Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Nick Matzke has also commented on this, but the op-ed is so bad I can't resist piling on. From the very first sentence, Michael Behe's op-ed in today's NY Times is an exercise in unwarranted hubris.
In the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design.
And it's all downhill from there.
Intelligent Design creationism is not a "rival theory." It is an ad hoc pile of mush, and once again we catch a creationist using the term "theory" as if it means "wild-ass guess." I think a theory is an idea that integrates and explains a large body of observation, and is well supported by the evidence, not a random idea about untestable mechanisms which have not been seen. I suspect Behe knows this, too, and what he is doing is a conscious bait-and-switch. See here, where he asserts that there is evidence for ID:
Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims.
This is where he first pulls the rug over the reader's eyes. He claims the Intelligent Design guess is based on physical evidence, and that he has four lines of argument; you'd expect him to then succinctly list the evidence, as was done in the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ on the talkorigins site. He doesn't. Not once in the entire op-ed does he give a single piece of this "physical evidence." Instead, we get four bald assertions, every one false.
The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.
He then tells us that Mt Rushmore is designed, and the Rocky Mountains aren't. How is this an argument for anything? Nobody is denying that human beings design things, and that Mt Rushmore was carved with intelligent planning. Saying that Rushmore was designed does not help us resolve whether the frond of a fern is designed.
Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too.
No, this is controversial, in the sense that Behe is claiming it while most biologists are denying it. Again, he does not present any evidence to back up his contention, but instead invokes two words: "Paley" and "machine."
The Reverend Paley, of course, is long dead and his argument equally deceased, thoroughly scuttled. I will give Behe credit that he only wants to turn the clock of science back to about 1850, rather than 1350, as his fellow creationists at the Discovery Institute seem to desire, but resurrecting Paley won't help him.
The rest of his argument consists of citing a number of instances of biologists using the word "machine" to refer to the workings of a cell. This is ludicrous; he's playing a game with words, assuming that everyone will automatically link the word "machine" to "design." But of course, Crick and Alberts and the other scientists who compared the mechanism of the cell to an intricate machine were making no presumption of design.
There is another sneaky bit of dishonesty here; Behe is trying to use the good names of Crick and Alberts to endorse his crackpot theory, when the creationists know full well that Crick did not believe in ID, and that Alberts has been vocal in his opposition.
So far, Behe's argument has been that "it's obvious!", accompanied by a little sleight of hand. It doesn't get any better.
The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.
Oh, so many creationists tropes in such a short paragraph.
Remember, this is supposed to be an outline of the evidence for Intelligent Design creationism. Declaring that evolutionary biology is "no good" is not evidence for his pet guess.
Similarly, declaring that some small minority of scientists, most of whom seem to be employed by creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute or the Creation Research Society or Answers in Genesis, does not make their ideas correct. Some small minority of historians also believe the Holocaust never happened; does that validate their denial? There are also people who call themselves physicists and engineers who promote perpetual motion machines. Credible historians, physicists, and engineers repudiate all of these people, just as credible biologists repudiate the fringe elements that babble about intelligent design.
The last bit of his claim is simply Behe's standard misrepresentation. For years, he's been going around telling people that he has analyzed the content of the Journal of Molecular Evolution and that they have never published anything on "detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures", and that the textbooks similarly lack any credible evidence for such processes. Both claims are false. A list of research studies that show exactly what he claims doesn't exist is easily found.
The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.
How does Behe get away with this?
How does this crap get published in the NY Times?
Look at what he is doing: he is simply declaring that there is no convincing explanation in biology that doesn't require intelligent design, therefore Intelligent Design creationism is true. But thousands of biologists think the large body of evidence in the scientific literature is convincing! Behe doesn't get to just wave his hands and have all the evidence for evolutionary biology magically disappear; he is trusting that his audience, lacking any knowledge of biology, will simply believe him.
After this resoundingly vacant series of non-explanations, Behe tops it all off with a cliche.
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Behe began this op-ed by telling us that he was going to give us the contemporary argument for Intelligent Design creationism, consisting of four linked claims. Here's a shorter Behe for you:
The evidence for Intelligent Design.
That's it.
That's pathetic.
And it's in the New York Times? Journalism has fallen on very hard times.
This article was first published on Pharyngula and appears here by permission.
Testable, yes. And the *tests* (and/or verifications) have to be "repeatable", *not* the events being studied. Vulcanologists, for example, don't have to grow their own supervolcanos in order to understand how volcanos work at various scales.
How do either Evolutionary Theory or ID (or the Big Bang Theory) meet that qualification?
Easily. For example, see 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent . Especially see the subsections on "potential falsification", and the page on "Scientific Evidence and the Scientific Method".
Seems to me they don't and we're talking about science-based conjecture and not science.
"Seems to me" you're not entirely clear on how science is actually done and verified.
It also seems to me that we should distinguish between natural selection (which one can demonstrate by noting the development of anti-biotic resistant microbes) and the origen of species,
They're two sides of the same coin -- when different subpopulations diverge far enough via adaptation, they become different species.
which is unknowable and beyond the realm of science.
Horse manure. Again, see the link I provided above. And that's just a layman's overview -- the actual research papers detailing the evidence and the various kinds of tests and confirmations are so numerous and vast that you could literally spend a lifetime trying to read them all, and still not reach the end. No, I'm not exaggerating. Go visit any well-stocked research library, or the library of a major university which specializes in postgraduate degrees in biology.
When the creationists say that there is "no evidence" for evolution, they're lying.
And I have no doubt that there are will be additional problems found with evolution. Indeed, that is the process with science.
My fundamental problem is that the argument seems to be: which is correct?? evolution or creationism or ID?
I argue, that is not the issue. The issue is which is science. Creationism and ID are matters of faith. Evolution is a matter of science. It may even be bad science, and it will certainly be different with time as we learn more.
I also have a problem with the notion that evolution is anti-God. I happen to be a Christian and I am a little bit, well, taken aback by that argument.
I would argue, as would many scientists, that the big bang, evolution, and indeed, all of science, serves to glorify God rather than detract from Him.
You'll find several names from LiteKeeper's "list" there. For example, LiteKeeper mentions "Dr Clifford Burdick, Geologist":
*snicker*
Clifford Burdick
(1894-1992)
Clifford Burdick, a researcher for the Creation Research Society and a member of the Creation-Science Research Center, is a "flood" geologist who has spent forty years trying to prove that giant humans once roamed the earth and even mingled with the dinosaurs. Burdick has displayed a copy of his Ph.D. from the University of Physical Sciences (Phoenix, Arizona) in Carl Baugh's Glen Rose Creation Evidence Museum. According to Ronald Numbers' The Creationists [2]: "[Creationist Walter Lammerts'] inquiries revealed the University of Physical Science to be nothing more than a registered trademark. As described in its memographed bulletin, 'The University is not an educational institution, but a society of individuals of common interest for the advancement of physical science. There are no campus, professors or tuition fee.'"
One more for the road; LiteKeeper's "Dr Harold Slusher, Geophysicist":
Harold Slusher
(b. 1934)
Harold S. Slusher, formerly of the Institute for Creation Research, is best known for his critiques of radiometric dating techniques. He is also known for the rather bizarre suggestion that the universe is much smaller than it appears, because its geometry is Riemannian as opposed to Euclidean. Slusher claims to hold an honorary D.Sc. from Indiana Christian University and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia Pacific University. Robert Schadewald discovered that Indiana Christian University is a Bible College with only a 1/2 man graduate science department. As for Columbia Pacific, it "exhibits several qualities of a degree mill" [3]. Ronald Numbers describes CPU as
an unaccredited correspondence school that recruited students with the lure of a degree "in less than a year." Slusher's dissertation consisted of a manila folder containing copies of five memographed ICR "technical monographs" and a copy of the ICR graduate school catalog, all held together with a rubber band. The supervising professor was his creationist colleague from El Paso and the ICR, [Thomas] Barnes, who himself possessed only an honorary doctorate. [2]According to Bears' Guide [1], Columbia Pacific was denied its application for state license renewal in early 1996 for undisclosed reasons. The university appealed the decision in late 1996, but the appeal had not been acted upon by the time Bears' Guide went to press.
This is *NOT* what the theory of evolution says, nor is it something that Darwin said personally. For that matter, the whole notion of "more evolved" is meaningless in evolution (although common in misguided popularizations of it) -- "evolved" is not something you can measure as if with a yardstick and declare one species "more evolved" than the other.
And "all men" are the result of an *equal* number of years of evolution since the day of their last common ancestor, so the very notion of "more evolved" peoples falls on its face right there.
So stop telling falsehoods about Darwin and evolution, please.
Because you posted a comment on a Behe thread, so I thought you might want to learn something about the flaws in his work. Silly me.
What a waste of bits.
Well in your case, yeah, apparently so.
But, since you did ... That link above didn't work. How lazy of you.
Oh, get a grip. Mr. Lindsay has apparently moved his pages to his own website now from their previous home. You can now find that review at: Review: "Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" by Michael J. Behe .
Now, also, you omitted all references to the blood clotting stuff.
...because Behe has already been hammered on that point thorougly enough that he has pretty much stopped using it as an "example". He has been concentrating on the flagellum mostly, thus the focus of my response.
For pete's sake, lets get comprehensive here! In detail, discuss why gradual evolution of blood clotting with 10 protein feedback loops all working at once is actually quite feasible evolutionarily speaking.
Well, okay, since you insist... Check out The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Clotting, or The evolution of vertebrate blood coagulation as viewed from a comparison of puffer fish and sea squirt genomes. Excerpt from the latter paper:
It is thought that 50–100 million years separate the appearances of urochordates (which include the sea squirt) and vertebrates. During that time the machinery for thrombin-catalyzed fibrin formation had to be concocted by gene duplication and the shuffling about of key modular domains. The relative times of duplicative events can be estimated by various means, the most obvious being the presence or absence of a gene in earlier diverging organisms, although it must be kept in mind that lineages may lose genes. Another way to gauge events is from the relative positions of various gene products on phylogenetic trees, earlier branching implying earlier appearance. In this regard, (pro)thrombin invariably appears lower on the phylogenetic trees than do the other vitamin K-dependent factors (Fig. 2).Also, Evolution of enzyme cascades from embryonic development to blood coagulation:The order of events can also be inferred by considering the most parsimonious route to assembling the various clusters of peripheral domains. Nine of the proteases under discussion can be accounted for by six domain-swapping events (Fig. 5). Indeed, the presence of a multiple-kringle protease in the sea squirt genome provides a reasonable model for a step-by-step parallel evolution of the clotting and lysis systems. It should be noted that a serine protease with only one kringle has been found in the ascidian Herdmania momus (36). Although numerous scenarios have been offered in the past about how modular exchange was involved in generating these schemes (refs. 4, 12, and 37–41, inter alia), the new genomic data now provide a realistic set of starting materials.
Recent delineation of the serine protease cascade controlling dorsal-ventral patterning during Drosophila embryogenesis allows this cascade to be compared with those controlling clotting and complement in vertebrates and invertebrates. The identification of discrete markers of serine protease evolution has made it possible to reconstruct the probable chronology of enzyme evolution and to gain new insights into functional linkages among the cascades. Here, it is proposed that a single ancestral developmental/immunity cascade gave rise to the protostome and deuterostome developmental, clotting and complement cascades. Extensive similarities suggest that these cascades were built by adding enzymes from the bottom of the cascade up and from similar macromolecular building blocks.That was the abstract. An excerpt from the text:
The downstream protease of the vertebrate clotting cascade (Fig. 1d), thrombin, belongs to the same lineage as complement factors C1r and C1s. The upstream and middle proteases of the clotting cascade (factors VII, IX and X) belong to the most modern lineage, that of horseshoe crab clotting factor C. Therefore, the lineage of thrombin is parental to that of the upstream and middle proteases of the clotting cascade (Table 1) and distinguishes it from the other vitamin-K-dependent clotting proteases (factors VII, IX and X, and protein C). This conclusion agrees with sequence and species comparisons implying that thrombin was the ancestral blood-clotting protein [11]. It also suggests that vertebrate blood clotting emerged as a by-product of innate immunity, because the entire functional core of vertebrate clotting shares ancestry with complement proteases.And if that's not enough, you could check these out:
Banyai, L., Varadi, A. and Patthy, L. (1983). “Common evolutionary origin of the fibrin-binding structures of fibronectin and tissue-type plasminogen activator.” FEBS Letters, 163(1): 37-41.And so on...
Bazan, J. F. (1990). “Structural design and molecular evolution of a cytokine receptor superfamily.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 87(18): 6934-6938.
Blake, C. C. F., Harlos, K. and Holland, S. K. (1987). “Exon and Domain Evolution in the Proenzymes of Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis.” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology: The Evolution of Catalytic Function, LII: 925-932.
Fornace AJ Jr, Cummings DE, Comeau CM, Kant JA, Crabtree GR. “The Structure of the human gamma-fibrinogen gene. Alternate mRNA splicing near the 3' end of the gene produces gamma A and gamma B forms of gamma-fibrinogen.” J Biol Chem. 1984 Oct 25;259(20):12826-30.
Crabtree, G. R., Comeau, C. M., Fowlkes, D. M., Fornace, A. J., Jr., Malley, J. D. and Kant, J. A. (1985). “Evolution and structure of the fibrinogen genes: Random insertion of introns or selective loss?” Journal of Molecular Biology, 185(1): 1-20.
Di Cera, E., Dang, Q. D. and Ayala, Y. M. (1997). “Molecular mechanisms of thrombin function.” Cell Mol Life Sci, 53(9): 701-730.
Doolittle, R. F. (1985). “More homologies among the vertebrate plasma proteins.” Biosci Rep, 5(10-11): 877-884.
Doolittle, R. F. (1990). “The Structure and Evolution of Vertebrate Fibrinogen A Comparison of the Lamprey and Mammalian Proteins,” in ADVANCES IN EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY: FIBRINOGEN, THROMBOSIS, COAGULATION, AND FIBRINOLYSIS. C. Y. Liu and Chien, S. New York, Plenum Press. 281.
Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “A detailed consideration of a principal domain of vertebrate fibrinogen and its relatives.” Protein Science, 1(12): 1563-1577.
Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “Early Evolution of the Vertebrate Fibrinogen Molecule.” Biophysical Journal, 61(2 PART 2): A410.
Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “Stein and Moore Award address. Reconstructing history with amino acid sequences.” Protein Science, 1(2): 191-200.
Doolittle, R. F. (1993). “The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Coagulation - a Case of Yin and Yang.” Thrombosis and Haemostasis, V70(N1): 24-28.
Doolittle, R. F. and Feng, D. F. (1987). “Reconstructing the Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Coagulation from a Consideration of the Amino Acid Sequences of Clotting Proteins.” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology: The Evolution of Catalytic Function, LII: 869-874.
Doolittle, R. F., G., Spraggon and J., Everse S. (1997). “Evolution of vertebrate fibrin formation and the process of its dissolution.” Ciba Found Symp, 212: 4-17; discussion 17-23.
Doolittle, R. F. and Riley, M. (1990). “The amino-terminal sequence of lobster fibrinogen reveals common ancestry with vitellogenins.” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 167(1): 16-19.
Edgington, T. S., Curtiss, L. K. and Plow, E. F. (1985). “A linkage between the hemostatic and immune systems embodied in the fibrinolytic release of lymphocyte suppressive peptides.” Journal of Immunology, 134(1): 471-477.
Ghidalia, W., Vendrely, R., Montmory, C., Coirault, Y., Samama, M., Lucet, B., Bellay, A. M. and Vergoz, D. (1989). “Overall study of the in vitro plasma clotting system in an invertebrate, Liocarcinus puber (Crustacea Decapoda): Considerations on the structure of the Crustacea plasma fibrinogen in relation to evolution.” Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, 53(2): 197-205.
Hervio, L. S., Coombs, G. S., Bergstrom, R. C., Trivedi, K., Corey, D. R. and Madison, E. L. (2000). “Negative selectivity and the evolution of protease cascades: the specificity of plasmin for peptide and protein substrates.” Chemistry & Biology, V7(N6): 443-452.
Hewett-Emmett, D., Czelusniak, J. and Goodman, M. (1981). “The evolutionary relationship of the enzymes involved in blood coagulation and hemostasis.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 370(20): 511-527.
Holland, S. K., Harlos, K. and Blake, C. C. F. (1987). “Deriving the generic structure of the fibronectin type II domain from the prothrombin Kringle 1 crystal structure.” EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) Journal, 6(7): 1875-1880.
Jordan, R. E. (1983). “Antithrombin in vertebrate species: conservation of the heparin-dependent anticoagulant mechanism.” Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 227(2): 587-595.
Kant, J. A., Fornace, A. J., Jr., Saxe, D., Simon, M. J., McBride, O. W. and Crabtree, G. R. (1985). “Evolution and organization of the fibrinogen locus on chromosome 4: Gene duplication accompanied by transposition and inversion.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 82(8): 2344-2348.
Kornblihtt, A. R., Pesce, C. G., Alonso, C. R., Cramer, P., Srebrow, A., Werbajh, S. and Muro, A. F. (1996). “The fibronectin gene as a model for splicing and transcription studies.” FASEB Journal, 10(2): 248-257.
Laki, K. (1972). “Our ancient heritage in blood clotting and some of its consequences.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 202(4): 297-307.
Neurath, H. (1984). “Evolution of proteolytic enzymes.” Science, 224(4647): 350-357.
Neurath, H. (1986). “The Versatility of Proteolytic Enzymes.” Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, 32(1): 35-50.
Oldberg, A. and Ruoslahti, E. (1986). “Evolution of the fibronectin gene: Exon structure of cell attachment domain.” Journal of Biological Chemistry, 261(5): 2113-2116.
Opal, S. M. (2000). “Phylogenetic and functional relationships between coagulation and the innate immune response.” Critical Care Medicine, V28(N9 SUPPS): S77-S80.
Pan, Y. and Doolittle, R. F. (1991). “Distribution of Introns in Lamprey Fibrinogen Genes.” Journal of Cellular Biochemistry Supplement(15 PART D): 75.
Pan, Y. and Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “cDNA sequence of a second fibrinogen alpha chain in lamprey: an archetypal version alignable with full-length beta and gamma chains.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 89(6): 2066-2070.
Patthy, L. (1985). “Evolution of the Proteases of Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis by Assembly from Modules.” Cell, 41(3): 657-664.
Patthy, L. (1990). “Evolution of blood coagulation and fibrinolysis.” Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis, 1(2): 153-166.
Patthy, L. (1990). “Evolutionary Assembly of Blood Coagulation Proteins.” Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis, 16(3): 245-259.
Patthy, L. (1999). “Genome evolution and the evolution of exon-shuffling—a review.” Gene, 238(1): 103-114.
Roberts, Lewis R., Nichols, Lanita A. and Holland, Lene J. (1995). “CDNA and amino-acid sequences and organization of the gene encoding the B-beta subunit of fibrinogen from Xenopus laevis.” Gene (Amsterdam), 160(2): 223-228.
Sosnoski, D. M., Emanuel, B. S., Hawkins, A. L., Van Tuinen, P., Ledbetter, D. H., Nussbaum, R. L., Kaos, F. T., Schwartz, E., Phillips, D. and et al. (1988). “Chromosomal localization of the genes for the vitronectin and fibronectin receptors .alpha. subunits and for platelet glycoproteins IIb and IIIa.” Journal of Clinical Investigation, 81(6): 1993-1998.
Wang, Y. Z., Patterson, J., Gray, J. E., Yu, C., Cottrell, B. A., Shimizu, A., Graham, D., Riley, M. and Doolittle, R. F. (1989). “Complete sequence of the lamprey fibrinogen .alpha. chain.” Biochemistry, 28(25): 9801-9806.
Xu, X. and Doolittle, R. F. (1990). “Presence of a vertebrate fibrinogen-like sequence in an echinoderm.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 87(6): 2097-2101.
Zhang, Y. L., Hervio, L., Strandberg, L. and Madison, E. L. (1999). “Distinct contributions of residue 192 to the specificity of coagulation and fibrinolytic serine proteases.” Journal of Biological Chemistry, V274(N11): 7153-7156.
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The 2.0-Å crystal structure of tachylectin 5A provides evidence for the common origin of the innate immunity and the blood coagulation systems
Davidson CJ, Tuddenham EG, McVey JH. 450 million years of hemostasis J Thromb Haemost. 2003 Jul;1(7):1487-94.
And even dogs ... you would agree folks that deliberately avoid dogs (or worse, refuse to own dogs; they can only handle cats) ... you'd agree dog owners vote for W. disproportionately. Right? I mean, look at how cute Barney is! (And remember what happened to Buddy?) Where are your links about how dogs can help the GOP? Or, is it this: Ayn Rand hated kids and dogs, and only kept cats ..... and its Ayn's Answers that will save the day? Would you say most scientist types love cats? I'm just asking mr. I....
You're going to feel pretty silly when you sober up in the morning.
And one other thing; what is your opinion regarding the fact that the overwhelming number of admissions to sex change hospitals feature hordes of men desperate to get rid of their equipment? Very, very few women will get caught alive or dead in a sex change clinic; why is that?
It's because the "default" sexuality for mammals during fetal development is female. It's only by action of genes on the "Y" chromosome that ontogeny is diverted down the developmental paths towards male physical and neurological development. Thus, it's "easier" for a genetic abnormality on the Y chromosome, or interference with development (e.g., fetal alcohol syndrome) to result in a genetic "XY" male which is not fully "imprinted" as a male, than it is for a genetic "XX" female to somehow acquire traits carried on the the "Y" chromosome (which "XX" individuals don't even *have*).
I mean, chances are good you have an opinion on this. Do you think that some men could have an autoimmune response to their own testosterone and that's what drives this madness?
No, see above.
And one last thing: have you read Shelly's 'Frankenstein'?
Yes, although it was pretty tedious in spots.
I wouldn't bet on that. It's a cut-&-paste job from some slimeball, fraud-riddled creationist website. Been posted several times before. Will be again. Creationist "research" consists of dumpster-diving in the same old garbagepiles, over and over again.
For the most part, it's like posting a list of people like Aristotle and Julius Caesar, to "prove" that nobody of any consequence believes in the solar system. And then, for the "modern period" you toss in some names like Charles Manson.
My particular favorite among these alleged creationist giants of science is this one: Howard A. Kelly (1858–1943) Gynecology. Oh, how the world would be different today, but for his brilliant contributions!
Your math is way, way out here even if your interpretation of the article is correct (and I think you are mistaken about that too). The odds against an event shrink enormously if you reduce the number of combined factors that are required from 18 to 12. In this case the shrinkage from that factor alone would be of many orders of magnitude.
I expected you to fix the link. You did. I found the review to be unimpressive. I expected you to be comprehensive regarding the blood clotting stuff, and you were. Some of that stuff is interesting; but all of it is speculation.
I didn't expect you to provide links to my marriage stuff and how it relates to the GOP and why that is a good thing to spend time on ... and you didn't. For whatever reason, the health of the GOP, its bedrock support by marrieds ... to you, not worthy of consideration.
I didn't expect you to spend time on Ayn Rand and how she hated kids and dogs ... and you didn't.
I didn't expect you to respond to the sex change stuff, and surprise!, you exceeded my expectations!
So, to be clear, the primary cause of men lining up at the sex change clinics is abnormal fetal development due to genetic dis-switching on the Y chromosone in the womb? I'm interested in those links Mr. I. Where are they? And how unusual of you not to include them.
(This of course means you likely can provide links which discuss that homosexual males is an artifact of similar genetic misswitiching, correct? Evolution certainly wouldn't create 'gay men', correct?)
Btw, my impression about sex change clinics and the men who visit them has been greatly influenced by this observation: most fathers of those men appear not to care one bit about this act by their sons.
I never see articles, information which indicate support or opposition by the fathers of these sons for this kind of cutting edge decision making.
Now this observation is consistent w/ my observation that most men eager for the scalpel were also badly betrayed or more commonly, ignored, by the biological fathers; and, naturally, these men uniformly reject God. But I gather you would argue otherwise.
I am really curious now, more so, about my questions about marriage and kids and the GOP that you didn't answer.
So I have concluded that most gay men, and most men who travel to the sex change clinic share in common the desire to adopt the only identity that socially/psychologically they understand .... mom's. Although a tiny fraction do indeed suffer from bona fide detectable genetic disasters, most men, gay, transv, mass murderers, whatever .... genetically they are fully identifable as men and function biologically just fine.
A poor fathering 'imprint' is my primary understanding for all this gay nonsense. I can find plenty of links about that if you are interested; but maybe your links about how genetic all this nonsense is would be more compelling?
Evolution certainly would "create" men with the capacity to end up gay, just as it obviously has not only 'created' humans with such a capacity but other species as well up and down the phylogenetic hierarchy. That appears especially true of species at the highest orders of intelligence (primates, pinnipeds, porpoises, pachyderms - hmm, there seems to be an exceedingly strange p correlation ;) while the 'lower' phyla tend to have much fuzzier sex-type boundaries to begin with.
The far more intriguing question to ask yourself is why an intelligent designer would "create" something that he allegedly abhors.
There is a Dr Frankenstein's creation here. It is the High Church of Evo-Doxy.
"All of it is speculation"? Clearly, you're unable to recognize solid research and evidence when you see it, or learn anything from it. That explains much.
PS. For precision, I should have said the capacity to engage in homosexual behavior when referring to other species (keeping in mind that 'gayness' denotes a uniquely human personality trait). That is not to suggest that certain other critters don't engage in extensive periods of homosexuality that are homologous to gay human male behavior (e.g., bottlenose dolphins).
The majestic chemistry of life should be astounding to everyone. But these facts should not be misrepresented as support for the idea that life's molecular complexity is a result of "intelligent design." To the contrary, [1] modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process.Two straw men carried to the altar to be burnt. (At least the Evo-Church is not yet directly burning humans -- indirectly, yes arguably, for abortion and assisted suicide are concepts that evolve out of the powerful evolutioary politics and psychology of the High Evo-Church.)In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But [2] the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.
What are the two straw men --
In the same way buying a lottery ticket in the intergalactic mega-mega-mega-mega....mega-mega-millions is entriely consistent with it winning. Something in excess of one chance in 10**100. Of course one ticket will win! And I'm sure the interstellar folks who run it, the Blue Siliconish-Pavonian's in their giant lottery outlet UFO's want you to believe that yes, indeedy, YOUR ticket could win! Buy it today!
Well, gosh darn it, they've got the High Holy Evo-Chirch peddling that (probably, almost certainly rigged) lottery to 99.97% of "official" scientists. So pure they float ...
Percy Bridgman, scientific experimenter without-par, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1946, countered that line more rationally that Bruce Alberts (who should return to the Tijuana Brass. maybe, to make a more honest nickle).
Has Alberts won a nobel? (Oh -- that may be or to come -- the Nobel Committee has already joined the pod people, they buy the Blue Silicon-Pavonian lottery tickets in the trillions!).
Anyway here is what PW Bridgman wrote on the matter at hand:
Some believe that religion and science are utterly incompatible. Actually, that view is relatively recent. It dates back not to Galileo, but to the liberal theologians of the Enlightenment. (Incidentally, Galileo was not actually branded a heretic, the sentence he received was for disobeying orders.) Not every educated person believes that science is against religion. There are a growing number of people who believe otherwise, and that have rational support for the idea that theology and science cannot be totally separated. Many scientists (including Newton, Faraday, and even Galileo) have been deeply religious. To add to that, some scientists have actually implanted their religion into their scientific work, including Newton, Boyle, Maxwell, Pasteur, and others. Clearly, religion and science are not always bitter enemies.Also, the evidence suggests that religion (and more specifically the theistic philosophy that stemmed from the Christian worldview) was a significant factor in the birth of modern science, at least partly because it provided some unique philosophical principles that science requires. Why, for instance, would a rational investigation of nature be successful? Because a rationally orderly God created the universe. (Nature consistently operating in mathematical patterns would especially be confirmative for this belief.) According to the Christian religion of that time and area, the universe is orderly, this orderly world can be known, and there is a motive to discover this order. Indeed, many of the founders of modern science were Christians trying to demonstrate that humanity lived in an orderly universe. Why should the investigation of nature be empirical? Because God could have created an orderly universe in more than one way. This sort of mindset is rather different from classical atheism (which was even accepted in the 16th century), which holds to the metaphysical view of a universe dominated by chance events. This philosophy hardly implied an orderly universe.
"The Nature and Philosophy of Science" -- PW Bridgman,
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/bridgman02.htm
The answer? Without their deep religious drives and incorporation of that love of G-d and his works into their own work, they would have been long forgotten.
Nonsense. The value of Newton's contributions to mathematics and science would have been recognized regardless of how much "love of god" he allegedly put into them.
Ah I just love how 'conservative' atheists magically turn into flaming liberals when confronted with anything that questions their religion. I seem to recall a pharisaic attitude that once said the earth the center of the Universe. Wasn't Galileo a Christian? Ah, yes, he was. Hmm... So we have Christian Scientists vs. the 'religious' establishment. Sounds like a familiar story going on today.
Yeah, that's right, join the left against the Christians. I love to see atheists join their proper crowd.
Ah yes, mention ID as a *possibility* (never mind the fairy tales we are allowed to teach in the name of secularism) and get sent to intellectual siberia. You have a proud ideological heritage you guys.
Members of the Laura Callahan school of education?
You've clearly misunderstood his post entirely.
I love to see atheists join their proper crowd.
And this sort of attitude doesn't make you a bigot how, exactly?
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