Period.
Nature Communications. 11:205
Namacalathus has hexaradial symmetry in the most authoritative source
I could find; I believe it was you who called it to my attention last year.
Dunno about that source, as I don't recall talking about it with you.
But here's a good article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4650157/
It's not the one I was thinking of, but I can't currently locate that one.
Now, of course, these could be secondarily radial, like echinoderms,
but the membership in Bilateria needs additional evidence.
The article on Namacalathus cited a cladistic analysis using
numerous lophotrochozoans, and (surprise! surprise!) it found it
to be a stem lophotrochozoan.
I'm sure you will agree that this is NOT evidence of being a primitive lophotrochozoan.
You are sure in error, I suppose,
though I would have to see the
analysis. What are you talking about?
Others are Cambrian
but before what Ron considers the explosion, i.e. the sudden appearance >> of many fossil taxa around 520ma, in the Chengjiang fauna.
Can you name some examples?
Trivially, tommotiids and halkieriids, plus other small shellies. There
are also a number of ichnofossils that are clearly bilaterian, and some would appear to be arthropod trails.
That, of course, is a taphonomic event, not an evolutionary one, but he takes the
fossil record at face value.
There's an old Army saying, "We go with what we got."
Surely you aren't that naive about taphonomy.
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes
and thus to the modern phyla descended from them,
it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the
Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
It's usually considered a primitive lophotrochozoan, outside the extant >> phyla.
I'd like to know some evidence for this.
The Wikipedia article on Kimberella, under Classification, gives a
number of sources.
The evidence shows that Kimberella had an organ
somewhat like a radula in general action but differing in ways that
exclude it from the crown group.
It could of course be a stem-mollusk,
but the various other Early Cambrian fossils of roughly similar nature
(such as the aforementioned tommotiids and halkieriids) are considered stem-lophotrochozoans.
On Monday, August 7, 2023 at 9:46:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:scientific literature describing just such fossils.
On 8/7/23 6:00 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I've gotten badly sidetracked from this thread for a long time, and now I am starting to
tie up loose ends. This one was on-topic all the way until Harshman
couldn't resist putting his foot in his mouth at the end--but only the end. >>>
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/18/23 4:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> [email protected] wrote:
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided? >>>>>
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>>>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*, >>>>> and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry >>>>> independent of Bilaterians.
Note the distinction here, John. I said it was the only bilateral Precambrian animal
of which I know, and your two examples do not qualify.
Glad to aid in your education.
Come off your Altihippus, John.
Namacalathus and Cloudina come to mind immediately.
What we have of Cloudina has radial symmetry, unless internal organs have >>> been found since the article I saw on it.
Cloudina is a skeleton or shell. The structure of the shell suggests
that it's a bilaterian.
HUH???
Find me a picture of the *shell* that does not have radial symmetry.
The following is on a completely different issue:structures may be most appropriately interpreted as digestive tracts, which would be, to date, the earliest-known occurrence of such features in the fossil record."
And recent fossils showing the gut reinforce
that: Schiffbauer, James D. et al. 2020. Discovery of bilaterian-type
through-guts in cloudinomorphs from the terminal Ediacaran Period.
Nature Communications. 11:205
Very weak and tentative, judging from the abstract:
"Here, using tomographic analyses of fossils from the Wood Canyon Formation (Nevada, USA), we report evidence of recognizable soft tissues within their external tubes. Although alternative interpretations are plausible, these internal cylindrical
No mention of *Kimberella* [555 to 558 Ma] anywhere in the long paper.
Unless this "earliest-known" is an oversight, [for cloudinomorphs, the article gives 550–539 Ma]
this casts doubt on *Kimberella* being in Bilateria. Known from over 1000 fossils in all stages
of development, and none hinting at a gut? The abstract continues:
"If this interpretation is correct, their nature as one-way through-guts not only provides evidence for establishing these fossils as definitive bilaterians but also has implications for the long-debated phylogenetic position of the broadercloudinomorphs.
Namacalathus has hexaradial symmetry in the most authoritative source
I could find; I believe it was you who called it to my attention last year.
Dunno about that source, as I don't recall talking about it with you.
But here's a good article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4650157/
There are 7 (seven) mentions of hexaradial symmetry in this one.
It's not the one I was thinking of, but I can't currently locate that one.
Looks like we are both in the same boat here. See below.
Now, of course, these could be secondarily radial, like echinoderms,
but the membership in Bilateria needs additional evidence.
The article on Namacalathus cited a cladistic analysis using
numerous lophotrochozoans, and (surprise! surprise!) it found it
to be a stem lophotrochozoan.
I'm sure you will agree that this is NOT evidence of being a primitive lophotrochozoan.
You are sure in error, I suppose,
though I would have to see the
analysis. What are you talking about?
I distinctly remember an analysis like the above, but it is not in this article.
My bad [and "same boat"].
Others are Cambrian
but before what Ron considers the explosion, i.e. the sudden appearance >>>> of many fossil taxa around 520ma, in the Chengjiang fauna.
Can you name some examples?
Trivially, tommotiids and halkieriids, plus other small shellies. There
are also a number of ichnofossils that are clearly bilaterian, and some
would appear to be arthropod trails.
Affinities wrt recognized phyla are obscure or contested, no? Just as with Cloudinia,
Namacalathus, and Kimberella. Ron Dean was looking for evolutionary paths connecting such things to existing phyla.
That, of course, is a taphonomic event, not an evolutionary one, but he takes the
fossil record at face value.
There's an old Army saying, "We go with what we got."
Surely you aren't that naive about taphonomy.
No, but Ron may be. I hope he hasn't gone on another one of his long absences.
[Bill Rogers wrote:]
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes
"descendants" is a category mistake. Even in Linnean taxonomy, Deuterostomia and Protostomia
are *subtaxa* of Bilateria.
You, of course, made no attempt to inform Bill Rogers about this,
and since he has killfiled me, I expect him to go on making category mistakes as bad as any that Ron Dean has made.
and thus to the modern phyla descended from them,
Another category mistake, violating the ideology that one should never claim that
any extinct organism is descended from any other extinct organism.
it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
Here Bill used the ambiguous word "precursors", making his whole point obscure.
By now, John, you may be itching to deliver a mean-spirited sarcastic put-down
like the one you delivered further down in your preceding post:
"Everybody loves your little hints about how very clever and knowledgeable you will be shown to be, and of course how very stupid and ignorant others will."
The main difference is that I am showing how incompetent Bill is here, instead of
CORRECTLY saying I would show it.
I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >>>>>> Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
It's usually considered a primitive lophotrochozoan, outside the extant >>>> phyla.
I'd like to know some evidence for this.
The Wikipedia article on Kimberella, under Classification, gives a
number of sources.
Did you find a good one? The webpage itself is not very helpful;
the devil is in the details.
organism, not pushed away as in molluscs, and that the maximum impact on the sediment was when the mouthpart was furthest from the organism.[20] The direction of grazing is also backwards, as opposed to forwards as in molluscs.[20] Furthermore, theThe evidence shows that Kimberella had an organ
somewhat like a radula in general action but differing in ways that
exclude it from the crown group.
Very different, and "in action" is to be contrasted with "in anatomy": apparently the extensive scratch marks haven't provided any real
clues as to anatomy. And the generic word "different" is a lot less
helpful than the details:
"Kimberella′s feeding apparatus appears to differ significantly from the typical mollusc radula, and this demonstrates that Kimberella is at best a stem-group mollusc.[19] Notably, the scratch marks indicate that the 'teeth' were dragged towards the
> It could of course be a stem-mollusk,
Or a stem-lophotrochozoan, or a stem-protostome, or a stem-bilaterian,
or NotA.
but the various other Early Cambrian fossils of roughly similar nature
(such as the aforementioned tommotiids and halkieriids) are considered
stem-lophotrochozoans.
Hence my comment about uncertain relationships to recognized phyla.
On Monday, August 7, 2023 at 9:46:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:scientific literature describing just such fossils.
On 8/7/23 6:00 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I've gotten badly sidetracked from this thread for a long time, and now I am starting to
tie up loose ends. This one was on-topic all the way until Harshman
couldn't resist putting his foot in his mouth at the end--but only the end. >>>
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 7:25:44 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/18/23 4:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023 at 5:15:44 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 8:05:40 PM UTC-4, Ron Dean wrote: >>>>>>>> [email protected] wrote:
And you keep saying that "These modern phyla appeared abruptly in the fossil record with no fossil paths of intermediate leading back to the common ancestor of these 30+ modern phyla" even though I and others have given you links to the
structures may be most appropriately interpreted as digestive tracts, which would be, to date, the earliest-known occurrence of such features in the fossil record."
As I have said repeatedly, I think Bill is bluffing here.
And he does nothing below to dispel this impression.
I've read every cite that I saw, I have seen nothing that provides the >>>>>>>> 30+ paths back to a common ancestor or any fraction of these phyla >>>>>>>> links going back to a common ancestor.
What was wrong with the links with which Bill alleges you were provided? >>>>>
But. I have read numerous
arguments explaining why the poverty of predecessors. And I will admit >>>>>>>> due to the length of some articles and time I did not read the entire >>>>>>>> article. Another problem I have is that my education was not in biology.
So, I do not understand everything with 100% certainity as to the >>>>>>>> meaning. If there is something the you think provides the linkage back >>>>>>>> this common ancestor, please provide actual quotes and references. >>>>>>>>>
It is positively bizarre that you keep repeated things that you should, by now, know to be false, especially since the actual truth provides no reason at all not to believe in a designer if you want to.I disagree, I do not _know_ that everything or anything you've offered >>>>>>>> is _truth_. Opinion, suppositions, hypothesis, theories do not qualify >>>>>>>> as irrefutable truth. Nothing is beyond challenge.
The articles I linked to showed you examples of bilaterians occurring before the Cambrian, whereas you had repeatedly claimed that they appeared only during the Cambrian explosion.
Do you know what articles Bill Rogers is talking about here?
The only bilateral Precambrian animal of which I know is *Kimberella*, >>>>> and what Bill says above and below, applied to it, would indeed be true *IF* it is
a true bilaterian and not some animal that attained a bilateral symmetry >>>>> independent of Bilaterians.
Note the distinction here, John. I said it was the only bilateral Precambrian animal
of which I know, and your two examples do not qualify.
Glad to aid in your education.
Come off your Altihippus, John.
Namacalathus and Cloudina come to mind immediately.
What we have of Cloudina has radial symmetry, unless internal organs have >>> been found since the article I saw on it.
Cloudina is a skeleton or shell. The structure of the shell suggests
that it's a bilaterian.
HUH???
Find me a picture of the *shell* that does not have radial symmetry.
The following is on a completely different issue:
And recent fossils showing the gut reinforce
that: Schiffbauer, James D. et al. 2020. Discovery of bilaterian-type
through-guts in cloudinomorphs from the terminal Ediacaran Period.
Nature Communications. 11:205
Very weak and tentative, judging from the abstract:
"Here, using tomographic analyses of fossils from the Wood Canyon Formation (Nevada, USA), we report evidence of recognizable soft tissues within their external tubes. Although alternative interpretations are plausible, these internal cylindrical
No mention of *Kimberella* [555 to 558 Ma] anywhere in the long paper.cloudinomorphs.
Unless this "earliest-known" is an oversight, [for cloudinomorphs, the article gives 550–539 Ma]
this casts doubt on *Kimberella* being in Bilateria. Known from over 1000 fossils in all stages
of development, and none hinting at a gut? The abstract continues:
"If this interpretation is correct, their nature as one-way through-guts not only provides evidence for establishing these fossils as definitive bilaterians but also has implications for the long-debated phylogenetic position of the broader
Namacalathus has hexaradial symmetry in the most authoritative source
I could find; I believe it was you who called it to my attention last year.
Dunno about that source, as I don't recall talking about it with you.
But here's a good article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4650157/
There are 7 (seven) mentions of hexaradial symmetry in this one.
It's not the one I was thinking of, but I can't currently locate that one.
Looks like we are both in the same boat here. See below.
Now, of course, these could be secondarily radial, like echinoderms,
but the membership in Bilateria needs additional evidence.
The article on Namacalathus cited a cladistic analysis using
numerous lophotrochozoans, and (surprise! surprise!) it found it
to be a stem lophotrochozoan.
I'm sure you will agree that this is NOT evidence of being a primitive lophotrochozoan.
You are sure in error, I suppose,
though I would have to see the
analysis. What are you talking about?
I distinctly remember an analysis like the above, but it is not in this article.
My bad [and "same boat"].
Others are Cambrian
but before what Ron considers the explosion, i.e. the sudden appearance >>>> of many fossil taxa around 520ma, in the Chengjiang fauna.
Can you name some examples?
Trivially, tommotiids and halkieriids, plus other small shellies. There
are also a number of ichnofossils that are clearly bilaterian, and some
would appear to be arthropod trails.
Affinities wrt recognized phyla are obscure or contested, no? Just as with Cloudinia,
Namacalathus, and Kimberella. Ron Dean was looking for evolutionary paths connecting such things to existing phyla.
That, of course, is a taphonomic event, not an evolutionary one, but he takes the
fossil record at face value.
There's an old Army saying, "We go with what we got."
Surely you aren't that naive about taphonomy.
No, but Ron may be. I hope he hasn't gone on another one of his long absences.
[Bill Rogers wrote:]
Since bilaterians are clearly related to descendants like deuterostomes and protostomes
"descendants" is a category mistake. Even in Linnean taxonomy, Deuterostomia and Protostomia
are *subtaxa* of Bilateria.
You, of course, made no attempt to inform Bill Rogers about this,
and since he has killfiled me, I expect him to go on making category mistakes as bad as any that Ron Dean has made.
and thus to the modern phyla descended from them,
Another category mistake, violating the ideology that one should never claim that
any extinct organism is descended from any other extinct organism.
it is incorrect to claim that most or all of the modern phyla appear in the Cambrian without precursors.
Here Bill used the ambiguous word "precursors", making his whole point obscure.
By now, John, you may be itching to deliver a mean-spirited sarcastic put-downorganism, not pushed away as in molluscs, and that the maximum impact on the sediment was when the mouthpart was furthest from the organism.[20] The direction of grazing is also backwards, as opposed to forwards as in molluscs.[20] Furthermore, the
like the one you delivered further down in your preceding post:
"Everybody loves your little hints about how very clever and knowledgeable you will be shown to be, and of course how very stupid and ignorant others will."
The main difference is that I am showing how incompetent Bill is here, instead of
CORRECTLY saying I would show it.
I think I was wrong about this. These phyla apparently were prior to the >>>>>> Cambrian.
Which phyla are you talking about now? Kimberella MAY be a mollusc,
but opinion on this is very divided.
It's usually considered a primitive lophotrochozoan, outside the extant >>>> phyla.
I'd like to know some evidence for this.
The Wikipedia article on Kimberella, under Classification, gives a
number of sources.
Did you find a good one? The webpage itself is not very helpful;
the devil is in the details.
The evidence shows that Kimberella had an organ
somewhat like a radula in general action but differing in ways that
exclude it from the crown group.
Very different, and "in action" is to be contrasted with "in anatomy": apparently the extensive scratch marks haven't provided any real
clues as to anatomy. And the generic word "different" is a lot less
helpful than the details:
"Kimberella′s feeding apparatus appears to differ significantly from the typical mollusc radula, and this demonstrates that Kimberella is at best a stem-group mollusc.[19] Notably, the scratch marks indicate that the 'teeth' were dragged towards the
> It could of course be a stem-mollusk,
Or a stem-lophotrochozoan, or a stem-protostome, or a stem-bilaterian,
or NotA.
but the various other Early Cambrian fossils of roughly similar nature
(such as the aforementioned tommotiids and halkieriids) are considered
stem-lophotrochozoans.
Hence my comment about uncertain relationships to recognized phyla.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of South Carolina in Columbia, SC
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On 7/20/23 3:42 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 2:45:46 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/20/23 9:12 AM, Ron Dean wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
On Friday, July 14, 2023 at 4:10:39 AM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:In a conversation with my boss, and long time friend, Rob H., I
On 7/12/23 7:59 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 5:15:37 PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote: >>>>>>> <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/score-onefor-punk-eek/ >>>>>>Okay, I was a bit careless regarding the date of the Cambrian Explosion.
For me, personally I believe there is an example of deliberate, >>>>>>> purposeful
design on a universal scale with functions designs for meeting long >>>>>>> range objectives. This involved long term planning, design and setting
up universal programs for the formation of animal body forms parts: >>>>>>> shapes organs,limbs etc.. This occurred at one brief period of time >>>>>>> (geologically) at a period called the Cambrian about 485 million years
ago and during what is called the Cambrian explosion
You need to do a bit more homework before making such comments; >>>>>> 485 million years ago was the END of the Cambrian, which began ca. >>>>>> 539 mya,
while the Cambrian explosion itself, when almost all phyla known >>>>>> from fossils
appeared, ended around 510 mya and began about 20 million years >>>>>> earlier.
I've been informer time after time after time that this did not happen >>>>> during the early Cambrian.
To be precise: the earliest of three divisions of the early Cambrian. >>>> Most of the modern phyla were done deals by the end of the third
division.
You really should buy or borrow a copy of Stephen Meyer's book, >>>>>> _Darwin's_Doubt_,
where some nice summaries of the Cambrian explosion itself can be found
and quickly read. The majority of the book is about various attempts >>>>>> to explain
the explosion without relying on intelligent design, and how they >>>>>> fall short.
mentioned Darwin's Doubt.
He had the book, so I've borrowed it.
You may want to consult various analyses of the book, including this one: >>
https://doubt848.rssing.com/chan-58294206/latest-article6.php
This from someone who jeered at what I wrote about Bill Rogers's incompetent post about God, but was unable to refute anything
I wrote about it. You twisted my criticism into (nonexistent) praise
of myself, but here you are advertising just how clever you think you were.
This is what is commonly known as "sea-lioning".
The fact that I wrote
it is hardly relevant to whether it's a useful critique.
Fact is, your "analysis" is riddled with distortions of what goes on in the book, and includes some
illogical attempts at refutation.
So you allege, but you would have to back that up with more than one example.
Further, your sole example isn't looking good.
To take just one *very short* example:
"A major claim in this chapter is the idea of “top-down” appearance: phyla appearing before families, families before species, etc. He dismisses the idea that this is an artifact of classification, but makes no real argument."
Strangely enough, Erwin and Valentine endorse this so strongly, you
may have a hard time believing they wrote it. Meyer quotes a paper by them, so you may have missed it due to it not being in their book that you've
been praising so highly. I'll give a more complete cite tomorrow; I'm still
in my office and can't access Meyer's book here.
I would be interested in a more complete explanation of what you're
talking about here. So far, there's not enough to respond to. You can't
be bothered to include a citation?
"But phyla were defined based on extant species as the broadest classifications, and so must arise earliest in the history of life, before lower-level groups that they contain."
This makes no sense whatsoever. Phyla are distinguished from each other by measures of truly major disparity. Pre-Cambrian phyla were few, not because
the species were few, but because the degree of disparity of the species did not warrant more phyla.
None of this is talking about Pre-Cambrian phyla. Meyer's discussion of phyla is all about extant ones, and that's all that's relevant.
The point is that if we have groups within groups, the most inclusive groups must occur first. Is that not true?
I think you've been so mesmerised by the slogan, "Ranks are arbitrary" that you may have a hard time wrapping your mind around what Erwin and Valentine
wrote in their paper.
Wouldn't know, until I see the paper.
One phylum, Porifera, was the lone metazoan phylum for a long time, and I would
not be surprised if it turned out that it contained many lower-level groups before any
other metazoan phyla arose. So the part beginning with "and so must arise" is essentially vacuous.
Still not relevant. The point is about phyla and their included taxa,
not about included taxa in different phyla.
There may be a coherent
point related to what you say here, but you haven't managed it yet.
their respective groups."His counter is that these early taxa all have the distinctive features of their modern relatives. Oddly enough, he frequently cites one of my favorite papers, Budd & Jensen 2000, which shows that nearly all Cambrian taxa are at best stem-members of
This doesn't undermine Meyer's counter, as long as they share the same body plan.
Being stem members means that they are closer to the crown members than are
the members, extant or extinct, of any other phylum. So "Oddly enough" is unwarranted.
"Body plan" is notoriously hard to define and to reduce to particulars.
Body plans are not unitary things, and are not assembled all at once. Do anomalocariids have the arthropod body plan? Any stem taxon must lack at least one of the features of the crown group. So where does the body
plan begin?
Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.
You say that a lot, but often you don't actually reply later.
On 7/27/23 2:03 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Speaking of outliers...
On Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 11:30:54 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 7/27/23 2:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:44:24 -0700, Mark Isaak
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/23/23 1:44 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things >>> they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live >> up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that
homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be >> denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman,
Now comes the outlier:
that women should not
be priests, etc.
Pope JPII put it this way: God has not authorized the Church to make women priests.
First, God has not authorized the Church to use printing presses,
either, yet they do.
Second, times change.
Third, I'm not talking just about Catholicism.
The reasoning is this: Jesus authorized the apostles to forgive sins,
and to turn bread and wine into his body and blood [1].
These powers have been passed on in an unbroken line to
to their successors, the bishops, and delegated by them to the priests. Such extraordinary powers cannot exist without divine authorization.
The reasoning is this: We think women aren't supposed to be priests, so
we will find excuses in tradition to prevent it from happening.
If women were duly ordained, the line would still be unbroken. Indeed,
it would become thicker and stronger, as would the church as a whole.
I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to continue it.
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:"> > > that women should not
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
--
be priests, etc"
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to continue it.
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
They are opposed to women priests and also abortion so…
On Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at 2:30:12?PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
Mark Isaak <[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
I've had my say about what Mark said, but I'll note again that
he accused the Catholic Church of things that should also
concern Martin Harran: "evil" and "human depravity," both on
account of not ordaining women priests. Martin may
also disagree with "needless sexism," but HMMV.
They are opposed to women priests and also abortion so�
You see it that way, eh? You are not alone.
Shortly after I started posting to talk.abortion in 1992,
I received an unsolicited email from one of the long-time regulars
accusing me of being a "misogynist," even though
I wanted abortion to remain legal through the 7th week LMP
[since then modified to 10th week LMP].
That gives women at least two weeks to apply a common but little talked-about >abortion procedure known euphemistically as "menstrual extraction."
It's done at a much lower vacuum energy than the usual suction procedure
in the 1st trimester. Also, of course, there is what is euphemistically >called "medical abortion" - the use of abortifacients like mifepristone
and prostaglandins.
Peter Nyikos
On Tuesday, August 22, 2023 at 10:35:11 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
You accused it of "human depravity" and "needless sexism";
"misogyny" seems to be between these two extremes, no?
See here:
________________________ repost of comments you snipped________________________
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including
needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to
continue it.
On 8/23/23 9:27 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, August 22, 2023 at 10:35:11 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
You accused it of "human depravity" and "needless sexism";
"misogyny" seems to be between these two extremes, no?
See here:
________________________ repost of comments you snipped________________________
[end of restoration]I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning: >>>>Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including >> needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to
continue it.
Note that nothing in that uncontroversial statement singles out any
single group.
I have elsewhere noted the fact that
... religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
On Thursday, August 24, 2023 at 10:05:13 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 8/23/23 9:27 AM, [email protected] wrote:
On Tuesday, August 22, 2023 at 10:35:11 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 8/21/23 6:21 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Martin Harran has overlooked the post to which I am replying,
even though Mark's accusation of misogyny by the Catholic Church
on account of denying women ordination as priests is a natural one
for Martin to address. [Martin did reply to at least one other post
by Mark on this thread afterwards, by the way.]
Anyone who would care to check out my statements can see that I did
*not* accuse the Catholic Church of misogyny.
You accused it of "human depravity" and "needless sexism";
"misogyny" seems to be between these two extremes, no?
See here:
________________________ repost of comments you snipped________________________
[unmarked deletion by you restored:]
[end of restoration]I don't know whether the following entered into JPII's reasoning:
Judaism has never had women priests either, so the Catholic Church
is following a tradition that went a thousand years further back.
Yes, one thing we learn from history is that human depravity, including >>>> needless sexism, has a very long history. That doesn't mean we need to >>>> continue it.
Note that nothing in that uncontroversial statement singles out any
single group.
Note that my restoration turns your "uncontroversial statement"
into a response acknowledging that a tradition of three thousand years is "a very long history".
Three thousand years without women priests, two thousand during the existence of Catholicism.
I have elsewhere noted the fact that
... denying the priesthood to women is "evil." I explained how you implied that below, but you snipped
the explanation. This time, I am quoting how you did it.
_________________________________________________repost, names added in brackets______________________________________
[Mark:]
... religion claims a moral authority. In particular, those
people I saw doing evil were saying that it was somehow good. Also,
those people claimed that the evils they did were an essential part of
their religion: If you don't act immorally, you can't be part of that
religion.
[Martin:]
But all of that has to do with people failing to live up to the things
they believe in, that is not necessarily a weakness in the beliefs
themselves. For example, leaving aside the existence of God, what do
you see wrong in the morals defined in Christian teachings?
[Mark:]
No, it most emphatically does not have to do with people failing to live
up to the things they believe in. Many people sincerely believe that homosexuals have no place in human society, that transgenders should be denied medial care, that non-Whites are subhuman, that women should not
be priests, etc.
=================================end of excerpt======================
-- https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/0EF-2hYIBQAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
Jul 27, 2023, 11:30:54 AM
Note that last clause, and note how the whole list of what "Many people sincerely believe"
refers back to how "the evils they did were an essential part of their religion."
Peter Nyikos
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