Posted on 08/26/2004 7:41:29 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
Proceedings of the Bioligical Society of Washington August 25, 2004
Link to PDF only. No text.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovery.org ...
You assume correctly.
Why would evolutionary science be in trouble? Is God not allowed to use whatever means He may desire to form Humankind - or the entire universe? Why should He be forced to limit Himself to the wave of a Heavenly Hand?
Today we tend to want instant gratification. Should we bestow Him with the same weakness?
You misunderstand me. I was simply poking a bit of fun.
I firmly believe that God is behind this whole mess and that science is simply figuring out how he did it*.
I must say, the more we figure out the more clever God appears.
* Yes, this means that I believe "Goddidit"
That should read "Biological"
Thanks! I pinged the mod earlier asking if they would correct it. Nothing yet.
You need to get out more.
Perhaps the author wasn't keen on being quoted...To be able to say that ID has been published in a scientific journal, of course. It's just filling out a bullet item in their standard list of talking points, nothing more.
If true, why publish at all?
Let us assume that an ID article has indeed appeared in a peer reviewed journal. I've got doubts, but let's say that it happened. Now what? Is there any scientific (verifiable, testable) evidence for ID? Any at all? Is there any scientific way to test the "theory" of ID (that is, could ID be falsified)? And if the answer to these questions is "no," then what are we talking about? Just a journal with low standards.
Well, then I guess we can't use this argument in the future ;^)
BTW, there is also a review of Meyer's paper by Wesley R. Elsberry on "The Panda's Tumb": Meyer's Hopeless Monster.
Review of Meyer, Stephen C. 2004. The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117(2):213-239.
by Alan Gishlick, Nick Matzke, and Wesley R. Elsberry
[The views and statements expressed here are our own and not necessarily those of NCSE or its supporters.]
“Intelligent design” (ID) advocate Stephen C. Meyer has produced a “review article” that folds the various lines of “intelligent design” antievolutionary argumentation into one lump. The article is published in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. We congratulate ID on finally getting an article in a peer-reviewed biology journal, a mere fifteen years after the publication of the 1989 ID textbook Of Pandas and People, a textbook aimed at inserting ID into public schools. It is gratifying to see the ID movement finally attempt to make their case to the only scientifically relevant group, professional biologists. This is therefore the beginning (not the end) of the review process for ID. Perhaps one day the scientific community will be convinced that ID is worthwhile. Only through this route — convincing the scientific community, a route already taken by plate tectonics, endosymbiosis, and other revolutionary scientific ideas — can ID earn a legitimate place in textbooks.
Unfortunately, the ID movement will likely ignore the above considerations about how scientific review actually works, and instead trumpet the paper from coast to coast as proving the scientific legitimacy of ID. Therefore, we would like to do our part in the review process by providing a preliminary evaluation of the claims made in Meyer’s paper. Given the scientific stakes, we may assume that Meyer, Program Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, the major organization promoting ID, has put forward the best case that ID has to offer. Discouragingly, it appears that ID’s best case is not very good. We cannot review every problem with Meyer’s article in this initial post, but we would like to highlight some of the most serious mistakes. These include errors in facts and reasoning. Even more seriously, Meyer’s paper omits discussion or even citation of vast amounts of directly relevant work available in the scientific literature. ...
Great minds think alike. :-)
That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of Occam's Razor, which has a proper formal construction and is provably correct. "God did it" is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the ultimate application of Occam's Razor and would evaluate as a relatively mediocre hypothesis in mathematical application.
Unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to care what Occam's Razor really means and how to correctly evaluate it. Shortness of sentence has no relation to "simplicity of hypothesis" when applying the Razor.
Pure non-mathematical tripe.
L. Ron Hubbard built a religion the same way. Write a bunch of vaguely plausible sophistry with liberal usage of scientific terminology and sell it to people who like the conclusion too much to bother investigating the credibility of the axioms.
Dembski is an idiot and/or charlatan, and I would love to get into a mathematical Metal Cage Death Match with him, preferably televised for posterity.
Since materialists think excluding a Creator will better help them understand the creation, perhaps plucking an eye out will help them see better or removing a leg will improve their walk.
www.arn.org - he posts there all the time. Before you do that, though, you may want to have a look at this:
Information as a Measure of Variation and determine whether or not you have the necessary credentials to understand what he is saying, let alone the maths he uses.
| "Modern science" is no longer simply interested in seeking the truth, but is actively engaged in propping up the philosophy of non-theistic materialism. |
That is the essence of the argument, isn't it?
D'oh! Just had the same thought ;^)
We would comment on the paper, that it exists at all and what that means, or on the contents of the paper and whether the arguments are metaphysical in nature.
Look for a metaphysical development of whether something is possible. It doesn't have to be a certainty of existence and it doesn't have to have observational data to back it up if it isn't science.
"One of my friends at Oxford, a senior scholar who works in the history of physics, has watched the vituperation and storm of controversy that surrounds my work and continually counsels me to keep my polemical streak in check. Yet when I referred him to Gross’s article, here’s what he wrote:"
My goodness, Bill, this is loaded with extreme polemical language almost from the first sentence. I find it so biased that I simply cannot get beyond the first page. That the editor is proud to present this polemical babble is astonishing. If this is the best that the “scientific establishment” can do, then that establishment is culturally decadent. It confirms what I have worried about for a long time: that science today simply does not have the cultural depth, the conceptual and linguistic resources, to conduct civilized scholarly debate about its foundational commitments and assumptions. Thomas Huxley would be deeply embarrassed by this article. If you have to deal daily with this kind of low polemic, there is a real danger of being dragged down to their level. I am more sympathetic than ever with what you have to deal with.
YUP!
THX.
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