The Religious Cult of Evolution Fights Back

PostItNews.com ^

[postitnews.com]

HARRISBURG, PA-The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and attorneys with Pepper Hamilton LLP filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of 11 parents who say that presenting "intelligent design" in public school science classrooms violates their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.

"Teaching students about religion's role in world history and culture is proper, but disguising a particular religious belief as science is not," said ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Witold Walczak. "Intelligent design is a Trojan Horse for bringing religious creationism back into public school science classes."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United Executive Director, added, "Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we must resist any efforts to make them so. There is an evolving attack under way on sound science...Read More

[VadeRetro]

I'll copy forward the conclusion of the previous link since there seem to be so many non-clickers on the No-See-Um side of things.

So to summarize, although Spetner's arguments are superficially plausible, a deeper look with some knowledge of biochemistry shows massive flaws. Spetner is wrong in the details of the biology, ligand specificity is not directly governed by binding string length as required by Spetner's theory, and ligand binding is not and "all or nothing affair". This invalidates his analyses. Even then, Spetner's own examples do not support his claims. Furthermore, when using his metrics Spetner swaps metrics when one shows inconvenient changes.

[jwalsh07]

Debates are so much more interesting than proclamations from the techno mount.

[VadeRetro]

I was not claiming that Spetner had clammed up and skulked off. Creationists in fact are never wrong. They charge forward forever. The reader will have to judge if real holes are being poked in creationist info theory arguments and whether the rebuttals to the rebuttals are more than an illusion of hocus-pocus and rhetoric.

I'm saying that all creationism offers is selective (or even wrong) "facts," bad models, bad logic, bad faith.

[jwalsh07]

I'm saying that all creationism offers is selective (or even wrong) "facts," bad models, bad logic, bad faith.

I'm well aware of your contempt for creationists. The evidence abounds on FR.

What I wasn't aware of was that you had a penchant for presenting only one side of the story when a guy like Spetner is more than willing to enage the critics of his theories, models and calculations.

[puroresu]

Considering the raw number of micro-organisms on earth, and the rapidity with which they reproduce, shouldn't we observe mutations among them that both increase information and provide a positive advantage? The sheer number of reproductive events among such organisms is exponentially greater than the number of such events among, for instance, mammals. If we've so far failed to see such a mutation among micro-organisms, how much time and how many mutations would be needed to produce a giraffe or an elephant? I'm not asking you to answer that specifically, just noting that the total number of splits that occur daily among the countless "zillions" of micro-organisms on earth likely exceeds to total number of elephant births that have ever occurred.

[Right in Wisconsin]

No snow here in Wisconsin, just really cold! I didn't ask about science, so give me your opinion of whether it makes sense to you (that is, being designed).

[Right in Wisconsin]

I wasn't making a statement about science. Besides, quantum physics is just an unknown at this point, but if everything else fit into the puzzle being put together, I doubt its going to end up an anamoly.

[Right in Wisconsin]

What's not a theory to YOU doesn't mean its not a theory to ME. We both have support in our positions. Like another loves to say, saying it over and over again does not make is so.

[PatrickHenry]

Considering the raw number of micro-organisms on earth, and the rapidity with which they reproduce, shouldn't we observe mutations among them that both increase information and provide a positive advantage?

I don't think anyone knows how many single-celled plants and animals exist. They exhibit an enormous range of variety. It's possible that new types appear from time to time. How would anyone really know?

Unless something somehow evolved that was impervious to all potential preditors, it would be unlikely for it to start making big-time progress so it could begin developing into something like an elephant. That could happen if most existing life on earth were destroyed. Then the way would be open for new forms to exploit the suddenly unoccupied and thus available environment. This has happened in the past, following a few well-documented great extinction events. It could happen again.

[Right in Wisconsin]

I wasn't making a statement about science.

[Right in Wisconsin]

Dimensio has more to him than he likes to admit.

[Right in Wisconsin]

I didn't read his entire post, but I understand what he/she is saying. Hitler was a strong believer in evolution, so much so that he endeavored to weed out the weak to make a master race. I also believe it has a lot to do with our current cultural wars - not saying its accurate, but by crediting evolution without a God makes some who would prefer not to act Christian, if you will, to be the moral standard of their own life.

[PatrickHenry]

Hitler was a strong believer in evolution, so much so that he endeavored to weed out the weak to make a master race.

I can't stand it when this nonsense gets posted. Where was the biology training in Hitler's background? He wanted to be an artist, or an architect. He knew nothing of Darwin's work. In the field of economics, the closest thing to "survival of the fittest" is the free enterprise system, which Hitler opposed. Stalin too (and Stalin had studied for the priesthood. No biology exposure there).

There are over 9,000 biology teachers in the US. All of them exposed to the allegedly destructive teachings of Darwin. How many of them are mass murderers? Tyrants? Nazis? Can you name even one? Certainly Darwin wasn't much of a criminal, and he was certainly a "Darwinist."

Actually, Hitler was a creationist. In his own words:

For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.
-- Adolph Hitler, creationist

Source: Book 2, Chapter 10, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
Discussed at Adolf Hitler's Religion.

[BJungNan]

The words of Patrick Henry

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of free men. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, are incompatible with freedom."

Patrick Henry ·1736-1799·
Virginia House of Burgesses
Born: May 29, 1736 in: Hanover County, Virginia.
Education: (Lawyer, Politician)
Work: Elected to Virginia House of Burgesses, 1765;
Admitted to the Bar of the General Court in Virginia, 1769;
Elected to the Continental Congress, 1774; Virginia Militia Leader, 1775; Governor of Virginia, 1776-1778, 1784.
Died: June 6, 1799.

And how now has this nation evolved?

[RussP]

RussP wrote:

By the way, I'm always amused at people who think that so-called "genetic algorithms" provide evidence for evolution. Last I heard, they are programmed by ostensibly intelligent engineers. If they are not intelligent, then they are certainly overpaid, eh?

jennyp replied:

That logic - all experiments are designed, therefore the world is designed - is totally bogus. It would invalidate all scientific knowledge about the natural world a priori.

It'd be like saying "pour this acid into a beaker. Add a drop of this clear liquid. See how it turns red? That's because you're wearing a red shirt!"

RussP replies:

Did I say -- or imply in any way -- that "all experiments are designed, therefore the world is designed"? How you could manage to twist my statement into that abomination is beyond me.

Let's start over. Genetic algorithms are algorithms that attempt to solve high-dimensional optimization problems with many local extrema (minima or maxima, depending on the goal). They work by injecting some randomness into the solution, which is analogous to what happens in evolution. The randomness keeps the algorithm from getting trapped in a local minimum as would happen with other algorithms such as simple gradient descent. They are not the only type of algorithm that injects randomness, but they are the type that are supposedly modeled after natural evolution.

OK, now let me explain why it is absolutely ridiculous to imagine that the purported effectiveness of these algorithms somehow corroborates the theory of evolution.

First of all, genetic algorithms are most certainly *not* designed to test the theory of evolution. They are designed by ostensibly intelligent engineers to solve high-deminsional optimization problems. If they were designed to honestly test the theory of evolution, they would probably fail miserably.

If said engineer is indeed intelligent, he will not let all of the potential solutions "go extinct." But nature has no qualms whatsoever about letting everything go extinct.

The engineer will attempt to tune the parameters (mutation rate, etc.) for the fastest and/or best solution. Does nature do that? Evolutionists certainly don't think so.

I could go on and on, but that should suffice to make the point. People who think that the effectiveness of genetic algorithms somehow supports the theory of evolution are well and truly clueless on the matter. Yet I hear it often. Heck, I bet I'll hear it on this thread.

And your interpretation of my point was just nonsensical.

[RussP]

RussP wrote:

I get the impression that many evolutionists do not comprehend large-scale combinatoric probabilities. They are always pointing out the "billions of years" available. I think it was Julian Huxley who famously said that a monkey randomly pounding at a typewriter could eventually type out Macbeth. That's true, but its also very misleading. Someone (perhaps Spetner) did an amusing analysis. He concluded that you could fill the entire known universe with such monkeys pounding at typewriters for trillions of years, yet the chances of randomly typing out even the first page of Macbeth are virtually zero.

PatrickHenry replied:

Not a great analogy. As I attempted to explain yesterday -- and this will be my last attempt -- you not only have billions of years, but billions of reproduction events every second during each of those billions of years.

Further, for each succeeding second of that time, the emerging biosphere isn't starting from ground zero. In organic chemistry, you get to keep your winnings after each round. Each time a successful combination occurs, it persists, and the next round of reproduction builds from there.

RussP replies:

But you don't get that persistence when you are talking about getting to the first living cell capable of reproducing itself. Until cells are capable of reproducing, all information is lost and you are starting over and over essentially from scratch -- like the monkey at the typewriter starting from scratch.

Read chapter 11 of Michael Denton's book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" for a good analysis of the scope of the problem. The simplest known living cell turns out to be more complex perhaps than all of man's technology. It has several interdependent subsystems that are each critical to the viability of the cell. And here's the kicker: the protein synthetic apparatus is itself made of protein. So how did the protein in the protein synthetic apparatus get produced.

Yes, I know that evolutionists can wave their arms and tell us that we just need to use our imaginations and imagine how it could happen incrementally. But no "simple" transition cell has ever been found. And they never do a probabilistic analysis, either because they are incapable or because it would demonstrate the absurdity of their "overwhelmingly supported by the evidence" theory.

[RussP]

RussP wrote:

I beg to differ. Spetner has studied the issue for some forty years, and he claims to be unaware of any mutation that has actually been discovered that a) benefitted an organism somehow, and b) added information. If you know of one, please let me (and him) know.

VadeRetro replied:

That's the classic creationist argument. "I know nothing and nobody can make me know."

RussP replies:

Boy, that has to take the cake for distorting my statements. Do you read posts before you reply to them? I wrote, "If you know of one, please let me (and him) know." And that translates into "nobody can make me know"? Incredible. But I guess that demonstrates the kind of irrational hostility I am up against here.

RussP wrote:

What does he mean by "add information." This rules out mutations in bacteria, for example, which makes them resistant to antibiotics by simply reducing their sensitivity to the antibiotic. Reducing sensitivity is not *adding* information; it is *subtracting* information. Read the book for the details. (By the way, its hard to become a professor of information theory at MIT by just making up nonsense.)

VadeRetro wrote:

You're mixing non sequitur with appeal to authority, but read the link above.

RussP replies:

I'm dam*ed if I do and dam*ed if I don't. If I don't point out Spetner's credentials, many evolutionists will simply dismiss him as some wacky "creationist." But if I point them out, its an "appeal to authority."

No, its not an "appeal to authority." It's a simple statement of his credentials. If I had written, or even implied, that you should take his word for it because he is a professor at MIT, *that* would have been an "appeal to authority."

But I'll bet it made you feel intellectually superior to me to incorrectly label my statement as a logical fallacy. And it relieved you of replying to me with substance.

By the way, when you look for a doctor, do you check to see if he has a degree? Or would that be an "appeal to authority"?

[jwalsh07]

For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will. -- Adolph Hitler, creationist

Very funny. Hitler claiming Christianity or citing God is evidence of nothing but a lunatic who would use his own Mother to advance his unChristian and unGodlike agenda of a master race at the expense of any who would oppose him.

[PatrickHenry]

Me:
Further, for each succeeding second of that time, the emerging biosphere isn't starting from ground zero. In organic chemistry, you get to keep your winnings after each round. Each time a successful combination occurs, it persists, and the next round of reproduction builds from there.

RussP replies:
But you don't get that persistence when you are talking about getting to the first living cell capable of reproducing itself. Until cells are capable of reproducing, all information is lost and you are starting over and over essentially from scratch -- like the monkey at the typewriter starting from scratch.

You need some understanding of organic chemistry to get over this block. Those long, complicated, carbon-based molecules form naturally. If the elements are present, it's something that will happen. Organic molecules have even been observed off the earth. The oceans would have probably been full of them. Those are all building blocks from which more complex molecules can form. A living cell doesn't need to (and I agree it certainly couldn't) assemble itself from disassociated atoms. I don't need to see any math. I know an absurdity when I see one.

To go back to your monkeys-and-typewriters analogy, it's as if all the "th" and other useful combinations were preserved. Soon you'd get words. They'd be preserved. Then the monkeys are working with combinations of words. Grammar rules would also be present (all of this is an analogy to the basic laws of chemistry) so noun-verb combinations would be preserved. Now the monkeys are working with an inventory of meaningful sentence fragments. Get the picture?

I agree, it's doubtful that one of them would produce "Hamlet." That would probably require a designer. But they'd turn out a lot of complete sentences. That's the biological world in which we live. Not Hamlet, just organisms like we see all around us.

[RussP]

http://www.nationalreview.com/shiflett/shiflett012102.shtml

Excerpt:

You Mean Hitler Wasn’t A Priest?
The truth is, in fact, out there.

Dave Shiflett is coauthor of Christianity on Trial.
January 21, 2001 8:40 a.m.

A shocking story has been revealed: Adolf Hitler was not a Christian after all. Instead, he hoped to destroy Christianity. This news flash comes courtesy of a group of students at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, who have posted papers on a website detailing Hitler's desire to eradicate Christianity. The documents are from the archives of Gen. William J. Donovan and were originally prepared for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, so we can safely assume they are authentic.

...