Summations Only

Well, Catholic Scientist is an atheist who uses "Catholic" in his name.Okay, just joking. But he posts so little on religion, that it is hard to be sure.GDR has religious views that are more-or-less defensible. It's the theists with indefensible views who won't defend them. I wonder why?

Yes, there is some validity to that complaint.When you, or another creationist, raises a point, that should be answered. But we should try to avoid the piling on that so often occurs.I am trying to follow the practice of not posting unless I have something worth saying that has not already been expressed by others. That reduces my posting rate, but I hope it makes it a little easier on the creationists to who are presenting and arguing their positions.Edited by nwr, : fix typos

I think you have that wrong.The problem is that they have a huge amount of confidence in their beliefs, but they have no ability at all to communicate a basis for that confidence (probably because there is no basis).

I have read Shapiro.He disagrees with neoDarwinism, but he disagrees only in the emphasis. He has different ideas about what is most important, and would like a different theory more consistent with his views.I agree with Shapiro on that point. However, in my opinion, he overstates things when he is talking about intelligence of the cell, and he does not clearly define what he means by some of his terminology.It is hard to know how well you understand Shapiro. For that matter, it is hard to know to what extent he agrees with you. He has not been here participating in these debate, so it is hard to assess what he would have said about them if he had been here.A while ago (it was earlier this year, I think), Dembski raised the question of whether Shapiro is still a Darwinist, even though he criticizes Darwinism. I read about that on the UncommonDescent blog, though I think Dembski may have actually raised the issue on the Evolution News and Views blog (which is an ID blog, in spite of its name). I seem to recall that Shapiro responded, possibly also on ENV. In any case the upshot is that Shapiro's views are such that Dembski would consider him a Darwinist.I'm not sure where that leaves you with your view of Shapiro's ideas. Here's a recent assessment of Shapiro's views by Larry Moran, a biochemist at U. Toronto. Moran is somewhat critical. Incidently, Moran also claims to not be a Darwinist, though I'm pretty sure that most ID proponents would consider him to be Darwinist.

That's about what Shapiro says. The intelligence he is talking about is in the cell. However, he does not clearly define intelligence, and most people find the claim of intelligence a bit implausible. He is probably using intelligence to refer to what most biologists describe as teleonomy.On the mutation part, he does say that mutations are not random. However, when he gives details, he does say that you don't only see mutations that will be useful. So he isn't actually disagreeing with other biologists on mutations, except that he is using his own non-standard terminology.On Darwinism, he does not think that natural selection is a satisfactory explanation. I don't think he is actually claiming to see something that other biologists don't see. It's more a matter that he does not like that way of explaining.I have not talked to Shapiro, so I'm not sure if I am getting him wrong. There's an interaction between biological populations and the environment. Darwinists describe this with language that, in effect, puts the environment in charge selecting what should survive. I think Shapiro wants to describe it with the biological population in charge, exploringthe environment to find ways to survive.We often find that there are two ways of describing things. We can say that the dogs wags its tail, or we can say that the tail wags the dog. Both are describing the same thing, but changing what is considered in charge.My take is that Shapiro would prefer a different explanation, but he isn't disagreeing about what happens in biological systems. That is, he wants to describe it as the biological population redesigning itself, rather than as the environment redesigning it. That may be a correct assessment. However, most scientists try to keep their science secular.The neo-Darwinian account is mechanistic, and I think that's what Shapiro doesn't like about it. However, scientists like mechanistic accounts, because those give a better guide to the researcher.

I think you are correct.I see ranting and whining, but very few attempts to make reasoned arguments.I'm guessing, but I suspect that this is due to the increasing role of the Internet. It has become quite hard to keep those children ignorant.Edited by nwr, : fix bad typo (I had buz instead of il)

Perhaps Genomicus is smart enough to understand that the way to change a scientific theory is to come up with something better.