Dean's World

So, they thought that the Big Bang Theory was no good, because it left open the possibility of a divine creator?

I thought scientists were supposed to be open-minded and objective!

So what, does every scientific theory have to specifically exclude the possibility of divine involvement? Is the Theory of Gravity "the attraction between two bodies that has nothing to do with God"?

Blah... science has become a religion of its own, with its own form of excommunication and its own caste system and its own holy sacraments.

Oh and let me just add this, before someone brings it up:

"Are we going to allow astrology in the classroom? Are we going to allow voodoo?"

Show me the people proposing that this be brought into my son's science class, and we'll talk. Otherwise, take a valium, drink a beer, and get a life.

The whole point of teaching science to children is to teach them how the scientific methods work and what critical and dispassionate inquiry is all about, not to memorize whatever the received wisdom of the academy is at the moment.

Show me the people proposing that this be brought into my son's science class, and we'll talk. Otherwise, take a valium, drink a beer, and get a life.

Dean
Sorry, but I'm not going to give up 4 years of sobriety over this issue.

You think it's impossible that someone in the USA would demand that another "theory" like astrology be taught alongside evolution and intelligent design? You seriously believe that you are not opening a Pandora's Box worth of trouble here? So you are slamming the door on the argument.

How very convenient.

I don't have to be a Nostradamus (we can introduce his predictions too I supppose) to forsee a whole heap of trouble rolling down hill should ID be "argued" in classrooms.

After turning science class into debating class we would have a good crop of lawyers, and no scientists worthy of the term.

After turning science class into debating class we would have a good crop of lawyers, and no scientists worthy of the term.

Scary thought. As if we don't already have enough lawyers.

But seriously, are you saying that debates don't happen in true science, or that they shouldn't?

I agree that some things are, or should be, out of bounds in scientific discussions, but I think it's difficult to draw the line. For example, I don't buy most of the "science" behind global warming, but I'm not necessarily opposed to global warming being taught. I'm more concerned about how it's taught rather than if it's taught.

For example, I don't buy most of the "science" behind global warming, but I'm not necessarily opposed to global warming being taught. I'm more concerned about how it's taught rather than if it's taught.

I'm also concerned with how science is taught. From my perspective, it's taught badly at all levels. Add in what the Discovery.org group says is the "intelligent cause" behind evolution and I'm sure we'll have Noah's ark being taught in biology.

Scott: I'm arguing the natural selection vs intelligent design issue - not the ACLU case (which I do not support).

Oooooh! Okay!

Then we're on the same side!

From that perspective I'm not sure there's much point to ID in the classroom. Let 'em hash it out at home or school or whatever. Although I wouldn't be upset if it got brought up or the local school board wanted to do it, but I'd probably be happy to point out to people why it's kinda pointless.

Only maybe I'm wrong. I kind of like these discussions. For example you can point to several things about human anatomy that just don't seem (at a superficial level) to make a whole lot of sense evolutionarily. Homo sapiens has all sorts of traits that seem very unusual. Human females are not well-designed for childbirth for example. No, they really aren't. They're far too likely to be killed by giving birth to a baby with too big a head for example. We also need an enormous amount of daily fluid intake compared to other land-based mammals--the average man needs almost as much as the average horse, for example. And who was the cruel joker who removed the bone in the human male's penis that almost all other mammals have? Why is the human female almost constantly in estrus? Why do we have SUCH longer lifespans than almost any other mammal? Why are we the only primates who are completely bipedal? Our sense of both rhythm and melody have very, very little relation to what's seen in other animals, even birds. What the hell's it for, or is it just all happy coincidence?

All these are such fun discussions....

Urthshu:

Excellent site.

False alternative: Either "Science has proven that there is no God!" or else "God made everything in 6 days 6000 years ago." I disagree with that. Intelligent Design is an intelligent alternative to both. Teachers and students should be free to discuss it. And keep the courts out of it.

Blenster &B. Minich
I followed Dean's link to the Discovery.org's blog and read up on what their position on evolution is. They agree with evolution, just not the mechanism of natural selection that drives it. Here's their definition of intelligent design:

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. (Source)

Here's their position on evolution:

Is intelligent design theory incompatible with evolution? Of course, it depends on what one means by the word "evolution." If one simply means "change over time," or even that living things are related by common ancestry, then there is no inherent conflict between evolutionary theory and intelligent design theory.

I wrote in a post in my blog today that their use of "intelligent cause" seems like a way to sugar coat the existence of God to the scientifically minded.

An intelligent cause is either God or an alien race. One could argue then argue what "intelligent cause" made the "intelligent cause" - which is why philosophy majors earn the big bucks debating these issues into the ground.

However it appears that the ID folks do not disagree with evolution per se, which would make it distinct from the creationists - who believe that God made all animals in their current forms.

This post has been answered, as was the previous one on this subject, here.

ID is testable, possibly more so than evolution itself. Here's one way. Show that the irreducibly complex biochemical processes and structures (such as the flagellum) can be reduced. Another of the facets of ID is using mathematical models which detect design. Show that they misidentify the results of genetic algorithm's as designed, or that they identify disguised designed algorithms as evolved.

I have seen the untestable assertion before. I don't believe it. The ID scientists give specific tests which will falsify their hypothesis, as well as complaining how difficult natural selection's supporters attempt to make falsifying (testing) natural selection itself. Frankly, I think the ID folks HAVE falsified natural selection, according to a test proposed by Darwin himself, by providing irreducibly complex biochemical processes and structures, but until the consensus is that those processes and structures are both irreducible and too complex to be explained by natural selection, natural selection will remain the consensus theory.

Yours,
Wince

Michael I don't refute any of it. I simply object to the insinuation that he has answered all our questions.

Apparently there is plenty that people still want to discuss it, although I am usually not much into the discussion myself.

Wince wrote:

ID is testable, possibly more so than evolution itself. Here's one way. Show that the irreducibly complex biochemical processes and structures (such as the flagellum) can be reduced.

I think you are confusing a test for ID with a test for evolution, and inadvertantly making my argumetn for me. Showing that IC processes are in fact reducible would merely go to showing that evolution has a good explanation for them. The ID argument relies upon the failure of evolution as an explanation as evidence for ID because it's a classic God of the Gaps argument - not evolution, therefore god must have done it. In point of fact, all of the processes that Behe claimed were IC have been shown to be quite reducible. The flagellum contains smaller components that are entirely functional, such as the TTSS. He claimed that the blood clotting cascade is irreducibly complex, yet marine mammals are missing one of the major components of the cascade (Hagemann factor) that Behe names as vital and their blood clots just fine.

Another of the facets of ID is using mathematical models which detect design. Show that they misidentify the results of genetic algorithm's as designed, or that they identify disguised designed algorithms as evolved.

This one is quite easy. Dembski's "mathematical model", which is really just an arbitrary boundary on probability that automatically defaults to "design" if you go over a certain number, has never been applied to objects in the natural world. And as we at the Panda's Thumb have pointed out before, it does in fact show false positives.

Frankly, I think the ID folks HAVE falsified natural selection, according to a test proposed by Darwin himself, by providing irreducibly complex biochemical processes and structures, but until the consensus is that those processes and structures are both irreducible and too complex to be explained by natural selection, natural selection will remain the consensus theory.

I think you are confusing "claiming that some processes are irreducibly complex" (which is what the ID advocates have done) with "providing irreducibly complex biochemical processes" (which they have not done). As noted above, all of the systems that were supposed to be IC have turned out not to be. But when shown that those systems are reducible (which you claimed above is all that is necessary to falsify them), the response is to move the goalposts and claim that just because it could have happened that way doesn't prove that it did. Rather than demanding that scientists provide reasonable pathways for the development of a system, they will demand nothing less certain than a videotape of the actual events taking place.

What's going on, Dean, first the Ebonics and now this?

ID doesn't belong in a science classroom because it's not a scientific theory. Rather, it's a dishonest criticism of some Darwinian notions used for the express purpose of putting religion and science in conflict. It has no place in the schools for the same reason that all agenda-driven junk science has no place in the schools: it's a distraction that drains valuable class time away from the subject with the purpose of instilling false beliefs. It's no different from the wild feminist social science that purports to show all sorts of wickedness being dumped on women by the evil male patriarchy.

Woefully, Americans are poorly educated in science, especially in biology, because our religious nuts have made such a football out of evolution for the last 100 years; surveys show that only 35% of us actually believe that evolution is a fact, something that ID's intellectual proponents don't even dispute. So introducing ID into biology classes is going to make it harder for the children to understand what evolution is and how it works.

It's better to spend the time looking into the factual basis of evolution than in the theoretic issues of philosophy of science that ID always raises. Children aren't really capable of grappling with these issues until they're pretty far along on high school.

The courts have to get involved in these issues because there are rogue school boards that insist on throwing the Constitution out the window in the interest of their religious viewpoints. So rather than complaining about the ACLU insisting on enforcement of the law, you should be complaining about the Discovery Institute people hijacking science in order to promote religion.

Di's position on this is un-American, and the DI is not a bunch of well-meaning innocent victims. They aim to hurt our children and our country, and they can not be allowed to succeed.

Sandi, you're seriously confused. Natural Selection is a theory, but evolution is a fact. A fact is something that's supported by actual evidence, while a theory is a hypothesis generated in order to explain the fact. Darwin developed his theory of natural selection to explain the evident fact that species evolve and diversify over time. We know this happens because we can observe it in the fossil record, among isolated populations such as those of the Galapagos Islands, and even under the microscope in the case of bacteria and antibiotics. Evolution is a fact, not "merely a theory". Even leading ID proponents accept the factual nature of evolution, but purport to offer a different explanation for it.

So you denigrate scientific theory and say that it's no better than parlor-room theories such as ID designed to impress religion on young minds, once again showing your ignorance of science. Scientific theories differ from crackpot theories and junk science theories in that they're supported by evidence and subject to experimentation, falsification, or statistical analysis. There is such a thing as "junk science" of which there are many examples, such as astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and Intelligent Design. We don't teach these subjects in Biology classrooms because they aren't Biology, or even science according to any respectable definition.

Rather than spewing nonsense and asking me why I want to keep non-science out of science classes, you should explain to the audience what possible justification there can be for putting non-science in our science classrooms. Dean posted a bunch of stuff on Ebonics recently arguing that it would increase the efficiency of English education; non-science doesn't have that salutary effect on science education, much of which is hard and numerical and will make your head hurt.

I'm perfectly happy to have religion/mythology classes in public schools where creationism is taught as the myth that it is, but I'm not happy to pass something off as science when it clearly doesn't fit the bill. You're saying we should lie to our children, and I don't accept that.

OK, Dean that should pretty well wrap it up. Intelligent Design is not a legitimate scientific theory, and as long as it remains in this status it has no place in the public schools. If ID's proponents were the sincere scientists they claim to be instead of intolerant religious nut-jobs on a par with the Taliban, they would seek to legitimize their theory (using that term as loosely as possible) in the proper forums for scientific research: peer-reviewed journals, symposia, and university biology departments.

They can't win that sort of acceptance, so they seek to ram their views down the throats of the young and naive. The reasons why they can't win acceptance don't point to a conspiracy to suppress the truth as much as to a wholly inadequate theory, lacking a coherent model, a coherent mechanism, a set of predictions, or even one bit of experimental or empirical evidence to back it up.

It's simply junk. Now many of us can sympathize with the agenda of ID's proponents: perhaps our culture is sliding down the drain, and perhaps the feminists, evolutionists, atheists, gays, and sex perverts are to blame. But cramming junk science down the throats of our children in hopes of bringing them to fundamentalist churches is not the way to combat this menace, real or imaginary. And don't be fooled, there is an agenda at work here.

Ed: This post has been answered, as was the previous one on this subject, here.

Yes, and you manage in that answer to be pedantic, condescending, and presumptuous all at once. A hat trick. Thanks for hosting that little "Dean Esmay and his wife are lunatics and stupid too" tete-a-tete, by the way.

Dean wrote:

Yes, and you manage in that answer to be pedantic, condescending, and presumptuous all at once. A hat trick. Thanks for hosting that little "Dean Esmay and his wife are lunatics and stupid too" tete-a-tete, by the way.

Dean, I think you're reacting to a few of the people who responded to what I said, not to what I actually said. My response to what you wrote (all three of them) were calm, polite and well reasoned. Nowhere did I insult you or your wife. In fact, when the first person, who I do not know at all, popped up to call you a nut, this was my response:

Well, that wasn't really the point, and I certainly don't want this to turn into a place where those who don't like Dean call him names. I don't know Dean personally, but I do know several people that I respect a lot who also respect him a lot, and that was more than enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, take his question seriously, and attempt to give it the well-reasoned response that it deserved.

Now, it is hardly reasonable to portray what I wrote as calling you "irrational" or that I "wrote an essay on how crazy you are", as you claimed above. I wrote nothing of the sort. What I wrote is a very detailed and thorough answer to your question. Now let me answer the comment you left on my blog, since you said you would not be returning there to see any response.

Well thank you very much for starting the "why Dean Esmay is a bad person" thread.

Again, I didn't. In fact, I specifically disavowed that sort of thing, but I can't control what others might say or think. I'm sure there are a lot of folks out there who think I'm an asshole too, but they are responsible for their opinion, not someone else. I'll snip out the stuff about your wife's thing about nuking cities and ebonics, since I made no comment on them and don't really care about them (nor do I even know the people who did comment on them).

Ed: I find your own assertions about me rather insulting. Pardon me if I loosely compare holocaust deniers with Nazis, but you're being pedantic if you think that's an unreasonable comparison.

I do think it's an unreasonable comparison, especially in light of the fact that ID advocates have, literally dozens of times over the last few years, directly compared folks like me to the Nazis themselves, as well as to Stalinists. As many people have pointed out, ID opponents have often compared the IDers to holocaust deniers in terms of the tactics they use, but this is not at all the same thing as "comparing them to Nazis". For that comparison, you have to go to the very people making the accusation. And my point was simply that you swallowed that bit of propaganda from them whole and "couldn't stop yourself" from linking to it, but you didn't bother to check out whether it was true, and you didn't portray the situation accurately. Now, perhaps you might think you had no obligation to do so, and perhaps you'd be right, but it certainly is fair game for someone like me, who has been compared to a Nazi by these people, to point out the difference between reality and what you passed along, isn't it? At the very least, it's absurd to consider it "insulting" that I pointed out that what you said was not accurate or balanced.

You are also being terribly presumptuous. You presume that just because you wrote a response to me, in a thread where I received multiple trackbacks and countless comments, you say that I "was informed" of your response. Well fine and dandy--did you presume I had time to read it before you went off on this lengthy jeremiad about how ill-informed and unreasonable I am and began hosting a lengthy thread about how stupid and evil I am?

Actually, I didn't leave a comment because for several hours it kept telling me that my account had not been created yet. And I didn't rely on a trackback ping to inform you of it. I informed you of it directly, through the "contact the author" link on your main page. Now it's obviously possible that you didn't see it, or saw it and were too busy to do anything with it at the time. I was just noting that while there was an entirely calm and reasoned response to your question (a question I took seriously and gave a serious and compelling answer to), rather than taking it seriously and having a reasoned discussion about it, you had decided instead just to throw out the post you did yesterday, filled with the same inflated and insulting rhetoric ("take a valium, drink a beer and get a life" or "you are the book banners") that had been seen prior to that. And that led me to wonder if perhaps you really weren't interested in having a civilized discussion about it.

And frankly, the emotional overreaction to my follow up on the subject makes me wonder even more. Behind all of this furor over the insults you have mistakenly projected from others on to me as though I had said them are some interesting substantive issues that I took the time to address in response to you. And the primary reason why I did so in that format and with the very calm tone that I did was because I know people who hold you in very high esteem as both a thinker and a person and I assumed there must be a good reason why. And that's still a dialogue that I think is important and educational, which is why I have bothered with this whole conversation.

Oh and as for the bit about mutation: did it occur to you that I may have simply misspoken or been careless in what I said or what I meant? Did you think to ask?

My honest answer is that I have a hard time imagining what you said as merely misspeaking or being careless. What you said wasn't a little bit off, it was a complete reversal of reality. I can't imagine what you might have meant to say that would have been any closer to reality. There is simply nothing in the research that you cited that is even the slightest problem for evolutionary theory, yet you declared that it "flies in the face" of that theory. The truth is that it is precisely the type of research that flows from and continues to provide support for evolution. I think the far more likely conclusion is that you just don't understand what evolutionary theory really says, and I said so. Now, that's not an insult. I didn't jump up and down and say, "god, what an idiot". There are a thousand different subjects that I don't understand either, and pointing that out, while I may not like it, is not tantamount to calling me names. But when you offer up public statements about a subject, and those public statements are completely and verifiably wrong, and especially when you have publicly invited the attention of those who oppose your view by repeatedly portraying us as horrible censors and irrational people who need to "get a life", you certainly cannot be surprised when they point out that those statements are wrong and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

You want a discussion with me? This isn't the way to start it.

Well, I thought my initial response to the question you posed was a very good way to start it. I took your question seriously, I composed a very detailed and polite answer, and I sent you a message pointing you to it so you could read it. There was nothing in that response that was in any way insulting, and in fact my message to you was, if anything, overly gracious, noting that I hoped you would find that I've given a worthy answer to your question.

My second response to you was also not insulting, though I can understand why you might not have liked it. And my third, while again I can understand why you might not like it, was entirely reasonable. I pointed out that you are engaging in exactly the kind of overheated rhetoric that you accuse others of doing. And I would point out now that, while you're taking offense at things I did not say and falsely claiming that I have called you "crazy" and "irrational", your rhetoric toward me and my colleagues who work diligently against the insertion of ID into science classrooms has been far more insulting than anything I have written, and it's not even a close comparison. I could have responded in kind and used the same tone (believe me, I do it often with those I don't think deserve my respect), but I have chosen not to. And that makes your highly emotional response all the more unwarranted, at least toward me.

I can certainly understand you being mad at the guy who commented (again, someone I do not know at all) and called you an unbalanced nut. But it's not reasonable to project that on to me and claim that I started a "Dean Esmay sucks" club when I specifically went out of my way to tell that person that that was not the point of the post at all and that I didn't have any interest in seeing it turn into that. I have attempted at every turn to have this be a civilized and polite discussion on the substantive issues. I had hoped that you might make the same attempt, but that seems increasingly unlikely at this point.

"For example you can point to several things about human anatomy that just don't seem (at a superficial level) to make a whole lot of sense evolutionarily."

These discussions are fun: when they are science discussions. The reason ID is so corrosive to science is that there's no actual scientific discussion to be had. The answer is just "well, God musta wanted it like that" and then you get to lean back in your chair with your legs up and throw spitballs around the classroom. It's quite possible and scientific to have discussions about problems with evolution being able to account for this or that. But until ID or any other such theory can actually produce an testable scientific _explanation_ itself, it's as much of a waste of time as letting students make up answers to math homework and declaring that all answers are equally worthy.

B. Minch: "I would recommend reading "Darwin on Trial", by Philip E. Johnson. This book looks at problems with Darwinism, and toward the end, the author makes some interesting observations about science in general, and how they've been blinded by evolution so they can't see any evidence to the contrary.

The author isn't out to promote the view that a God of the Bible created the earth in 7 days, but looks at the evidence for and against evolution."

Philip Johnson is a laywer who became a born again Christian who's calling he believes to be to refute evolution. While he's very coy about this in some of his books, he's open about it with friendly audiences. Most of his arguments are the usual litany of goofy claims, but his more metaphysical complaints have, I believe, been adequately knocked flat by Pennock in his book: "Tower of Babel."

Wince and Nod: "ID is testable, possibly more so than evolution itself. Here's one way. Show that the irreducibly complex biochemical processes and structures (such as the flagellum) can be reduced."

You've got it backwards. IC is not a test of ID, or even a test of evolution. It is a specific claim that evolution cannot account for something in a particular instance. Worse, if we ever do find a structure that is IC, that will mean that conventional evolution cannot explain it, but it doesn't prove or disprove ID, because ID proponents have yet to put forward any coherent positive theory that explains how the IC structure was designed.

Sandi: "Evolution is a theory. I agree that is is one of the best, but still just a theory, not a fact. "

The fact that people still say things like this is proof positive that our science classes are already weakened enough by all this pussyfooting around explaining evolution. In Science, theories NEVER "advance" to become facts. "Theory" is not the same things as a hypothesis.

In refuting Esmay's claim that these movements aren't harmful to science education, note what the first thing that ID proponents try to do when they get the chance: stick disclaimers on evolution that read something like "evolution is just a theory" which itself is an incredible misuse and misunderstanding of scientific terminology!

The essence of science is free-wheeling debate. But then, so is the essence of mathematics and history. However, most high schoolkids simply are not in possesion with enough understanding of the methods and tools of these fields to conduct meaningful debates in the sense that the fields actually conduct them: they have to learn the basics before they can know what's there to criticize: have to learn what the assumptions actually are before they can meaningfuly question them. Science and mathematics and even history are languages as well as bodies of knowledge in this respect.

But already science classes are watered down to the point where we still get people who clearly don't even understand the basics of evolution (they think natural selection works on individuals instead of populations, or that we are descended from apes, and so on) yet who think they have discovered serious flaws in a theory they have little or no knowledge about.

It's great to have debate, but let's make priority one to ensure that kids actually learn what science IS and how it works, and make sure that when they do have debates, they do it like scientists would do it. ID and other such things are invitations to throw the ethic and methods of science completely out the door. Almost all it's major proponents eventually admit this (that's what the above poster means when they talk about Johnson's "insights" into science: he basically says that we have to toss empiricism as we know it!)

Frodo:"“Random” evolutionists claim that it just had to happen, just like IDers claim that ID had to happen, given the complexity of life."

For someone that want's to criticize the field, you don't seem to know enough about what you are criticizing for anyone to be sure what you are talking about.

What is a "random" evolutionist? Are you talking about the start of life itself? If so, that's not evolution, by definition (evolution is DEFINED as working via heritable descent with modification: i.e. reproduction/variation must be a given for natural selection to function). That's abiogenesis.

However, while abiogenesis is NOT a solid theory like evolution is, it also isn't the claim that life came about randomly in any meaningful sense. All the major abiogenetic theories concern particular natural PROCESSES explicable and plausible within the conditions of the early Earth that catalyzed the development of self-replicating life. That's why scientists were so confused by those who ran around declaring statistical probabilities for life arising: you cannot calculate probability without some causal mechanism or story on the table to lay out the possibilities. Claiming to know that life could not have arisen because the chances against it are 10 to the 152th power is as demonstrative of a serious confusion as it would be if I declared that I knew the probability of a particular die roll before being told how many and of what type the die cast would be.

Given that example, can you see why scientists might be a little frustrated by debaters who refuse to even learn the basics of what they are talking about before angrily rejecting it?

"with the defense that the main trigger is non-random natural selection instead of random mutations, is one of the more asinine, hand-waving arguments I’ve seen. "

You're going to have to explain this a little more because I can't understand to what it refers. Random mutations almost never, just so you know, advance speciation or promote adaption: not directly. What they do is increase variation within a breeding population. And it is variation that combined with natural selection produces non-random morality and non-random differential reproductive success. The theory that massive mutations drive evolution is saltation, and it was thrown out pretty early on (though recent research has suggested that quick mutations may have played a role here and there, though again, this is very rare and not how evolution generally proceeds).

I’m plenty busy (both work and personal life) right now, so I’ll make this fairly short.

The problem with the initiation of life w/r/t evolution theory is that your typical evolutionist or evolutionary textbook intimately associate the two. Have you ever see an evolutionary textbook, or gone to a talk where, as an explanation of life’s beginnings, the book/lecturer says “we haven’t any idea” – no, and it is often implied, of not expressly stated, that it began as some natural occurrence in the “soup”. That’s reality, and using terminology to claim that associating the two isn’t reality is – in fact – denying reality. Would you agree that evolutionary/biology textbooks should clearly state that there is no known mechanism by which living material can be naturally created? I didn’t think so.

Also, the probability stuff is more hand-waving. You have genetic material, which must be affected in some way to in order to create the genetic variation which will in turn trigger natural selection (which, I agree, is a non-random process). However, the main triggering mechanism is the event that causes the genetic material to be affected. No change in genetic material, no natural selection. This isn’t difficult, but the hand-waving has to occur somehow. Most times that the genetic material is affected, the result is neutral (at the time of the event, possibly positive/negative later) or harmful. The more genetic material affected, the more chance of harm. Rarely, these changes in genetic material produce a good affect, which is then refined by natural selection, provided 1) the creature survives long enough to reach reproductive age, which is iffy even if it is “superior” and 2) is able to reproduce itself (or, worse, mate and reproduce – obviously, the more radical the change, the less chance an animal will be able to reproduce and pass on the altered genetic material). The enormous amount of positive/neutral-then-positive changes in genetic material have to be accounted for, even before natural selection becomes a factor. I could write more, and I’m sure you’ll respond with a bunch of terminology – so be it.

There is a huge elephant in the room, and that elephant is chance. Scientists will attempt to move the elephant from one corner of the room to another by, for example, trying to move the chance from one part of the process to another, or, using the most common assertion – after using a bunch of high-falutin terminology to create a smokescreen – and then saying “You apparently don’t know what you are taking about”. I would say that’s probably the most prevalent tactic. I’m no genius, but I know more than you think I do. I will agree that this topic is fascinating because in combines biology/genetics, mathematics, and a whole host of other disciplines that, in total, absolutely no one can be on expert on.

The frustration of honest-thinking people is that evolutionists refuse to recognize the improbability of evolution happening naturally, and use a bunch of hand-waving, or hide under a bunch of terminology, in order to keep people from looking at the elephant in the room. As far as they are concerned, it just isn’t relevant – mainly, because it’s such a huge problem to them. Meanwhile, the elephant is creating a big pile of elephant poo in the corner, and eventually all 4 corners of the room will be quite rank. The funny thing is, evolutionists keep claiming that all that is needed is “time” – but – in truth - time is actually on my side on this one – and many people like yourself know it, deep down inside, and don’t want to admit it. There are only so many corners of the room to move the elephant, and it’s getting’ pretty smelly around here.

As far as the Nazi thing is concerned – I said that both sides have to stop it. Calling someone a “holocaust denier” is a horrible thing to say, even if “Nazi” wasn’t used. While my opinion is that the left is more guilty of this than the right, both sides need to grow up.

Frodo writes:

As far as the Nazi thing is concerned – I said that both sides have to stop it. Calling someone a “holocaust denier” is a horrible thing to say, even if “Nazi” wasn’t used. While my opinion is that the left is more guilty of this than the right, both sides need to grow up.

No one called anyone a "holocaust denier". The argument is that they use similar arguments. And that is true. If it's true, it's not a "horrible thing to say". Your opinion that "the left" is more guilty of this than "the right" is both false and irrelevant. This battle has nothing to do with right and left, and if you had read the post I linked to, you would know that what are are calling "the right" here, the IDers, are the only ones who have compared anyone to Nazis. It's not a question of one doing it more than the other; only one side does it at all.

"Would you agree that evolutionary/biology textbooks should clearly state that there is no known mechanism by which living material can be naturally created? I didn’t think so."

That's because the problem is not that there is no known possible mechanism, but instead several different and somewhat mutually exclusive mechanisms being proposed. The major problem with them is not that they are implausible, but rather that there isn't enough evidence of what early life was like to determine which one is on the right track.

"Also, the probability stuff is more hand-waving."

No, it's a fact. Anyone who claims to have calculated a probability of life occuring via ANY natural process or set of initial conditions is either confused about what they are doing or are lying. Fact.

"You have genetic material, which must be affected in some way to in order to create the genetic variation which will in turn trigger natural selection (which, I agree, is a non-random process). However, the main triggering mechanism is the event that causes the genetic material to be affected. No change in genetic material, no natural selection."

This is really pretty confusing. First of all, the real design problem isn't variation but figuring out how the original genetic material became self-replicating. After that happened, errors, duplications, and so forth were inevitable and fairly easy to explain. It's reasonably _consistent_ self-replication that hard to explain, not _inconsistent_ self-replication that would lead to variation.

"Most times that the genetic material is affected, the result is neutral (at the time of the event, possibly positive/negative later) or harmful. The more genetic material affected, the more chance of harm. Rarely, these changes in genetic material produce a good affect, which is then refined by natural selection,"

This is a misunderstanding. There is no discrete "good" effect vs. "bad" effect, and natural selection doesn't wait around twiddling its thumbs hoping that some good mutation will come along. The variation that natural selection requires is just that: variation, usually fairly slight. In most cases, there is nothing clearly indentifiably "good" or "bad" about the changes. It is only circumstances that makes them so, and the effects are not felt on individuals but rather on populations.

"Scientists will attempt to move the elephant from one corner of the room to another by, for example, trying to move the chance from one part of the process to another, or, using the most common assertion – after using a bunch of high-falutin terminology to create a smokescreen – and then saying “You apparently don’t know what you are taking about”."

You know what? This is an excuse. This is YOUR defensive excuse for attempting to criticize something you don't understand. The problem is not that evolution is something only scientists can understand, but simply that it's a fairly complicated idea when you get down to the molecular level. Terminology is important not to create a smokescreen, but because if you don't use consistent, specific terminology, the result is a lot of very sloppy thinking and confusion as to what people are talking about. I often have a hard time understanding what your criticisms are because the terminology you use is vague and ambiguous: it could refer to lots of different things, and it is easy to misread.

"The frustration of honest-thinking people is that evolutionists refuse to recognize the improbability of evolution happening naturally"

You're stating this like it was already a proven fact that it is improbable in the sense YOU believe it to be. But obviously, that is exactly where we disagree. And it's certainly a little nasty to contrast evolution supports with "honest-thinking people."

For all your talk about elephants and so forth, you've yet to bring up a single cite or example as to what you even mean (which makes the discussion less productive, because I can't disagree with your arguments because I don't even really know what they are). This is pretty important, because of course issues of probability, especially when it comes to such extremely complicated mathematical subjects as biology and chemistry (and even physics), specifics are very much key.

"As far as the Nazi thing is concerned – I said that both sides have to stop it. Calling someone a “holocaust denier” is a horrible thing to say, even if “Nazi” wasn’t used."

Again, this isn't an adequate response to what I noted. No one called ID proponents holocaust deniers. What Shermer does is look at social movements and find similarities in them. And the similarities between the HD movement and ID are very similar. Both employ "wedge" documents and strategies. Both say different things to different audiences about what their agendas and beliefs are. Both attempt to appeal ad populum instead of engaging the full body of evidence. Both place higher importance on televised theatrical debates and publicity than on scholarly research and argument. And both movements have evolved in remarkably similar way.

Again, Holocaust deniers aren't Nazis, and no one is calling ID proponents Nazis or even HDs. They are just pointing out that, as social movements, they share the same flawed tactics and characteristics, and a lot can be learned by comparing the historical development of the two movements. The comparison is likewise important because many of the same claims that ID proponents make for science classes are made by HDs for history classes. Both groups claim that there is a conspiracy of orthodoxy keeping their ideas down.

Finally, to speak of right and left is sort of bizarre, and betrays more about your way of envisioning this debate as an Americanized political fight than one of science.

Let's stop discussing people's unknowable motives (I know mine, and am willing to discuss them) and get back to the science.

What? The Wedge Strategy document from the Discovery Institute clearly states their motives, nothing unknowable about them (unless you believe they're lying.)

As far as I can tell, many ID scientists started out believing in natural selection and changed their mind based on what they saw. That gives them a whole lot more credibility to me than those whose mind is closed.

Most ID advocates aren't biologists. Johnson is a lawyer, Demske is a math professor, and Meyer is a history and philosophy of science guy. Look at the list of Senior Fellows at the Discovery Institute's web site and tell me how many actual scientists you see. It's reasonably certain that most of these clowns have taken their position on ID for reasons not connected with science.

1) Can we use mathmatical models to detect design? Wow. That's a good question. If so, we could use it in so many fields of study. It might, if investigated, bolster natural selection, by detecting that it was created by a random process.

Define "design" and I can answer that for you. Demski's work is laughed at by information theorists - he rejects Shannon, for God's sakes - and the best he can hope to find is HUMAN ACTIVITY, not the same thing as Divine Intervention. By its very nature, Divine Intervention is not directly observable in sampling or in theory.

2) How could something as complex as x, y and z, have evolved? If you show they are irreducibly complex, you have falsified natural selection. But if you reduce them step-by-step you are well on the road to changing a mouse into a bat, which would bolster the bejesus out of natural selection.

IC is not provable in principle, as it's a negative. In other words, IC advocates claim it's been proved if there's not complete evidence of all the steps in the evolution of a complex organ. Absence of proof for one proposition doesn't constitute proof for any other one - you can't prove a negative.

In short, scientific disssent is GOOD! Calling other viewpoints cr*p is not good.

Crap is crap, and pretending it's something other than what it is is simply delusional.

I’m spending more time here than I should. This will probably be my last post, but I admit this is quite enjoyable. My only regret is that I wasn’t born a 100 years from now, when things will, after massive obstruction, become more clear.

I literally can’t believe some of this stuff….

Let me start by quoting this again, because it’s quite constructive for the argument….

All the major abiogenetic theories concern particular natural PROCESSES explicable and plausible within the conditions of the early Earth that catalyzed the development of self-replicating life.

It’s truly amazing that the same people who claim that ID isn’t “scientific” enough write stuff like the above quote. The mind boggles. The person who wrote the above statement is not a scientist; rather that person is a High Priest of Evolution. Let’s contrinue…..

That's because the problem is not that there is no known possible mechanism, but instead several different and somewhat mutually exclusive mechanisms being proposed. The major problem with them is not that they are implausible, but rather that there isn't enough evidence of what early life was like to determine which one is on the right track

This is your rebuttal? Unbelievable. The creation of living material is a complete mystery. I explained that no one has even been able to come up with all the essential amino acids, even when they fake conditions to make them as favorable as possible. And, has anyone started with the essential amino acids, put them into an oven preheated to 425, and came up with life? No. I repeat - the creation of living material is a complete mystery. If you want to talk about “Potential mechanisms”, as you do, of the creation of life, as you have above, then you might as well include ID – it is just as plausible, and has just as much “scientific evidence” behind it. It’s instructive that Natural/Random evolutionists have no problem with “Theories” with now solid proof whatsoever behind them, but, curiously enough, have a real problem with something like ID. I wonder why?

No, it's a fact. Anyone who claims to have calculated a probability of life occuring via ANY natural process or set of initial conditions is either confused about what they are doing or are lying. Fact.

There have been all sorts of calculations; if you don’t like them, so be it. And, as science progresses, and science continues on its merry way in mapping genetic material, and understanding how/why genetic material is altered, the amount of data available to make even more accurate predictions will be available. I regret that this will take many years, and will be fought like Hell by people like yourself. As I’ve said, nobody here will live to see most of the fun.

This is a misunderstanding. There is no discrete "good" effect vs. "bad" effect,

First of all, I admitted that most genetic changes are neutral, at least at the point they happen. Hopefully, you read this point. “Good” genetic changes result, after natural selection takes place, in positive affects. BUT THE RANDOM GENETIC CHANGE HAS TO HAPPEN FIRST. THERE IS NO GETTING AROUND THIS, PAL.

and natural selection doesn't wait around twiddling its thumbs hoping that some good mutation will come along.

Yes, it does. Without continued modification of genetic material,. Natural selection will eventually stall. You know this, and choose to argue around it. I find it pretty hysterical, actually. It doesn’t matter if a single genetic change is a ”slight” variation – it is a variation nonetheless, and it is random. The question is just how many random genetic changes have to take place, and your basic evolutionary scientist has no desire to even think about this – for very good reason. You’ll never be able to get around this, no matter what stuff you try to pull. As I said, time is on my side on this one. I am extremely confident that as more and more is known, future calcs will be even worse (for you) than they are now.

In most cases, there is nothing clearly indentifiably "good" or "bad" about the changes.

I admitted this in my last posts. Most changes are neutral, at least at the time they happen, and of course the natural selection process, which is not random, needs to happen for potential “good” changes to take full affect. I understand this.

It is only circumstances that makes them so, and the effects are not felt on individuals but rather on populations.

I love this. It must always end this way. I’m not usually into profanity but what a load of utter horse-pucky this is. “Circumstances”? Look, genetic material HAS TO BE ALTERED. It has to change, and the changes are random. The number of changes - from the original living material to human - whether they are slight or not - has to be gigantic. They have to build on each other, and be reproducible, and not be DERAILED by ”circumstances”. As time goes on, it will become more and more obvious how truly gigantic the number will be. The more major each genetic change, the less chance it will be ultimately unfavorable. There is no free lunch here. This is actually pretty simple. I just love the way you end this with the word “Circumstances” : - )

I have other things to do, this is fun. No one will probably be convinced on anything, but it’s not a waste because it does prove at least one point – everyone is religious. The Evolutionists here who have talked about the beginning of life, hopefully, have shown the readers here how very, very devout they are. I wish I had such faith myself.

Good discussion!

Ed: As much as I dislike use of bits of cut-and-paste "fisking" style responses, it's the fastest way to aswer you so I'll do it:

Dean, I think you're reacting to a few of the people who responded to what I said, not to what I actually said.

I was reacting to exactly three things:

1) That you would PRESUME that such lack of response says something about my character rather than my lack of time.

2) Your publicly speculating about my my character in such a way solely because I did not respond just to your very own special self, and

3) The fact that by doing so as a public article on the front page of your web site, you practically invited a bunch of pathetic assholes who have nothing better to do but take cheap potshots at me to have at me (and my wife!) on your blog, and,

4) Your weak-sister response to such vile comments directed at me and my family. Oh, you wouldn't want this to turn into an attack-thread on Dean? So why post it that way, and why allow these people to continue with their vile comments?

Note that if someone did this to you in my comments I would either delete the posts, publicly castigate those doing it, or write you a note immediately to let you know people were slandering you. Or all three at once. I would consider failure to do so on my part to be an endorsement of those vile comments, unless it was just something I managed to miss.

The very few times I have allowed commenters to bash a person not present on my own blog, it has been becuase I view that person with deep contempt. Although occasionally I might just miss something--have a look at how many comments I get a week and you'll excuse me if one of your pathetic little trolls points to some instance where I missed something. (I really do try not to.)

Take a hard look at how many comments and trackbacks I get in a week, Ed. I can't say I don't try to read everything but I'm not able to. Kindly refrain in the future from speculating about my motives. If you thought your response was that much above the fray and contained points that you badly wanted me to respond to, a far more effective way of doing it would be to drop me a polite note saying so. Not merely, "I responded to you here," since I'd already gotten a lot of responses (obvious to anyone who looked) but more along the lines of, "Hey Dean, I'd really like to read any response you have to this here essay I wrote about what you said, do you have time to give it a look?"

Either in the comments or as an email.

As for whether my response to all this is "emotion": You're damned right it is. Did I ever claim to be a Vulcan?

My response to what you wrote (all three of them) were calm, polite and well reasoned.

I find condescending speculation about my character and my motives on the front page of someone's weblog, particularly someone I've never heard of, to be more than a little impolite, no matter how calm or well-reasoned.

If it helps you to understand my position, I have been at this weblogging game for a good long time, and if you look at those pathetic cretins posting in your comments about me and my wife, it should give you an inkling of what I see on a regular basis. I get several trackbacks a week from people who write snotty things about me and things I've said. It's incredibly tiresome, but I don't even bothere deleting most of them anymore. One of the reasons I have comment registration is precisely so I can show such fuckwits the door.

("Fuckwits" -- An emotional word? Why yes indeed it is!)

So while you may not yet be so fortunate as to have a coterie of people obsessing over you and your blog, regularly leaving you nasty comments or sending you trackbacks to say how stupid, evil, shallow, or dishonest you are, if you stay at this long enough it'll happen to you more and more and more.

Here's my suggestion for next time. I think it'll get you a lot farther not just with me but your fellow bloggers: A polite note along the lines of, "Hey I wrote something here addressing some important points, and I'd really like to hear your thoughts on them," with perhaps a polite followup with something along the lines of "Hey you know I didn't get a response, I understand if you're busy but I'd still like to read what you have to say" will get you a hell of a lot further than writing articles questioning my character, my integrity, my honesty, and so on.

I don't recall ever getting any letter from you. If I did, it zipped past me. And this leads you to speculate about my honesty, integrity, and motives? In a public article on the front page of your web site?

Get bent dude. Seriously.

Now, as it is I've just put in a half hour of my time writing all of this. Time I don't really have at the moment.

That said I am running out of time. But now to this business about mutation:

It has been my impression for some time now that the view of mutation as the primary driving force behind evolution was not in favor, that most viewed mutation as a secondary force driving most evolutionary change and that gradual change over time through natural selection was sufficient to explain most evolutionary change, and that mutation could only be a part of things over a very long period of time since most mutations are contra-survival. It was further my impression that these researchers (the original article is here had found a way to show how mutation could invoke evolutionary change much more quickly and over shorter periods of time than previously thought.

If I am wrong about all that, feel free to correct me. There's an easy way to do that, too. Instead of writing articles that start by speculating about whether I know anything about biology at all, why don't you try, "Hey Dean, actually mutation's long been viewed as more important than you seem to think."

Just a style tip there, Ed. I'm not a biologist, but I'm not a moron either.

Enough. You either udnerstand where I'm coming from or you don't.

Ugh. My "precisely three" reasons above seem to be four.

Ah well. I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquision.

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again."

"I’m spending more time here than I should. This will probably be my last post, but I admit this is quite enjoyable."

A common tactic: spew a bunch of rhetoric, present few or no substantive arguments (and what there is is maddeningly vague), make a bunch of nasty insinuations, cackle loudly, and then bow out before having to answer any hard questions. Oh, how I WISH science debates could be more like THAT, Mr. Esmay! :P

"It’s truly amazing that the same people who claim that ID isn’t “scientific” enough write stuff like the above quote. The mind boggles. The person who wrote the above statement is not a scientist; rather that person is a High Priest of Evolution. Let’s contrinue….. "

Instead of simply being insulting, can you actually explain what you mean by any of the above?

"This is your rebuttal? Unbelievable. The creation of living material is a complete mystery."

First of all, you seem to have convieniently forgotten what it was actually a rebuttal too (a discussion of chance and process). Second of all, it's not a _complete_ mystery, though certainly most of the key historical aspects are unknown (though not as many as one might think). However, there really are several _general_ hypotheses about how life could have begun in the conditions of primordial Earth.

"I explained that no one has even been able to come up with all the essential amino acids, even when they fake conditions to make them as favorable as possible."

??? This is a bizarre claim. Of course no one has done this. No one even knows what the particular amino acids would be that early life would have started with, and we are still largely in the dark about what processes really were at work. As I noted, we don't, and may never have enough historical evidence to know how exactly life began on this planet. However, that doesn't mean we are completely in the dark. You forget that the issue here was plausibility. That is why it is important that we are looking at particular processes, not just supposing that early life simply came together by complete and totally random chance.

"And, has anyone started with the essential amino acids, put them into an oven preheated to 425, and came up with life? No."

Again, what? Why would anyone expect this to work, especially since we don't know what we are aiming at?

"I repeat - the creation of living material is a complete mystery."

Again, we are missing lots of really big pieces of the historical puzzle, but not as many as you seem to think, and most of the arguments about abiogenesis are arguments of plausibility, not forensics (since most people acknowledge that we are unlikely to ever find forensic traces of early life with high enough fidelity to tell us what we want to know about what it was like. Though we are learning quite a lot about genetics that provide some insight into the question.)

"If you want to talk about “Potential mechanisms”, as you do, of the creation of life, as you have above, then you might as well include ID – it is just as plausible, and has just as much “scientific evidence” behind it."

You can indeed include ID in this discussion. The problem is, you run immediately into a dead end: you have absolutely no more insight into what happened to create life than when you started, plus you now have posited without evidence an extra entity that's by definition even more complex than the phenomenon you originally set out to explain! In other words, you've accomplished pretty much nothing at the expense of an even bigger problem, and have nowhere to go from there: no further knowledge to test or theorize with. Science would be so EASY if we could just blame ID for everything! Then we could just go out and party all week instead of doing actual research.

"There have been all sorts of calculations; if you don’t like them, so be it."

You are missing, or even deliberately avoiding the point here, which is too bad, because it's a very important one. The point is not that I "don't like them." The problem is that no calculation could possibly be meaningful unless we prespecify some particular process/mechanism we think might be at work and then figure out all the possible outcomes and THEN how likely each one is. This is a serious issue for anyone claiming to know that abiogenesis is wildly improbable. You can't simply dismiss it and claim to be engaging in an honest discussion. I explained exactly why such calculations are irrelevant, and you've offered nothing to even begin addressing that point.

"“Good” genetic changes result, after natural selection takes place, in positive affects. BUT THE RANDOM GENETIC CHANGE HAS TO HAPPEN FIRST. THERE IS NO GETTING AROUND THIS, PAL."

Uh, yes, I agree.... so?

"Yes, it does (sit around waiting for mutation). Without continued modification of genetic material,. Natural selection will eventually stall."

Sure. But most of this modification is already present in any given the gene pool. It's constantly being replenished and it's there usually long before natural selection gets a hold of it. It is, in fact, generally variation that sits around until natural selection pushes it on average one way or another. I should also note that simple point mutation is only one of many mechanisms that increase variation. Simple sexual recombination is another.

"You know this, and choose to argue around it. I find it pretty hysterical, actually. It doesn’t matter if a single genetic change is a ”slight” variation – it is a variation nonetheless, and it is random. The question is just how many random genetic changes have to take place, and your basic evolutionary scientist has no desire to even think about this – for very good reason. You’ll never be able to get around this, no matter what stuff you try to pull."

I honestly don't understand what you are talking about here. There has been a giant amount of work done on this subject. Just like with Behe, I think my first assumption about you here is that you are basically completely unfamiliar with the field in question, and are just throwing out charges of conspiracy or avoidance to see if they will stick. There are quite litterally entire journals devoted primarily to research into the mechanisms of genetic variation.

"As I said, time is on my side on this one. I am extremely confident that as more and more is known, future calcs will be even worse (for you) than they are now."

Again, I don't know what you are talking about. What "calcs"? Of what? Variation? Mutation rates? Saltation? In what way are they unfavorable? Can you provide cites for ANY of these "calcs?"

"Look, genetic material HAS TO BE ALTERED."

You seem to be having an argument with someone that is not present. Of course it is altered.

"It has to change, and the changes are random."

Indeed.. although as with everything else, it gets more complicated than that (since they are rarely strictly "random" in any absolute sense). But for the moment, I'm happy to describe them as essentially random.

"The number of changes - from the original living material to human - whether they are slight or not - has to be gigantic."

They are pretty significant, but far less so than you seem to think. In many ways, the basic patterned system of subroutines for creating animal bodies (Hox genes) haven't much altered since before 500 million years ago when early animals first diverged.

"They have to build on each other, and be reproducible, and not be DERAILED by ”circumstances”."

But there is no real sense in which they can be "derailed" by circumstance, unless that circumstance happ