Very late. Very busy. Very long day and miserable weather that had made for a somewhat sleepless night.
C) An analogy was made to a centipede multiplying its feet through mutations. Without any intention to be disrespectful, it seems amateurish to simplify so drastically . So much is required for something like that to happen, I am not so sure it makes it any easier to understand. But I can understand why Dawkins would use it to promote his point.
HOX genes, as has been mentioned and which you should learn about. Genes which encode for the development of entire body parts. And when mutations (obviously deleterious ones) are encouraged in fruit flies (a popular subject in genetics research since the turn of the 20th century because of their short generation times) you can get such things as legs growing where antennae should be, which could be explained, I believe, by a single mutation of a regulatory gene which switched on the wrong HOX gene at that location.
As Dwise points out in his webpage, the conclusions we make from our observations is a different story- perhaps we could call it philosophy.
Could you please properly cite me on that? Tell us the web page and directly quote what you are referring to? And preferably do it with quote tags. At the bottom of this message is a peek button. If you click on it, you will see all the mark-up encodings, which we call "tags". If you ever want to know how to do something that you see in a message, use that
peek button. Though I must warn you that sometimes we resort to HTML.
As you should have read on my cre/ev homepage (
http://http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/index.html), I have been repeatedly accused in "run-by fruitings" of saying things on my site which I have never said there. It is for that reason
on my site that I ask that everyone please tell me exactly where they think I had said any such thing that they claim.
I hereby invoke that right of being told just what the hell you are talking about! Ye're just lucky I dinna don me kilt te say that. Sorry, ye got my Scottish up there! Please point out to everybody what exactly you are referring to and then we can all discuss it.
Over the weekend, I have discovered a blurb from none other than Thomas Nagel himself decrying the portrayal of Darwinism as gospel.
My Mexican father-in-law had an expression: En su propria casa se conece. ("In his own home he is known.")
So then just who exactly is this Thomas Nagel? What biological research has he conducted to make him an expert on Darwinism? Oh, he's a philosopher. OK, so what does that have to do with biology?
Here is something that I had started to write in response to another message (
HINT!!!!! use the peek button here to see how to do a quote, and URL links):
quote:
There are two basic types of anti-evolutionist: creationists and ID proponents. That holds true for the most part, even though the creationists have taken to trying to pass themselves off as IDists albeit just enough to fool themselves into thinking that they're fooling anybody.
The creationists got started around the end of WWI and gave us the infamous "monkey laws" in the 1920's. The Scopes Trial was an unsuccessful attempt by the ACLU to get a test case before the US Supreme Court, but it failed when the case was thrown out in the state appeals court for a technicality. It wasn't until Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) that a "monkey law" case finally got to the US Supreme Court and resulted in the "monkey laws" being struck down as unconstitutional. That woke up the slumbering creationist movement and ushered in the current conflict. I detailed that much more in a presentation I gave at church (Unitarian Universalist -- http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/Earlybird.html).
The creationist form of anti-evolutionism is characterised by a near exclusively religious basis, including belief in biblical literalism which extends to belief in a young earth, one which is no more than 10,000 years old. Their strategy included the creation of a legalistic deception, "creation science", for the purpose of fooling the courts with false claims that their purpose for opposing the teaching of evolution is for "purely scientific reasons." That's commonly called "playing the game of 'Hide the Bible'." When the true religious nature of "creation science" was exposed in (Edwards v. Aguillard (1987)), that killed use of that term. Creationists adapted by posing as "intelligent design" proponents, thus changing the game to one of "Hide the Creationism." That also failed when ID was exposed as a thin disguise for creationism in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005). I don't know what they've done in response to that.
In the 80's and 90's, another anti-evolutionism movement was forming: Intelligent Design. These anti-evolutionists primarily objected to evolution on philosophical grounds, though many individuals also had personal religious qualms as well (eg, principal founder, lawyer Phillip Johnson, said in an essay that he objected to evolution because "it leaves God with nothing to do."). They did not hold to young-earth or literalist beliefs, though they did recognize allies in the creationists and worked on cementing ties with them.
A big difference between the two types is in their education and professional training, which shows in their material. In general, creationists do not know what they are talking about. That doesn't hinder them when they are talking to others who also do not understand the science, but it leaves them very vulnerable among those who do understand such things, which is why they avoid those encounters or seek to control them (as in the infamous creation/evolution "debates"). Even the creationists who are well educated will frequently make claims that are far outside their areas of expertise, making flagrant errors in the process. In general, their claims are not only bullshit, but are bullshit of rather poor quality that start to fall apart the moment you begin to check them and can be refuted easily by just about anybody.
OTOH, IDists come up with bullshit arguments that are of much higher quality. They are of much higher academic quality and usually employ advanced mathematics. As a result, their critics must themselves have a higher education and be well training in those fields in which the IDists base their claims. That makes for a much tougher nut to crack. Their claims are still bullshit, but it takes a lot more work to expose them as such.
A number of IDist arguments employ information theory. Incorrectly, of course, but it flies far enough over their audiences' heads to bedazzle and to confound them nonetheless.
Your first two "points" seemed to try to make use of "information theory" type of arguments. Perhaps you were being influenced by your ID readings?
But back to Nagel (German for "nail").
The purely ID anti-evolutionists hold that position for some kind of philosophical reasons. Is Nagel one of those? Does that compromise in any way what he says?
I have mentioned a local creationist, Bill Morgan. He often engages in a typical creationist snake-oil show called a "creation/evolution debate." He has posted videos from some of those debates onto YouTube -- with a physicist Phil Sommerfeld on 07 March 2009. Here are a couple of those that I tried to discuss with him (met with dead silence, of course):
quote:
In Part 6 of 11 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He_M68cuC1k&list=PL2DC898... ) at 5:41 you cite Dr Georgia Purdom, PhD Molecular Genetics, in order to "refute" retroviruses. You made sure to explicitly point out her PhD in Molecular Genetics. However, you completely avoided mentioning that she is a professional creationist who works with Answers in Genesis. You misled the audience into thinking that she was speaking as a scientist, when in reality she was speaking as a creationist.
Clearly your intent was to deceive the audience.
And,
quote:
In Part 10 of 11 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CES4DnCRD2w&index=10&list... ) at 6:23 you repeat the deceptive trick you pulled using Dr Georgia Purdom, only this time you cite Dr. John C. Sanford who is an anti-evolutionist of the "Intelligent Design" variety and is also a young-earth creationist. Yet again you made sure to explicitly point out his PhD while completely avoiding any mention that he's a creationist. Again you misled the audience into thinking that he was speaking as a scientist, when in reality he was speaking as a creationist.
Clearly your intent was to deceive the audience yet again.
So then just who is this Thomas Nagel fellow? One of those fucking creationist lies?
Or just maybe you can provide us with a righteous citation for that quote that you never even bothered to provide us with in the first place.
A friend I work with is a Christian fundamentalist. I believe that there is mutual respect between us ... I certain do respect him and I assume that that respect is reciprocated. One day, I shared with him a fundamental problem I have with fundamentalists. They lie about everything. He was troubled by that perception. I sincerely hope he can work it out.
Lamden, creationists and IDists alike will lie to you. That is in their nature. So what are we to do? Follow truth. Follow truthfulness. Follow honesty. That is what I argue for at my site, isn't it?
Bill Morgan opposes my position. He says that he opposes it. He says that he has always opposed it and that he has disproven it. So what is my position? I have repeatedly asked Bill Morgan that and every single time he has remained completely silent.
My position is the truth and truthfulness and honesty. And every single step of the way, Bill Morgan has opposed the truth, and truthfulness, and honesty.
OK, Lamden, just what exactly is the nature of your Thomas Nagel quote? Did he actuallly say what he appears to have said? Or has he been misquoted?
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