"NCSE is not interested in scientific truth; they are (according to the "mission statement") interested in defending the teaching of evolution in the classroom."
Well over 500 Steves have signed that. Even if only 5 of them genuinely meant it, its still far more scientists than doubt evolution.
"You're misrepresenting the NCSE's agenda. They want the teaching of evolution in the classroom, and NO OTHER VIEWPOINTS"
Too right, because there are not other current SCIENTIFIC viewpoints to teach in a SCIENCE class.
"And indeed it is. I doubt if most of those scientists would really accept that the fossil record really proves neo-Darwinism"
Your ignorance of science is not my problem. Read this: Science does not "prove" things. The fossil record strongly supports common descent.
"I know for a fact that most embryologists are deeply troubled by the theory, since their knowledge of how embryos develop mostly contradicts it"
Name 10 embryologists who are deeply troubled by it then. I notice they were not on your list. Funny that.
Please consider that what you are espousing is just pseudo-science. I cannot put it any nicer than that.
"The NCSE's bigotry (as well as yours) comes out when it assumes that the serious questioning of Darwinism implies the serious acceptance of creationism or intelligent design"
Loads of incorrect words. Firstly Darwinism is pre-1940's. If you meant to use this to refer generally to the theory of evolution then fine, but then there is no evidence to bring in to doubt the theory of evoltuion. Any serious questioning is about how evolution happened, not whether it happened.
"Yep. That's exactly the mentality. As for your own position, you haven't advanced a single cogent argument either in favor of Darwinism, or against intelligent design; which leads me to believe that you accept the theory on faith."
I don't have to teach EVOLUTION (not darwinism) to you. If you really bothered you could go learn it yourself. I don't wish to waste my time if I don't have to. The burden is upon you if you think evolution is wrong.
"Too bad. That's the nature of scientific debate; it's SUPPOSED to go "on and on.""
Behe didn't submit his work to scientific debate. He instead chose to publish it as a popular book.
"What makes a belief 'scientific' is precisely the fact that it can, at least in principle, be REFUTED"
Go on then explain how Intelligent Design can be refuted.
"Wrong. What ALL computer models show is that they require a programmer to input the relevant criteria for selection. These criteria are then labeled "random," when in fact they were pre-SELECTED BY A DESIGNER -- the damn programmer!"
You have no clue. Genetic Algorithms use a random number generator for the random mutation. This is basic stuff in this field, your talk about cosmic rays and programmer input is nonsense. Read again: the mutation in the program is random.
"Berlinski is very good at pointing out the fallacies in all such models. Read his essay in Commentary titled "A Scientific Scandal.""
I don't need to. Genetic algorithms have been used to design efficient circuit layouts and have created designs that the programmer of the GA could not forsee. This latter case I have observed with my own eyes as I programmed such a GA. This is one area I have a problem with antievolutionists because in this area they always refute these programs as "intelligent input". But I know they are very wrong on this so to me it made me initially wonder "hmm what else are they wrong about?". And as I see it is a lot.
"It is Darwinism that posits miracles explained by "random mutations" and ignores the hardcore fact that 99.9999999% point-mutations are harmful to the organism"
Rubbish, you clearly just made that number up by pressing 9 a lot of times. How pathetic, you could at least have tried using 8,7 and 6. It might have been more convincing.
"In a large population, point mutations (as proved, ironically, by popluation genetics) generally get lost in the statistical "noise" of the rest of the population and don't influence either the geno/pheno type at all"
Uhhh no. Assuming the population remains stable then all individuals will reproduce, including the mutated varient. As this continues the beneficial mutation has more and more chance of spreading in subsequent generations. It only would turn out as you say if few offspring were created compared to the parents.
http://www.reviewevolution.com/viewersGuide/Evolution_00E.php
http://www.panspermia.com/ [homepage, general]
http://www.panspermia.com/neodarw.htm [on Neo-Darwinism]
http://www.panspermia.com/mechansm.htm [evolution vs. creationism]
http://www.panspermia.com/seconlaw.htm [on entropy: boltzmann entropy vs. shannon entropy, and the way most neo-darwinists conflate the two]
http://www.panspermia.com/computrs.htm [critique of computer models of evolution]
http://www.panspermia.com/computr2.htm [paper from Genetic Programming conference 1997]
http://www.panspermia.com/hoylintv.htm [1996 interview with Sir Fred Hoyle]
http://www.panspermia.com/chandra.htm [1981 trial evidence of chandra wickramasinghe in Arkansas]
http://www.trueorigin.org/behe06.asp [Response by Behe to critics re: falsifiability of ID]
"Now, one can’t have it both ways. One can’t say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it. Either it is unfalsifiable and floats
serenely beyond experimental reproach, or it can be criticized on the basis of our observations and is therefore testable. The fact that critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against ID (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable.
In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum—or any equally complex system—was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven."
http://www.strengthsandweaknesses.org/news.10.01.2003.htm [website asking that textbooks with evolutionary propaganda (like faked diagrams) be revised]
http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/berlinski/deniable.html [The Deniable Darwin, by David Berlinski, Commentary, June 1996]
"The fundamental core of Darwinian doctrine, the philosopher Daniel Dennett has buoyantly affirmed, 'is no longer in dispute among scientists.' Such is the party line, useful on
those occasions when biologists must present a single face to their public. But it was to the dead that Darwin pointed for confirmation of his theory; the fact that paleontology does not entirely support his doctrine has been a secret of long standing among paleontologists. 'The known fossil record,' Steven Stanley observes, 'fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.'"
http://www.sidis.net/Commentary%20Magazine%20--%20February%201998.htm [Berlinski contra the
Big Bang theory, Commentary, Feb. 1998]
1. List 10 embryologists who deny Darwin.
Since you're a computer geek, I'm safe in assuming that the number "10" is simply binary for "2". I'll therefore list 2 names. If you're talking base 10, you can easily find another 8:
a. Soren Lovtrup
b. Sir Gavin de Beer
In a private email to me a few years ago (responding to some questions I had regarding Darwin's Black Box) Professor Behe wrote that many embryologists he knew in academia secretly had severe doubts about Darwinism, as it contradicted what they knew about development.
Behe addresses question re falsifiability and ID above. See also the Commentary archives for 2002, "Has Darwin Met His Match?" by David Berlinski (by subscription). See also "A
Scientific Scandal" criticizing a famous paper by Dan-Erik Nilsson and Suzanne Pelger regarding a mathematical model for the formation of a vertebrate eye. Berlinksi is a Ph.D in math (Princeton) and proves that the model is just plain nuts. The "scandal" mentioned in the essay's title refers to the fact that a number or knee-jerk evolutionists -- Richard Dawkins, among them -- have falsely claimed that the authors performed a computer simulation of the model. In private correspondence between Nilsson and Berlinski, Nilsson freely admitted that there is no such computer simulation and never has been. Berlinski criticizes Miller in the Commentary article for not publicly stating this, and for allowing this myth to survive.
2. Whether or not one uses a random number generator to input data is irrelevant. A genetic algorithm writer still has to write the algorithm according to the given constraints required by the model; the constraints INTO WHICH the random data are input. The constraints, of course, cannot be random, but rule-governed -- governed by whatever model one is trying to test. Who chooses the constraints in Nature? Who or what is the writer of the algorithm in Nature?
Berlinski on computer models:
"A computer simulation of an evolutionary process is not a mysterious matter. A theory is given, most often in ordinary mathematical language. The theory's elements are then mapped to elements that a computer can recognize, and its dynamical laws, or laws of change, are replicated at distance by a program. When the computer has run the program, it has simulated the theory.
Although easy to grasp as a concept, a computer simulation must meet certain nontrivial requirements. The computer is a harsh taskmaster, and programming demands a degree of specificity not ordinarily required of a mathematical theory. The great virtue of a computer simulation is that if the set of objects is large, and the probability distribution and fitness function complicated, the computer is capable of illustrating the implications of the teory in a way that would be impossible using ordinary methods of calculation."
Berlinski criticizes some genetic algorithms written by Richard Dawkins in "The Deniable Darwin," linked above.
3. Check any good bio text (such as Darnell). DNA single-nucleotide substitutions (copying errors, or "point mutations") usually result in injuries to the organism. In fruit flies, induced mutations result in legs sticking out of ears, but these flies are obvious cripples, not new, thriving varieties. Some mutations are merely neutral, and don't affect evolution one way or the other. As for mutation frequency in a population, Sir Ronald Fisher (along with Sewall Wright one of the inventors of population genetics) says:
"A mutation, even if favorable, will have only a very small chance of establishing itself in the species if it occurs once only." [Fisher 1958, "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection"]
According to physicist Lee Spetner ("Not By Chance"):
"Fisher has shown that most mutants, even if they have positive SVs ["survival values"], will be wiped out by random effects. He noted that a single mutation, even if it is a positive one, has only small chance of survival. As a result, a single mutation is unlikely to play much of a role in evolution. Fisher concluded thatif positive mutations are to play a role in evolution, many of them have to occur."
And they all have to be positive, and they all have to occur at the same time. To find one needle in one haystack is one thing; to find 100 needles in a 100 haystacks, all at the same time, is something else -- like not believable. That's why population geneticists came up with the ad hoc notion that the populuations must be small in relation to the number of mutations; and to protect the small populations from natural catastrophe, they would have to be conveniently hidden in especially favorable environment. Again, not believable; it could not have all happened that way, for every species, or even for the majority of them.
You clearly don't know the literature, pro or con, very well. Obviously, you've never even read Darwin, probably with the excuse that he's "so pre-1940s." You, therefore, have little knowledge of the debate, and no historical context. Additionally, Behe has published many purely technical articles on histones (his narrow specialty within the field of biochemistry) in peer reviewed journals. The significance of Darwin's Black Box is not that it was published by a commercial publisher (Simon & Schuster) rather than a peer-reviewed journal, but that it was the one of the first anti-Darwin books NOT to be published by a religious press. Another fabulous anti-Darwin book, for example, had no such luck. "Not By Chance -- Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution" by Dr. Lee Spetner (physicist from MIT, and specialist in information theory) summarizes and critices modern neo-Darwinism from the standpoint of information theory. The book is published by The Judaica Press, Inc.
Just as the mainstream media contol the "official" press outlets, mainstream evolutionists control most of the peer-reviewed journals. We're all happy that there are alternative venues for news (book publishers like Regnery, upstart newspapers like the NY Sun, websites like freerepublic.com) and we should all be happy that there are alternative venues for scientific/speciality publishing (take-a-risk publishers like S&S, religious presses, websites, etc.). Your bigoted, narrow-minded attitude regarding the sacrosanctness of peer-reviewed journals is the same sort of prejudice shown by the protectionist freepers. The latter do not want a free market of goods and services. They speak, rather of a so-called "fair market"; i.e., one that favors them and their industry at the expense of everyone else. This is done under the excuse that their industry is "essential" to the economic well-being of the country; unless they are protected from "unfair" foreign competition, all sorts of injurious things will happen to the nation (the worst of it being, apparently, that they will go out of business).
You, on the other hand, are an intellectual protectionist. You don't want a free market of ideas (or maybe you merely want to limit the free market to venues that you don't find threatening, such as private institutions, religious presses, religious magazines, etc.). The economic protectionist doesn't believe that the competition is "legitimate"; i.e., those foreign goods were made under "slave labor" conditions; or they were made with an unfair foreign subsidy industrial policy; or they are of inferior quality (and they kindly wish to protect us from them). The intellectual protectionist doesn't believe that anti-Darwin ideas are legitimate; i.e., those foreign ideas are anti-scientific (and they kindly wish to protect us from them, lest we come to believe in magic as an explanatory force in nature), or they come from an unwholesome source (rednecks, hicks, biblical fundamentalists), or they are of inferior quality (the "best" people from Harvard and Yale won't touch them; you shouldn't either). It's still protectionism, and should be rejected on that account.
Your earlier statement about "trusting scientists" on this issue is touching, though naive. Trust no one. Here's Berlinksi on the matter of trust:
"In science, as in life, it is always an excellent idea to cut the cards after the deck has been shuffled. One may admire the dealer, but trust is another matter." [Commentary April 2003, "A Scientific Scandal"]
Finally, I should point out that, while my ignorance may not be your problem, YOUR ignorance surely is. Unfortunately, the hostility and just plain stupidity of your posts is now making your ignorance everyone else's problem too. Come back when you've caught up in the debate. I'd be happy to recommend a reading list for you, which I feel sure you can find at your local library.