Posted on 03/24/2007 10:28:12 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Professors opposed to the Bush library aren't the only angry faculty members at Southern Methodist University this week.
Science professors upset about a presentation on "Intelligent Design" fired blistering letters to the administration, asking that the event be shut down.
The “Darwin vs. Design” conference, co-sponsored by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society, will say that a designer with the power to shape the cosmos is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe. The event is produced by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based organization that says it has scientific evidence for its claims.
The anthropology department at SMU begged to differ:
"These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits," said the letter sent to administrators by the department. "They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask."
Similar letters were sent by the biology and geology departments.
The university is not going to cancel the event, interim provost Tom Tunks said Friday. The official response is a statement that the event to be held in McFarlin Auditorium April 13-14 is not endorsed by the school:
"Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU's endorsement of the presenters' views," the statement said.
The school also will review its policies about who is allowed to hold events on campus, Dr. Tunks said.
The size of the dispute reflects two ongoing battles about academic freedom and responsibility.
One is local: The concern that some SMU professors have that the proposed Bush library and an accompanying policy institute would create the impression that the school tilts politically toward the positions of the current administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Me too. I also find it peculiar when editorialists rage at censorship and limits upon the First Amendment, then wholeheartedly puke upon the Second Amendment.
["...coyoteman, would be the first to accept that evidence."]
I have seen no evidence of that assertion.
["...probability calculations will not determine what is impossible unless the probability is 0."]
You are correct in this. The probability is not 0. It is merely so improbable, that practically speaking, it would require definitive proof to refute. There is none such.
["Another problem is the assumption you make that life has to have formed spontaneously, rather than by slowly and incrementally bridging between non-life, pre-life, protolife and then eventually life."]
What you describe here is the spontaneous formation of life, as opposed to the design of life. You simply restate the evolutional theory as it already is argued. What I assert is that the possibility is so remote as to be impossible.
Even using incrementalism, the first steps of life would have required too much specialism of biochemistry, working together toward a purpose, for it to be unguided. Again, you see a clock, and deny the clockmaker. That is unscientific. To disregard evidence is to be unscientific.
["The main proponents of ID also understand that the 'evidence' you want to put forward is not scientific..."]
To claim that it is mere philosophy, is to remove philosophy from science. Try doing that in other disciplines, and we no longer see a table as a table, but a collection of molecules, made up of atoms, elementary particles, energy, etc. It's simply not practical. Philosophy and science are inextricably entwined. How can you come to a conclusion, based on evidence, without any philosophy?
["Nor have you correctly considered why we know a watch has a watchmaker."]
Indeed I have. You have gone far afield of science when you claim that such complexity merely needed the right mix of chemicals, energy and time to form life, the universe and everything, because you do so without anything beyond circumstantial proof, which is open to interpretation.
And you have to really stretch to justify your refusal to simply accept the obvious, that it had to have been created by the purposful actions of a creator, that there is a force in our lives that guides all things.
Can you honestly say that the evidence of the origins and present nature of life isn't best explained by a guiding hand behind it all?
You present evidence, but come to all the wrong conclusions. You say it's all happened because, well, it just did. I say all of your evidence explains that life is guided; it explains adaptation to environments by all living things, it explains the complex interactions of molecules in living things, it explains it all except where God came from, which is a matter of belief. The scientific evidence simply supports the idea of Creation.
["Showing that it is possible is not the same as showing that it is universally true."]
You hold a very high standard for things that disagree with your philosophy.
True, it's not the same as showing that it is universally true.
However, it does mean that you cannot disprove the theory of ID under laboratory conditions, doesn't it?
And yet, somehow I don't think you'll be swayed. Ever.
["Why is requiring ID follow the same processes and conditions as every other science being a zealot?"]
What bothers you the most, is that we use the same evidence that you rely on, but come to a different conclusion. The best argument to refute creationism seems to be a slur against the creationist as a Luddite who believes the Earth is flat, and the stork brings babies. Pure genetic fallacy.
["Just as an experiment..."]
Just as an experiment, when I'm done with yours, why don't you put together a bowl of promordial soup, add whatever ingredients you think will work best, and let me know when new life forms. Tell me what you get and show me your work.
What ever you do, God forbid you ask him about the speed of gravity. LMAO!
Germ theory will always be theory. In science, the word theory means explanation, not guess.
It's not a science debate, it's a Law School debate. Facts and reason have few roles there. ;^)
Yes, that was the discussion that influenced my initial impression of you.
It's not a science debate, it's a Law School debate. Facts and reason have few roles there. ;^)
Its a backdoor approach because the science departments wanted no part of the IDiocy. Creationists keep trying, but they have had to resort now to dishonest approaches, like ID. (Really, we have no idea who the designer is, wink, wink! We're doing science, see, look at all the big words!)
Indeed. That is what analogies are used for. That is also a limitation of analogy. They are an abstraction, they are not the phenomenon in question.
"His probability math itself is quite sound (which is why Darwinists can't post math of their own to refute it). Said math is also quite germane to whether or not genetic DNA programming can sequence itself (or not) without aid (read: external bias).
His math is sound but misapplied.
The author presented his work to address the creation of the Universe, many IDists use it as an argument against Abiogenesis, but you seem to be saying that it can be applied to the formation of new traits. Is this correct?
Since the argument really has nothing to do with the BB and the start of the Universe I guess we can ignore that idea.
As far as it applying to the formation of new traits you'll have to explain how this particular calculation has anything to do with the modification of existing DNA.
Since you've made this particular calculation an absolute with respect to evolution then all it would take to debunk it is to show a single point where the assumptions affecting the calculation do not reflect reality. I can actually show more than one.
The calculation is based on the random creation of a string of letters that roughly correlate with the molecules making up a DNA sequence. However the way molecules combine is deterministic, not random.
The calculation is focused in a single specific string from out of all possible combinations of a letters of the same specific length. The number of viable DNA strings is not limited to one. In fact the number is unknown, it could be a small percentage of all possible strings or it could be a significant percentage. It is certainly many more than one.
There is no fitness function in the calculations. DNA strings are modified a number of ways, most ways do not express morphologies that can be classed as either beneficial or deleterious at the time. Changes in DNA happens incrementally, with neutral changes building upon neutral changes. Only when the environment changes do they become advantageous or deleterious. The deleterious changes die off and the beneficial changes spread through the population.
The calculations presented, and your comment, indicate a requirement that the specific string develop as a unit, at one time, and be functional. DNA strings in living organisms have no such constraints. Changes can be a simple, or a not so simple, modification to an existing string or a duplication of a substring.
My main point is that the calculations do not apply to nature but to a straw man.
You can run the probability calculations for either DNA or RNA sequencing, so at most you have 4 codons sequenced long-enough for the most basic/simple known life form.
The author in the math cited above simplified the probability math even further in order to show that even life forms orders of magnitudes simpler (i.e. shorter sequence of codons) than the most basic known life need external bias even when given 17 billion years of available, active time.
You can pretend various things all day long, but *you* were the one who was fundamentally wrong about recessive traits.
No amount of dancing and squirming, much less the character assaults that you freely toss in thread after thread, will ever change the fact that you were attempting to belittle me for being right about recessive traits...when in reality you were ignorant of the subject and wrong about the facts.
Who said this was a free society?
Having a vast number of potential "correct" DNA results is indeed taken into account in the math in that article in that thread.
The author also follows up on that point in his second article on the subject.
He correctly anticipated your argument, dealt with it pre-emptively in the thread that you have failed to fully read, and then came back with an even more devastating set of calculations in his second article on the subject (which is linked in that thread, by the way).
You've managed to miss all of the above, and in *hindsight* you still managed to fall into the very trap that the author told you would be your complaint in advance.
That's incorrect.
It is fundamental to probability theory that the result of probability calculations for sequences do not change based on whether the sequence was formed all at once or in parts.
To wit: flip a coin 50 times. The pattern of heads and tails may change with each experiment, but the mathematical probability for 35 heads and 15 tails remain the same whether you flip the coin 10 times a day for 5 days and then randomly group those results, or if you flip the coin all fifty times in a single group.
Moreover, the probability remains the same even if you randomly group together other random sets of 10 coin flips made by vast numbers of other people in vastly different places over vastly different time periods.
It's the end sequence that matters to probability math...not whether sub-sets were later grouped together or whether the entire sequence was formed at one time.
Have you ever engaged in conversation with your mother?
["...coyoteman, would be the first to accept that evidence."]
"I have seen no evidence of that assertion.
You did a bit of quote mining here. The following is the entire quote:
If the scientific evidence against some hypothesis was convincing, a scientist, such as coyoteman, would be the first to accept that evidence.
Please note the requirement that the evidence be within the realm of science and be convincing.
["...probability calculations will not determine what is impossible unless the probability is 0."]
"You are correct in this. The probability is not 0. It is merely so improbable, that practically speaking, it would require definitive proof to refute. There is none such.
I'd like to know what probability calculations you are basing your opinion on because all the ones I've seen are grossly inaccurate in their initial assumptions.
["Another problem is the assumption you make that life has to have formed spontaneously, rather than by slowly and incrementally bridging between non-life, pre-life, protolife and then eventually life."]
"What you describe here is the spontaneous formation of life, as opposed to the design of life. You simply restate the evolutional theory as it already is argued. What I assert is that the possibility is so remote as to be impossible.
The incremental nature drastically changes the probability calculations. That is why it is mentioned as often as it is.
"Even using incrementalism, the first steps of life would have required too much specialism of biochemistry, working together toward a purpose, for it to be unguided. Again, you see a clock, and deny the clockmaker. That is unscientific. To disregard evidence is to be unscientific.
The first steps of life? Which steps would those be?
What purpose are you referring to?
Are you saying that there needs to be a conscious decision made for each mutation and selection process?
What is the unit of 'specialism?
If we call the unit a 'spec', how many 'specs' are necessary before we can claim something is guided?
To accept a poorly thought out, unvalidated and strictly unvalidatible interpretation of the evidence is unscientific. That is why Astrology is not accepted as science.
So far your 'evidence' is an assertion that it looks designed so it must be designed.
["The main proponents of ID also understand that the 'evidence' you want to put forward is not scientific..."]
"To claim that it is mere philosophy, is to remove philosophy from science.
So, if I make a claim that it is not scientific I am making a claim that it is philosophy? Why are you making them mutually exclusive?
Science is a methodology. Conclusions drawn from data using a methodology greatly divergent from that of science is not science. It has little to do with making it out to be nothing but philosophy.
"Try doing that in other disciplines, and we no longer see a table as a table, but a collection of molecules, made up of atoms, elementary particles, energy, etc. It's simply not practical. Philosophy and science are inextricably entwined. How can you come to a conclusion, based on evidence, without any philosophy?
I never said we could. However we can not use philosophy as a substitute for the methodologies of science.
["Nor have you correctly considered why we know a watch has a watchmaker."]
"Indeed I have. You have gone far afield of science when you claim that such complexity merely needed the right mix of chemicals, energy and time to form life, the universe and everything, because you do so without anything beyond circumstantial proof, which is open to interpretation.
So, it is your opinion that the interpretation of a large number of independent and dependent streams of data and the conclusions drawn from the convergence of that evidence derived from Cosmology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Genetics, Genomics, a number of fields of Biology, Statistics, Paleontology, Archeology, Anthropology and a number I'm am probably missing is unscientific?
"And you have to really stretch to justify your refusal to simply accept the obvious, that it had to have been created by the purposful actions of a creator, that there is a force in our lives that guides all things.
Do you think I just decided to stop believing in a creator without thinking it through? That is hardly the case. I went through a lot of information, a lot of science and a whole lot of weighing the options before I let the evidence convince me there is no creator. In fact it became more than a little obvious that there is no creator.
However being obvious is not an indicator that something is scientific nor an indicator that it is correct. Your claim that we are being unscientific because we reject the obvious without some testable evidence is, at best, misguided.
"Can you honestly say that the evidence of the origins and present nature of life isn't best explained by a guiding hand behind it all?
Easily.
There is testable evidence for the mechanisms behind the 'deterministic' formation of molecules, the psuedo-random modification of polypeptides, and the efficacy of selection. I see no testable evidence for a Grand Designer.
I do see a tendency for people to jump to conclusions because they see patterns in nature that remind them of human designs.
"You present evidence, but come to all the wrong conclusions. You say it's all happened because, well, it just did.
We say it happened because we are familiar with mechanisms which could easily contribute to life. The origin of life is well within the range of known processes and physical laws. We also understand where interactions are deterministic because of those laws.
"I say all of your evidence explains that life is guided; it explains adaptation to environments by all living things, it explains the complex interactions of molecules in living things, it explains it all except where God came from, which is a matter of belief. The scientific evidence simply supports the idea of Creation."
Yet the vast majority of all life forms that inhabited the Earth failed in their adaptation and are now extinct. The ability to adapt to changing environment and the occasional failure to do so is quite easily explained by Evolution. It can also be explained by a God. The complex interaction of molecules can easily be explained by incremental change through mutation and selection and to a certain degree by co-evolution of active DNA sequences. It can also be explained by God.
The difference is in the testing. Those mechanisms related to evolution can be tested by making predictions which are subject to falsification. Those tests are always designed with a competing hypothesis in mind and formed in such a way that the results will either point to one hypothesis or the other. This requires that the question being asked have a different potential answer from each hypothesis. An example would be - When a specific test is run, hypothesis A, if correct will give one result and hypothesis B, if correct will give another result. Since the God hypothesis can give every conceivable result it cannot be compared to any other hypothesis. It is therefore not scientific.
If we want to test ID then we have to assume the Designer is not God and that the designer will leave testable evidence that can be tested in comparison to other hypotheses. So far no one has come up with such a test for ID. What they have come up with is the assertion that Evolution is false, therefore ID is true. So far all the 'proofs' that evolution is false have been dealt with by science and shown to be specious.
Even if evolution is shown to be incorrect, something not likely to happen considering it has survived 150+ years of falsification attempts, that does not mean that the ID hypothesis is true, there could be some other naturalistic explanation. The realization of this is behind the attempt by IDists to lump all of Methodological Naturalism/Materialism under the banner of 'Evolution' and hope to bring down MN through attacking the small segment of science which they feel, incorrectly, is most defenseless. For some reason they believe that by bringing down Biological Evolution (derived from Darwin's ToE) all of MN will be brought down. However they need more than just one item to bring down Evolution; they have to bring down the confluence of evidence from dozens of fields. They need to bring down much more than just Evolution to bring down MN. They have to show that science does not result in correct answers, which of course means they have to know the correct answers to begin with (as they believe they do). Unfortunately for them, correctness can be tested for, but it requires MN.
How is that a high standard? It is simple logic.
I can go to the top of a mountain and throw down a stone. Does that mean that all the stones I see at the bottom were thrown there by humans?
"True, it's not the same as showing that it is universally true.
However, it does mean that you cannot disprove the theory of ID under laboratory conditions, doesn't it?
What theory?
The inability to form tests which can falsify ID is the very reason it is not science. It is nice of you to agree with us in this point.
"And yet, somehow I don't think you'll be swayed. Ever.
Not as long as ID is untestable, nope. You find some tests for it that are conclusive and I will have no choice but to reevaluate my position. I've changed my mind before based on evidence.
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