Posted on 05/28/2007 5:44:20 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Too late for rebuttal...back at you tomorrow.
The problem is that the "original version" and not a perversion of it, is what led to eugenics. The notion that any variation is inheritable (Darwin) is precisely that notion which makes pathological science like eugenics and evolutionary psychology possible. Despite Mendel and all the advances in genetics, Darwinians still think in terms of Darwinian heredity, even today.
What the F is "Darwinian heredity?"
Even today, even?
The notion that any variation is inheritable.
I never heard of that notion. G’night.
It's best if you remain in your happy little bubble.
I understand the difference between a statistical inference and "evidence." What I object to in this debate is the heated assertion that a statistical inference -- in this and apparently only this -- case cannot be admitted into the discussion.
That sounds a lot like your assertion: Darwinism isn't about truth, and truth is a word best avoided entirely in Darwinism. On this point you are in full agreement with many non-Darwinians here. Why complain about it?
Science is not about TRUTH - Coyoteman
Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] - Coyoteman Cut & Paste
How about a different intelligent design for each dimension of space/time, or each “universe”? (Just exploring the unknown here.)
“If you don’t buy into the group’s beliefs, don’t expect the group to give you a lifetime guarantee of employment, is all I’m saying.”
So Christians should be excluded from tenured public university positions?
This is hardly a scientific critique of Behe’s work.
I was looking for something specific, like why the following statements are not “scientific.” I’ve studies much science at the undergraduate and graduate level. Much of what passes for science in universities does not even approach Behe’s level of discourse.
Here’s an example-
“To Darwin vision was a black box, but today, after the hard, cumulative work of many biochemists, we are approaching answers to the question of sight. Here is a brief overview of the biochemistry of vision. When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in the shape of retinal forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein’s metamorphosis alters its behavior, making it stick to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into activated rhodopsin, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with activated rhodopsin, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)
GTP-transducin-activated rhodopsin now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to activated rhodopsin and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the ability to chemically cut a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, like a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub.
Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.
My explanation is just a sketchy overview of the biochemistry of vision. Ultimately, though, this is what it means to “explain” vision. This is the level of explanation for which biological science must aim. In order to truly understand a function, one must understand in detail every relevant step in the process. The relevant steps in biological processes occur ultimately at the molecular level, so a satisfactory explanation of a biological phenomenon such as vision, or digestion, or immunity must include its molecular explanation.
Now that the black box of vision has been opened it is no longer enough for an “evolutionary explanation” of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century, and as popularizers of evolution continue to do today. Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric. Darwin’s simple steps are now revealed to be huge leaps between carefully tailored machines. Thus biochemistry offers a Lilliputian challenge to Darwin. Now the black box of the cell has been opened and a Lilliputian world of staggering complexity stands revealed. It must be explained.”
So, to paraphrase your own words, for evolution to rise to the level of science, scientists would need to repeatedly replicate random evolutionary changes from one species to another?
How exactly does one ensure pure randomness in a clinically controlled setting? There mere fact that a study is underway implies intelligent design.
I don't need to. I believe the same thing. Are you sure you're responding to the right post? I also believe in the fallability of mankind.
I should have pinged the other poster. I was just supporting your comment.
You quoted me as saying:
Let me get your argument straight... Darwin's theory of evolution... is hogwash.
When my original post was:
[Marx] can justly be compared with contemporaries like Faraday, Darwin, and Pasteur, who are still influencing our lives and thoughts, because their ideas were important not only for their own time, but for many generations to come. These men applied scientific method to new fields. So did Marx -- J.B.S Haldane.Let me get your argument straight. Because Darwin's ideas are still influencing our lives and thoughts, as are Faraday's, Pasters', and Marx's, that is proof that Darwin's theory of evolution, as modified by 150 years of scientific advances by tens of thousands of scientists, is hogwash.
Is that what you were trying to peddle?
Pretty dishonest.
Then you misquote me again on the roll of truth in science. Here is a definition from my FR homepage:
Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from it seems to be correct to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that its use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said "Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths." Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths. Source.A little different from what you are claiming I said, eh?
BTW, to those who think that Guillermo Gonzalez does not deserve tenure because he believes the fine-tuning of the universe and the conditions that create life on our privileged planet are better explained by intelligent design, you might want to ask yourselves why the following professors who endorsed his work are TENURED :
1) Owen Gingerich
Research Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Author of The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus
2)Michael J. Crowe
Cavanaugh Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame
3) Philip Skell
Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Physics, Pennsylvania State University
Member, National Academy of Sciences
4) Henry F. Schaefer III
Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry
Director, Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia
Five-Time Nobel Prize Nominee
5) Simon Conway Morris FRS is a British paleontologist. He made his reputation with a very detailed and careful study of the Burgess Shale fossils, an exploit celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life. Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge University.
Just to name a few...
Are these respected scientists loonies too ? Are they people who don’t know what they’re talking about when they endorse Gonzalez’s work ?
Yes, we adapt. We adapt to the environment we live in and the universe as it is. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be here. The universe does not adapt to us.
Which leads to you previous post. If various physical constants were different, the universe would not form as it did and we would not be here. We would be in a different universe, one that allows life to form. The anthropic principle most explicitly does not say the universe was made to suit us. We just happen to be living at a time a place where it does.
I just cant see how the evidence for the anthropic principle exists anywhere except for pure conjecture. If Krauss cant get his view of string theory to work, maybe its because it doesnt. I dont see how it follows that if a theory doesnt work then the alternative must be the anthropic principle-now thats a leap of faith. It could also be that string theory and other, related theories are not my bailiwick. But, as a life scientist of 47 years practice, I see strong (a gross understatement) evidence that life forms adapt to the universe, or die, and that the universe did not or does not adapt to us.
But anthropic principle researchers are generally not examining the adaptation of life forms to the universe, or the universe to life forms, but rather asking what kind of universe would have been necessary for there to be life at all-— the same sort of question Stephen Wolfram and Stuart Kauffman have asked. And the design inference is not, "these theories don't work, therefore, magic explanation x must be true" but rather an inference to the best explantion based upon markers of design., connecting the dots much as a data mining program searching for terrorist activity does.
What Gonzalez does on his own (not the university’s) time is a subset of that work that provides empirical evidence from astronomy, chemistry and biology that the principle of mediocrity that Carl Sagan popularized was false.
Your comments about purpose making man superior to an indifferent universe are interesting. While you find purpose as something that exists in the mind of man, according to Daniel Dennett, this means you are shirking from the logic of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” which, according to him, is like a universal acid, eating away at our notions of purpose all the way up in regards to the universe and all the way down in regards to notions of personal identity, consciousness and intentionality. In other words, wherever there appears to be “purpose”, Darwin’s dangerous idea gives us every reason to think that science, perhaps on the part of you or one of your fellow neuroscientists, will show that purpose to have been merely epiphenomenal i.e. an illusion. Now, some would say Dennett and those like Dawkins who follow him are extremists, but he would say that people who say that, whether Stephen Jay Gould or Noam Chomsky, or perhaps you, are simply refusing to accept the full force of Darwin’s discovery.
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