Posted on 04/21/2006 9:17:58 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
I don't like to talk specifically about my work online. What I put in my profile has to do with politics. It is not a curriculum vitae. I will say that worked at one of the national sequencing centers for several years. He's being totally unfair and insulting to a great many people.
That seems to be his style. Run others down without contributing any understanding. I'm still waiting for examples of my incorrect or badly reasoned posts. It shouldn't be difficult. I've made thousands of posts.
I find it amusing that Darwinian" evolution is being attacked on the grounds that new discoveries are being made in molecular biology.
Darwinian evolution as a concept is independent of the mechanism of change. It merely states that however changes occur, some will result in differential reproductive success.
Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter what causes this difference in reproductive success. I'm sure there isn't any intelligent agent fine tuning the structure of a poodle, yet the details of this structure determining whether an individual will be bred or be neutered. Evolution occurs whether the selection is "natural" or "artificial".
This is something the ID guys seem incapable of understanding. No matter how molecular biology works, it has to produce some degree of stochastic variation. There is no way to anticipate need over thousands of millennia. The overall shape of a population will change in response to differential reproductive success, regardless of what is going on under the hood.
Who on the human Genome project had an evolutionist background?
Did you? Was your studies of evolution what got you the job? Or something else?
What was your role, as an example?
I find it insane that you say this. Cite where I attacked Darwinian evolution based on new discoveries in molecular biology.
In fact I said the opposite.
I have not run anyone down. I have not been rude or obtuse.
I have no idea how or why you are unable to think clearly and communicate based on what I say.
That is a major problem in agenda driven rhetoric. For example, we always refer to gene similarities in primary structure as evolutuionary relationship. We all do that. But it isn't. It is exactly what it is -- sequence similarity or homology.
We assume and infer it reflects evolutionary relationship, but in actual practice that isn't being measured, a sequence of nucleotides is determined chemically for a gene and the sequence of another gene is compared.
Evolutionary relationships are never directly examined -- physical structure of nucleic acid polymers are compared.
These seqeunces have implications for evolutionary relationships, but it is inferred from actual physical data that is theory-neutral.
Let's review.
Here's what you said:
My point again being the discoveries that have saved evolutionary theory
Saved from what, pray tell?
and provided information to becoe instrinsic to the ideas over tie have all coe from hard/basic scientists such as Mendel, Sutton, Morgan/Stuyvestant, Avery, Hershey and Chase, Watson and Crick, Pauling, Sanger and many others.
Never ever have evolutionists studying evolution moved the feld forward. Ironic, eh?
Ignoring how utterly preposterous your second paragraph is, Here's my paraphrase of the first, correcting your egregious classification errors:
For example, that the discovery of facts from fields outside classical darwinian paleontology which confirm Darwin, somehow works to discredit his theories. Do you have a theory about how the Illuminati and the Rigelian Lizard People are somehow behind this?
Should we go over one more time how utterly brain-dead it is to claim that Watson isn't an evolutionary scientist? Maybe you think Newton wasn't a physicist?
So when you call me "delusional", I should take that as a compliment?
As if molecular biology and biochemistrLook up, say developmental evolution (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed), on pubmed. You will find hundreds of papers published in the last month alone that are obviously not written by hand-waving wordsmiths.
All of them. By definition. Who do you think evolutionists are, exactly? Perhaps what you mean when you say "evolutionist" is, in fact, "field paleontologist".
By the same token, we unwarrantedly infer that 10081 is larger than 5, but in actual practice, that isn't being measured, were are merely assuming, due to our left-wing leanings, and hatred of God, that because 5 < 6 and 6 < 7.....10080 < 10081, therefore, 5 < 10081.
This is part of an old feud, and the vitriole runs in both directions. Micro-biologists have also been embarassed from time to time by the bone guys. No amount of micro-biology would have established the continuity between eohippus and horse that has been achieved since Watson's breakthru, and neither party could have untangled the recent anthropoid tree without the help of the other. Your personal experience does not a statistically meaningful sample make.
Crick was a physicist who was studying protein structure via X-ray crystallography. Watson has a phage biologist -- a geneticist after having been a naturalist/ornithologist type.
You are still delusional. I said nothing even akin to your claim and your quotes show that.
I stated that it has been discoveries of people not addressing evolutionary questions but more basic and fundamental questions that have moved evolution forward and provided the most insight to move the theory forward. I provided examples, eg Mendel, Sutton, Hunt ...
Why you object to these historical realities is mysterious. Probably not best to speculated on this as well.
I'm sure they do. Unfortunately Behe & Co. have managed to incite enough 'controversy' to require that time, energy, and resources that could be of more use elsewhere are now required to answer his nonsense.
You agree with me that evolutionists should be their own worst critics, but then say I am dissing evolutionists for saying it. If you agree with me, aren't you also then dissing them?
And the rest of it is rambling. eg
You also note: "why do you think someone should present an alternative?" Are you going to overturn a scientific theory for no reason? Theories change when better alternatives come along. If you have one, present it. But you don't. What you have is a religious belief, not a scientific alternative to the theory of evolution.
What point are trying to make?
I in no way attacked js1138. Saying so is in fact a personal attack on me and there are to be no personal attacks on these threas.
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The take home message -- stop projecting your own ideas in to things I write based upon your experiences with creationists.
That goes for everyone here. It makes you seem like psychos. For exaple. I say most of the evidence supporting evolution comes from molecular biologists and geneticists. That somehow is taken to be an attack on darwin's principles. The level of irrationality is very difficult to deal with.
Not a very nice comment.
Why is that not a nice coment? I went out of my way to be nice.
The question really is at the crux of the non-scientific or social aspects of this topic, which clearly is the dominant force in why it is disccussed here.
My point exactly.
But in actual down and dirty fact, Francis Collins, as an example, was in the Department of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics.
He wasn't doing evolution research.
He was doing basic genetic and medical research.
That's one example. Specious coments such as I quoted don't inform or clarify.
Come on. Now you jabbering nonsense.
You know what I stated is 100% true and accurate. There is no reason to deny it. To do so would be an obfuscation that is not necessary.
If it is nonsense there is no reason to address it.
It is an interesting phenomenon that an obscure biochemist who never did much is now driving decisions made by editors of Science and NPG.
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