Meyer's Hopeless Monster

That's why I love these design guys. You tell them what they believe, and they tell you "that's false" and tell you what they think they believe, which, as it turns out, was exactly what you said in the first place.

So, what you're saying is, the Fallacy of the False Dilemma is the best support you have for your argument?

Not the event; the mechanism.

Darwin couldn't propose natural selection as a mechanism of evolution until he had seen selection in action. Similarly, intelligence can't be proposed as the source of biological systems until we see an intelligence create a biological system.

Really? Because so far, the only words you seem unwilling to use are the words that would support your arguments with evidence.

No, you were asked for the evidence for a designer. You offered a supposed lack of evidence for naturalism via a rhetorical question.

But that's the fallacy of the false dilemma. Even if you were to somehow disprove naturalism, that wouldn't substantiate an intelligent designer.

Design is never a mechanism. Only someone completely ignorant of the way things are made would make such a statement.

Turning something on a lathe? That's a mechanism. Casting in bronze? That's a mechanism.

"Design"? Not a mechanism.

Irrelevant. Darwin was the first to propose a scientific model of evolution because he was the first to indentify the mechanisms.

NS doesn't create, NS selects. RM creates.

Together, we've seen these processes generate endless variety and novelty, as you have been shown in other threads.

Certainly, but I've never heard of it doing anything but shuffle genes already created by natural selection and random mutation. I've never heard of any genetic engineers engineering a totally novel organism from scratch, as you would have us believe intelligence can do.

We observe it in every new organism.

No, what you gave was what you viewed as a lack of evidence for naturalism.

Thus, you committed the fallacy of the false dilemma. It really is that simple.

Lac operons in E. coli.

The mechanisms are natural selection and random mutation, working together.

Of course. We know that selection occurs because it's impossible for it not to, based on the laws of physics. We know that random mutation occurs because it's impossible for it not to, based on the laws of physics. We don't know of any other operating processes, and have certainly observed none.

In the same way that we conclude that it is gravity that holds you in your seat like everybody else and not your own personal invisible angels, we conclude that these genes were the process of NS and RM.

Since it only had to happen once, and could not now happen on Earth, that's not surprising.

You believe that it is merely an assertion that organisms reproduce? Or that organisms take non-living matter as food in order to construct themselves?

This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-18-2004 12:07 PM

I presume he meant the pre-biotic Earth.

At some point, if you trace the history of organisms back, there comes a point when the study of those ancestors becomes chemistry and not biology. I presume that's what he meant.

Maybe it's not so much of a point, exactly.

Well, if he gets it published the way you ID guys have to get your stuff published, the notice he attracts is going to be of the legal variety.

The journal is a journal of systematics and taxonomy. This is not an article on those subjects.

Clearly, peer-review did not occur. Moreover, from the journal itself:

quote:

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The paper by Stephen C. Meyer in the Proceedings (“The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories,” vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239) represents a significant departure from the nearly purely taxonomic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 124-year history. It was published without the prior knowledge of the Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, or the associate editors. We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.

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This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-27-2004 11:13 AM

At any point that you have evidence, please feel free to share it.

The journal in question does not publish papers of this nature. Why would they have made an exception in this case? Malfeasance is the most likely explanation.

So they weren't exactly "peers", were they? Peer review did not occur, then, in the sense that peer review constitutes a practice designed to fairly judge a paper on its scientific merits, not its ideology. Is the process was perverted, as it probably was, then can it really be said to have occured?

But I recognize the correction.

What evidence?

I'm sorry, you misunderstood. I asked for the evidence, not to have the claims repeated.