Stephen C. Meyer Article: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories

Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington ^ | January 26, 2005 | Stephen C. Meyer

[Thatcherite]

Wow! That's quite the list! Nice job! The Piltdown fraud will no-doubt continue to cast a negative light on Darwinism for years to come.

I'll charitably assume that you are either being sarcastic, or that you didn't actually read the contents of the list.

[WildTurkey]

Wow! That's quite the list! Nice job! The Piltdown fraud will no-doubt continue to cast a negative light on Darwinism for years to come.

The "Piltdown Man" was discovered BEFORE Darwin published. It was largely ignored in the early 1900's and by 1955 had been determined to be a fake using modern testing methods by SCIENTISTS! It is a positive light for scientists to uncover the fraud, not a negative. You are bearing false witness AGAIN!

[stremba]

I would agree with you that if anyone can conclusively show that something or another could not have evolved that it would be a valuable finding. However, ID arguments notwithstanding, this hasn't yet happened. Evolutionary explanations have been given for all of the systems that ID has claimed could not possibly have evolved. Whether or not the evolutionary or design explanations are correct is the question. Absent a test for design, there's no good way to answer that question. Since the evolutionary paradigm is the accepted scientific theory, (this paradigm was the one that met with staunch resistance because of religious objections, BTW, not the design paradigm) the burden of proof is on the design advocates to show that the design explanation is in fact correct. Without a test for design, I fail to see how this is possible. Of course, outside of the scientific community, people are free to believe whatever makes the most sense to them. Within the scientific community, however, evolution remains the accepted theory.

[stremba]

Not to mention that the main reason that Piltdown man was suspected of being fraudulent was that it conflicted with the predictions of evolution, not that it in any way demonstrated that creationism was correct.

[js1138]

It cracks me up how these atheists keep pulling scripture on you. The irony.

Are we back to calling all evolutionists atheists?

[Tribune7]

Evolutionary explanations have been given for all of the systems that ID has claimed could not possibly have evolved.

Well, anybody can give an explanation, the point being the ID explanation has more evidence -- meaning the explanations as to how the flagellum evolved etc. have nothing to back them up whereas ID can at least argue from the experience of design.

[WildTurkey]

Not to mention that the main reason that Piltdown man was suspected of being fraudulent was that it conflicted with the predictions of evolution, not that it in any way demonstrated that creationism was correct.

Yes, many in the early 1900's were suspicious and it became largely ignored. It was NEVER a basis for supporting evolutionary theory so the determination that it was a fraud has no impact, other than to say that science worked.

[Thatcherite]

Another good one was an editorial in the Morning Post.

And of course all the articles that are pre-1912, and the items on the LETTER PAGE of scientific journals....

[js1138]

The "Piltdown Man" was discovered BEFORE Darwin published.

Considering it was fabricated, that may be true, but it was "rediscovered" in the early 1900s. Only the Brits were impressed by it.

[WildTurkey]

whereas ID can at least argue from the experience of design

So you agree with Meyers OLD EARTH THEORY arguments? It is really a change to see all the former YEC'ers come around to accepting that the earth is billions of years old.

[WildTurkey]

On review, it appears I was in error. The bones were discovered in 1908.

[stremba]

ID explanation has more evidence

Really? What is this evidence for design? All I have ever seen are arguments from incredulity that claim that things could not have evolved. When presented with possible evolutionary paths, IDers typically just repeat their argument from incredulity rather than providing actual evidence for design. BTW, arguments from the experience of design are irrelevant here. Nobody has observed the design of a biological system. The experience of design comes from a knowledge of the history of design in a system. We don't have knowledge of the history of design in the biological systems under question. To claim that experience is evidence for design is assuming the conclusion.

[stremba]

ID explanation has more evidence

Really? What is this evidence for design? All I have ever seen are arguments from incredulity that claim that things could not have evolved. When presented with possible evolutionary paths, IDers typically just repeat their argument from incredulity rather than providing actual evidence for design. BTW, arguments from the experience of design are irrelevant here. Nobody has observed the design of a biological system. The experience of design comes from a knowledge of the history of design in a system. We don't have knowledge of the history of design in the biological systems under question. To claim that experience is evidence for design is assuming the conclusion.

[stremba]

oops sorry for the double post.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Are we back to calling all evolutionists atheists?

No. I'm sure there are a couple of people here at FR who are theistic evolutionists.

[js1138]

Wow! That's quite the list! Nice job! The Piltdown fraud will no-doubt continue to cast a negative light on Darwinism for years to come.

Frauds are no fun fo anyone, but Piltown proves for all time that you cannot intuitively detect design, and cannot intuitively say anything about things found in isolation. Only by having a unifying theory of things happening through uniform process can we place artifacts in context and evaluate hypotheses.

Creationists and IDers have no reason at all to assert that Piltdown is a fraud. Even now they cannot claim it is a fraud unless they admit evolution is true and biologists have it right.

No one ever confessed to fraud, and a devout priest was present at one of the finds, so either Piltdown is a good find, or evolution is true, because only evolution gives a theoretical framework for asserting it is a phony.

[js1138]

I'd never really thought about it, but the bones were probably discovered long before "Piltdown" and were stored somewhere not having been inventoried to a museum.

[WildTurkey]

No. I'm sure there are a couple of people here at FR who are theistic evolutionists.

But you referred to CERTAIN poster calling them atheists when in fact they have posted they are not. Either you can read their minds or you are posting false witness.

[js1138]

More than a couple. I'd guess at least a majority.

[WildTurkey]

hmmm. Seems a French Priest is suspect ...

---

Was it the French Priest?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a young French priest and paleontology enthusiast, was present at the Piltdown excavation site during several major discoveries. His clerical duties had brought him to England, where he befriended Dawson. Later in his professional career, de Chardin was to become involved in the discovery of Peking Man, an important collection of early human fossils (Homo erectus) found in China. He was to also become well-known for his philosophical ideas on religion and evolution.

For many years, de Chardin was not seriously considered a suspect. But in 1980, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, published an essay accusing him as a co-conspirator with Charles Dawson. While reviewing Piltdown documents, Gould was struck by a statement made by the priest in correspondence with Kenneth Oakley after the fraud was exposed. In the letter, de Chardin mentioned that Dawson had showed him the second Piltdown site in 1913. But that site had actually been reported to Woodward two years later, in 1915. It was unlikely that de Chardin had the dates mixed up because in 1915, he was serving as a stretcher bearer in France during World War I.

This slip, said Gould, suggested that de Chardin and Dawson could have planned the hoax. Gould further speculated that Piltdown was a joke that got out of hand, becoming so quickly accepted without question by most British paleontologists that a confession would have ruined de Chardin's career. Other investigators have disagreed, explaining de Chardin's alleged slip as an innocent mistake. They suggested that Dawson had actually taken him to see the Barcombe Mills site where a set of human fossils had been found in 1913, not the Piltdown II site at Sheffield Park. Although no other evidence has been found linking the priest to this fraud, he still remains a major suspect to this day.