Getting Information from Creationists Is Like Pulling Teeth
Some of you may remember threads on time.com and Pharyngula where Egnor challenged “Darwinists” to say “how much new information can Darwinian mechanisms generate?”
For completeness, you should read those threads, but the summary is that when people tried to answer his question, e.g., by showing that point mutations increase the Shannon information of the genome, or pointing at the literature for gene duplication, Egnor said that wasn’t what he meant by “biologically meaningful information” and refused to provide a definition.
On the Mar. 26, 2007 episode of the ID the Future podcast, Casey Luskin interviewed Michael Egnor. They talked about these discussions. Egnor accused Darwinists of being angry and implied that they were unsure of the soundness of their own theory (start listening at 12:42, if you care).
Then (around 14:16), Egnor said
I, for example, if a Darwinist approaches me, and asks me politely about Intelligent design, I’m delighted to talk about it!
I took this as an invitation to ask him to clarify his remarks.
On Apr. 13, I sent him this message:
Dear Dr. Egnor,
A while back, I read about your attempts to get Darwinists to tell you how how much biologically meaningful information a darwinian process can generate.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure what you mean by biologically meaningful information. Could you please clarify what you mean by this?
Thank you,
He replied (all email reproduced with permission):
Thanks for the note. I asked Darwinists to define biological information, because Darwin’s theory hinges on it. Darwin asserted that all natural functional biological complexity (information) arose by non-teleological variation and natural selection. ID theory asserts that some natural functional biological complexity (information) arose by teleological variation and natural selection. By ‘teleological’ I mean a process that is most reasonably understood as the result of intelligent agency, analogous to human intelligent agency, with which we have ample experience.
These assertions are the whole issue in the ID/Darwin debate.
I think the best definition is Dembski’s CSI, but there remains a lot to understand. What appalled me is that Darwinists don’t even know how to measure the property on which their entire theory turns.
I can’t help them prove their theory. That’s their job. What kind of scientist asserts that his theory is a fact, and when you ask him for the data on which his theory turns, he demands that you tell him how to prove it?
Darwinism is a scandal.
(Emphasis added.)
Unfortunately, that didn’t answer the question, so the next day I wrote back:
Thank you for your answer, but I’m afraid I still don’t understand. For one thing, the people at Time and Pharyngula defending evolutionary theory gave examples such as gene duplication, but you said that wasn’t what you were asking for.
This leaves the question of what you are asking for. You say that it’s close to Dembski’s CSI, but unfortunately I’ve been unable to find out how to calculate CSI.
Perhaps an easier question is, if a process did increase (or decrease) biological information in the way that you ask, how would we know? What would we have to measure?
On Apr. 22, he replied:
No one knows how to measure biological information in a meaningful way. The current ways of measuring information (Shannon, KC, etc) are relevant to sending signals, and are not of much help in biology.
Gene duplication is not a source of significant new information. It obviously changes the way things work in the cell, to some extent, but it can only copy what’s there, and we’re asking how it got there to begin with.
Even though we can’t measure it (and serious investigators like Dembsky are trying to figure this out), we know biological information when we see it. The genetic code, molecular machines, seamless integration of physiology are all obviously the kind of biological information that we are trying to understand. The only source of such information (or functional complexity or whatever) that we know of in human experience is intelligent design. There are no ‘natural’ codes, aside from biology, which is the topic at issue.
Darwinists have a responsibility to show that undesigned mechanisms can produce sufficient biological information to account for living things. If they don’t even know how to measure it, how can they assert that random variation and natural selection can account for it, and why is the design inference ruled out?
(Again, emphasis added.)
I wrote back:
If I understand correctly, evolutionary biologists do not recognize biological information as a necessary, or even useful, concept. You, on the other hand, intuitively recognize biological information, but cannot quantify this information the way that Claude Shannon quantified the nebulous notion of “information”.
Since you are claiming that “How much biological information can be generated?” is a meaningful and important question, isn’t it then up to you to define what you mean? It looks as though you’re asking evolutionary biologists to formally quantify your intuition, which hardly seems fair.
Have I misunderstood something?
He replied:
The origin of functional biological complexity (‘biological information’, or whatever) is obviously of central importance to biology and the Darwin/ID debate. You can’t make the problem go away by pretending that it’s not a problem. We ID folks have a straight forward explanation: like all complex functional ‘machine-like’- systems that we encounter, biological systems are best explained (at least in part) as having arisen from intelligent agency. This raises profound philosophical issues, which is the reason that Darwinists are avoiding it, even to the point of denying that it exists.
If you don’t think that there is anything that could be meaningfully be called ‘biological information’ in living things, then there’s not much that we can talk about. I have no patience for sophistry.
which I took to be the end of that conversation.
So there you have it, folks: Michael Egnor can’t define “biologically relevant information”, no one knows how to measure it, so obviously it’s up to “Darwinists” to do the hard work of formalizing his intuitive notions. But he’s delighted to talk about it if asked politely!
Fine and dandy…and immaterial to the discussion as published. Spinny McYoYo here appears analogous to an uneducated art critic, “I don’t know how to quantify my argument, but I know what I like.”
I just noticed: this may be a coincidence, but in the 7 hours between my first message above and Egnor’s reply, someone at SUNY Stony Brook googled “god andrew arensburger“.
In case that person sees this comment: no, I am not God.
That’s wonderful, Andrew! “I know information when I see it and if you don’t see what I see, you’re a sophist!” Hmm, I wonder if Egnor knows the definition of the word?
John:
I think this just confirms Randy Olson’s point in A Flock of Dodos that the problem with ID as a scientific theory is that while it seems intuitive, it never rises above the level of intuition.
But what do I know? I’m a sophist.
Lessee if I’ve got this straight: The IDists invent (out of thin air) a concept that even they can’t define or quantify. Nonetheless, they also invent (out of equally thin air), a conservation law to go with this unquantifiable concept. But somehow, it’s our problem to show that their invention is not a problem for evolution?
I want to coin a term: reverse anus. Like reverse onus, it means to illiegitimately shift the burden of proof, but applies to the case in which the thing being “proved” was pulled out of one’s ass in the first place.
Eamon Knight:
I thought it meant “I know you’re an asshole, but what am I?”
Actually, we can measure biological information in a meaningful way, and we can demonstrate how it increases through evolutionary processes. Dr. Thomas Schneider published a paper entitled “Evolution of Biological Information ” in 2000, and his work shows definitively how genomes gain information. Here’s a quote from the paper:
“The ev model quantitatively addresses the question of how life gains information, a valid issue recently raised by creationists ( 32) (R. Truman, http://www.trueorigin.org/dawkinfo.htm ; 08-Jun-1999) but only qualitatively addressed by biologists ( 33). The mathematical form of uncertainty and entropy (H = –{Sigma}plog2p, {Sigma} p = 1) implies that neither can be negative (H >= 0), but a decrease in uncertainty or entropy can correspond to information gain, as measured here by Rsequence and Rfrequency. The ev model shows explicitly how this information gain comes about from mutation and selection, without any other external influence, thereby completely answering the creationists.”
Here’s the full text: http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/28/14/2794
And here’s another page covering Dr. Schneider’s work: http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/%7Etoms/
To sum up, the work of biologists have demonstrated, through quantitative means, how genomes acquire information via mutation and selection.
Someone might want to inform Dr. Egnor. Personally, I don’t care to give him the time of day.
Chris Harrison:
Naah, the IDists will just say, “Well, sure, mutation and selection can produce rapid increases in protein acceptor site specificity. But that’s not what we mean by information!” (See also Humpty-Dumpty Syndrome.)
Just look at how often creationists on talk.origins say something equivalent to “That’s not evolution! That’s just allele frequency change in a population over generations!”
Just look at how often creationists on talk.origins say something equivalent to “That’s not evolution! That’s just allele frequency change in a population over generations!”
Heck, Egnor himself says that bacteria develop resistence to drugs just amounts to “bacteria that aren’t killed by antibiotics aren’t killed by antibiotics.”
John:
Furthermore, whether a given bacterium is killed by the antibiotics isn’t random — hence, it can’t be evolution, since we all know that evolution is random.</sarcasm>
Perhaps a few elementary questions about the nature of “information” might help to clarify the concept.
Is “information” an extensive or intensive property? For example, when there is a duplication of a gene, does that double the information or leave it unchanged; or when an oak tree produces many acorns, does that multiply the information?
Long ago, as a trainee in clinical psychology (a profession that I never practiced) I found it comparatively easy to communicate with schizophrenics and to find out a good deal about their cognitive make-up. The method is, during interview sessions, to go along with them in their delusions (within ethically acceptable limits, of course). Although these patients are characteristically and deeply suspicious, they have little or no ‘defence’ when they are not threatened in the integrity of their delusional world. As soon as you start to show signs of disbelief or critique with respect to what they (momentarily) perceive as reality, they shut up and become irritated or fearful.
The teeth-pulling metaphor of the header, is (unfortunately) appropriate: the style of questioning, IMHO, is bound to elicit anxiety in professor Egnor, M.D., that has its effects on his subsequent behaviour. It reflects the difficulty of having to deny the delusion you know you are suffering from.
Conclusion: Arensburger’s attempt to talk meaningfully with the man was a great idea, but in order to be successful the approach should be adapted to the nature of the case. Which, by the way, does in no way implies that you are dealing with a case of schizophrenia. There are other reasons for being deluded. My remark refers only to the suitability of the interviewing technique employed in this case.
“…Egnor said that wasn’t what he meant by “biologically meaningful information” and refused to provide a definition.
Ah, then he must be using Lee Spetner’s metric of biological information. That explains everything.
JAM:
Somehow, this reminds me of Dembski’s “vise stragegy” fantasies of putting “Darwinists” on the witness stand and asking tough questions. But I think he dropped that after he backed out of being a witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
Unsympathetic reader:
What’s Spetner’s metric? “Whatever I need at the moment”? A five-time winner of the Creationist 500 Goalpost Races?
Precisely. Spetner never sticks to a consistent method of assessing biological information. He switches to a new one as you knock down each example, finally claiming that the level of information increase is “not enough” or “not of the right type” to explain the evolution of X,Y or Z.
Deja vu, eh?
I’m sure someone must have already commented on this before, but wasn’t the I know it when I see it definition most famously used to describe pornography? So maybe this ineffable “biological information” that the ID people keep referring to should be regarded as a kind of porn? Brings to mind some interesting images that I’m a little too polite to elaborate on here…
Kurt:
Well, net.nanny software blocks pr0n from reaching the computer, and creationists often do have Morton’s Demon, which prevents unwanted evidence from reaching the brain.
Though I can imagine a creationist mother telling her son, “Stop reading Pharyngula! You’ll go blind!”
I wonder why Egnor and the information mongers at the DI are so utterly ignorant of the facts – such as the fact that Kimura demonstrated in 1961 that adaptive evolution increases genetic information:
Natural Selection as the process of accumulating genetic information in adaptive evolution. 1961. Kimura, M.
“…natural selection is a mechanism by which new genetic information can be created. Indeed, this is the only mechanism known in natural science which can create it.”
Kimura used math, and creationists like math, so they can’t complain…
slpage:
To steal a line from Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to learn something when his ideology depends on him not learning it.
To be fair, this isn’t a widely-known paper, is it? This is the first I’ve heard of it. I don’t remember it coming up in talk.origins, or in the Pharyngula and Time threads listed above. But thanks for the reference. Between this and the paper Chris Harrison gave above, we’ve got the beginnings of a good list of references. A few score more, and the next time a creationist asks this question, we’ll be able to stage the equivalent of the scene in Dover when Behe was given a literal pile of books and papers on the evolution of the immune system, and dismissed it all as being not good enough.
Only when they can use it as a smokescreen.
If anyone is interested in perusing some of the above-mentioned publications on the evolution of information, I have compiled the full-texts of several very good peer-reviewed articles on this topic to a directory on my website: HERE.
Later, I will be scanning in the Kimura 1961 paper and two papers by Saunders & Cho in the J Theor Biol from ’81.
All of these papers address the formal, rigorous definition of information, and apply it to evolution by random mutation with natural selection. Beautifully and resoundingly answering these “challenges” to evolutionary biology from incredulous persons who employ arguments from ignorance.
Arensb:
[quote]To be fair, this isn’t a widely-known paper, is it? [/quote]
I suspect not. But if one is a person declaring that ‘no new information’ is possible via ‘naturalistic, ‘Darwinistic’ means, it seems reasonable to me that one might have come across it in their literature reviews on the subject.
Because after all, if one is going to make broad-based proclamations on such a topic, they should have studied up on it and done at least some background research.
At least that is what I would do. But then, I am a “Darwinist” I suppose, and “Darwinsit’s” have at least the tendency to try to find out some basic information on a subject before they declare that they have “disproved” this or that.
slpage:
True. Of course, one can always object that this or that definition of information isn’t applicable in the case being examined, but then one is obligated to provide a suitable definition. There are several definitions of information in the literature, so it’s not as if it’s an undefined term.
http://miv7.informatics.sunysb.edu/neurosurgery/,sorry – anonymous,IANAL(not even on TV), but seeing as both New York and Maryland have anti-SLAPP statutes, I look forward to consuming much popcorn should someone feel they’re tweaked enough to attempt strongarm tactics.
Fez,
What was really interesting was this litigious threat in response to a very polite email (so I heard, of course), while many not-so-polite public postings have been made that might actually have some libelous content. After all, all lawsuits must show some sort of damages, and simply reporting facts of a matter are never illegal; but some of the blog hits that turn up when one Google’s the good doctor’s name definitely contain material that he could argue have impacted his client base. It definitely appears that he doesn’t want evidence presented that his question has been answered (assuming such evidence exists), as he could then be shown foolish for continuing on with this “argument” of his. He gave you permission to post the emails above…but not one which shows he received an answer to the questions contained in the above emails. Telling.
anonymous,
’twasn’t I that was granted permission or no. I’m not an employee here, I just happened to wear the same color shirt as the owner of this establishment.
In a general sense, and in a perfectly functioning legal system that would be true. Being a cynical misanthrope by nature, my opinion is that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment too frequently is demonstrated to mean, “equal protection between parties of equal income.”
Heh. Peeking at some of the Discovery Institute’s published efforts, it would appear to me that having and maintaining foolish opinions is a requirement for their secret handshake club.
Those interested in any of the three following papers can email me — s.daniel.morgan at gmail:
1. Natural selection as the process of accumulating genetic information in adaptive evolution, M. Kimura (1961)
2. Rate of Information Acquisition by a Species subjected to Natural Selection, D.J.C. MacKay
3. Evolution of biological information, T.D. Schneider
4. The fitness value of information, C.T. Bergstrom and M. Lachmann
5. Review of W. Dembski’s No Free Lunch, J. Shallit
6. The Evolution and Understanding of Hierarchical Complexity in Biology from an Algebraic Perspective, C.L. Nehaniv and J.L. Rhodes
7. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho (1976)
8. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution II: The Relativity of Complexity and the Principle of Minimum Increase, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho (1981)
Okay … my pimp work is done. I got you a mention in Pharyngula:
George Gilder, Lord of the Adguacyth.
John Pieret:
Woot! I guess I owe you a $BEVERAGE_OF_CHOICE next time we meet.
What really gets me about this IDiot’s non-understanding is that they are actually close to a few fairly important things when you need evolution and information theory, such as in the case of genetic algorithms. I have been experimenting with genetic algorithms for years and I really must say that Egnor shows a pretty profound non-understanding of concepts. First off, information theory does clearly apply to evolution in the sense Shannon used it.
Information content changes during the mutation(), reproduction(), and death() steps in genetic algorithms. Mutation’s changes are rather obvious in so far as you have changed/add/deleted some bit of information within the organism. The reproduction stage simply makes two identical genomes which provides new information, in that you now need to know how many copies of that genome you have. If I have one copy of “Origin of the Species” and buy another, have I changed the information? Yes. Number of Copies of “Origin of the Species” is 2 now rather than 1. Now, if I rip a page out of one of them, I have added more information to the entire system. Rather than just two copies, now I have one copy and one copy with modification. Though, you would think ripping out the page removes information from the system on account of having information on the page which is no longer in the book, rather I still have that pages’ information in the other book but now it takes more information to describe what exactly I have. Rather than two copies of “Origin of the Species”, I have two copies of “Origin of the Species”, one with page 41-42 ripped out. You can think of information as how much space it would take to describe exactly what I have, or surprise factor (anything you weren’t expect is new). If I have multiple copies of the same gene each with little alterations, I have more information than if I simply had multiple copies of identical genes, even if the little alterations were produced via a deletion. Making a copy of the gene doesn’t add anything more than a change to the information of ‘how many copies do I have’. However, once I have multiple copies, any change I make adds more information to the system.
So from a raw genotype information theory point of view, certain things gain and lose information within evolutionary systems, but information loss is more along the lines of species or gene extinction whereas gains in information are pretty much anything you do to alter what you have (so long as another copy exists). The truth is, static on a TV screen has much more information than a clear signal. Within the static, each frame is quite random such that to describe each frame would take a lot of description space. However, on a movie to describe each frame, the description would be roughly, “This frame is exactly like the last frame but that ‘guy’ there is a hair to the left.” — In fact, that’s roughly how video compression works (compressed data is a great indication of description space). If you modify your only copy or delete it, you could easily lose information… if you have other copies you can only gain information.
Now, Egnor’s objection is actually an interesting (and stupid) one. The genotype and phenotype are, in a number of algorithms, the same thing where the actual evolving genetic code is equivalent to the what the code does. Such as a flat file of code commands to be processed on a virtual machine. However, in biology the genotype and phenotype are different (as well as in some genetic algorithms eg. GEP). In such systems, it is the phenotype which is responding to the selection pressure whereas the subtle shifts in form arise in the genome which directly codes for (though is not directly the same thing as) the phenotype. This produces many interesting ideas when you consider such things as evolution within hive populations. How does one explain the evolutionary advantageous adaptations of the worker bees when worker bees do not have offspring? Well, oddly enough in such a case the genotype evolution doesn’t take place in the workers it takes place in the queen. Whereas the selection pressure on phenotype echoes back via the success of the workers in providing for the bees. If the queen makes good worker bees, the queen also makes more queens. However this “echoing back” doesn’t actually pass any data though it does in a sense give you information. If you hit a button each time and it turns on and off a light, then one time you hit it and the light doesn’t toggle… well that’s information (such is the case when with your numlock key, if the computer’s bus is busy the light will not toggle and thus hitting that key can tell you if your computer is locked up or not).
Egnor’s objection lies in the (mis)understanding between the relationship of the genotype and phenotype. How does altering the blueprints to a house, change the house itself in a meaningful way? — Well, if you erase a wall and the crew build the house without that wall, that’s a pretty meaningful change. Though the blueprint change is not directly the wall change.
Basically he’s wondering how evolution explains gene expression, and how you define the information of the phenotype; it’s pretty stupid. And since genotype isn’t phenotype, if we ignore the clear relationship between the two, we find an oddity in that the evolutionary selection pressure is being put on something which doesn’t directly evolve itself. The rabbit’s form doesn’t change to fit the environment, the genetic information that codes the rabbit form either becomes more popular or less popular based on the evolutionary success of the rabbit. So the modifications which result in a more successful rabbit get duplicated more often so the mutations to those successful genes increase information, and the less successful forms die out and we lose the information which resulted in the less successful rabbit.
If anybody ever doubted that the ID movement is just creationism wrapped up in a cheesy two dollar suit, which in turn was theology in a one dollar suit, just take a look at the Egnor’s argument. He says that “These assertions are the whole issue in the ID/Darwin debate.” Well, this “natural functional biological complexity” needing to arise by “teleological means” equates the entire argument directly to the teleological argument. Such a ‘thing’ to add this information would need to be more complex (contain more information) than the information added to the system (it needs to possess the added information and the information of how to add it). So how do we explain this force? We need an even more complex information-giver to explain this IDD, and then we need an IDDD to explain that one, and then we need an IDDDD to explain that. Moreover, if we hold that evolution and ID contribute information to the system rather than completely one or the other, we must find a point such that the evolution/ID mix reaches 100% evolution and 0% ID in order to terminate the series (or multiple series trees if we allow for more than one ID). Which, we have for certain cases, such as a computer. A computer is intelligently designed by a large number of very talented people over the years but these designers or their designers (etc) must be completely evolved (or some other similarly converging theory) as we look backwards in time. All intelligence must arise ultimately from a converging process such as evolution (converging as we go backwards in time).
Gentlemen:
I enjoy the decided advantages of layman status and functional biological illiteracy; in other words, I come to your forum in the guise of Everyman, and I have evolved a very thick skin.
Forgive me, but let me recast this in Everyman’s terms.
The ID folks quite persuasively insist that you Darwinist fellows have provided no plausible means within the assumptions of mutation and selection to get from goo to you. Everyman, I must insist, finds this objection to be intuitively very plausible indeed.
Everyman perhaps scans a few of the wonderful online debates at talkorigins and hence links to trueorigins and discovers that the slam dunk he is repeatedly assured has long since been perpetrated in the face of the Dumbski Creationist ID’ers, is in fact no such thing. Your case is, if you will forgive me for saying so, not only un-made, but is rather seriously undermined by the–I want to say Stalinist- tenor of the “only stupid Dumbskis fail to recognize that all of this has been proved to a greater level of certainty than the theory of universal gravitation” gambit.
The fact that the term “information” has not been rigorously and quantifiably defined by your opposition is certainly a wonderful rhetorical cudgel with which you can, and do, beat Spetner, et al, about the head and shoulders. It is indeed unfair that you should be required to answer objections advanced using terms which have not been quantified.
Everyman couldn’t care less about this. The fact remains you fellows run the world and get all the money and power and you have no credible mechanism whatsoever which you can use to get from goo to you. This is bad enough. It is much worse that you band together and attempt to shout down those who insist, however inadequately or irritatingly, that you haven’t proven a thing until you can show how a single celled organism builds up information to create you.
Everyman concludes you guys are all bluff. Extremely well educated, technically sophisticated bluff. But bluff. And you have nasty attitudes.
Now I will take my medicine.
Thank you.
Rick DeLano:
Then Everyman simply hasn’t done his homework. Mutation and natural selection are not assumptions: they have been observed and extensively documented. As have genetic drift, sexual selection, and other mechanisms. And it’s not as if this stuff is hard to find out. talk.origins, the Panda’s Thumb, etc. are full of people who do this stuff for a living and will happily explain it at length and in detail.
Furthermore, what makes you think that your intuition is correct? Intuitively, the Earth is flat. If there are 35 people in a room, then intuitively, the odds of any two of them sharing a birthday are about 1/10. Intuitively, the stars are fixed to a spherical shell around the earth.
Intuition frequently gets things massively wrong, so why should anyone take your intuition seriously? Especially when you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about?
So I trust you can produce some papers that convincingly demonstrate that mainstream evolutionary biology is wrong, with actual data, and arguments that haven’t been refuted a thousand times? Or perhaps, mirabile dictu, you have data that actually supports ID?
(emphasis added)
So are you saying that no matter how stupid someone’s arguments are, no matter how lame, how oft-refuted, how pointless, it’s never okay to just say “STFU N00B” and ask that they FOAD?
In case you missed it, the Intelligent Design crowd had the perfect opportunity to make their case in the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA in 2005. There was a friendly judge who gave both sides as much time as they wanted. But in the end, most of the ID expert witnesses dropped out rather than submit to cross-examination. In fact, it was Michael Behe’s testimony that helped convince the judge that ID isn’t science.
Then Everyman simply hasn’t done his homework. Mutation and natural selection are not assumptions: they have been observed and extensively documented.
Strike one.
As have genetic drift, sexual selection, and other mechanisms.
Strike one and a half.
And it’s not as if this stuff is hard to find out. talk.origins, the Panda’s Thumb, etc. are full of people who do this stuff for a living and will happily explain it at length and in detail.
Furthermore, what makes you think that your intuition is correct? Intuitively, the Earth is flat. If there are 35 people in a room, then intuitively, the odds of any two of them sharing a birthday are about 1/10. Intuitively, the stars are fixed to a spherical shell around the earth.
There exists no similar proof for NDT, and hence your attempt to duct-tape an unproven hypothesis, NDT, to a scientifically demonstrated one, fails.
I note that this particular con, which bears many similarities to the three-card monty scam I used to observe on Boston Commons, is a tremendously powerful indication that those who employ it haven’t got a case and are bluffing.
Call it a hunch……
Intuition frequently gets things massively wrong, so why should anyone take your intuition seriously? Especially when you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about?
It is also important to remember that the fellow asserting the alleged scientific discovery is required to prove it.
You certainly haven’t proven NDT here.
Strike two.
So I trust you can produce some papers that convincingly demonstrate that mainstream evolutionary biology is wrong, with actual data, and arguments that haven’t been refuted a thousand times? Or perhaps, mirabile dictu, you have data that actually supports ID?
Until you got that you got nothing.
The fact that you ain’t got that after about a century and a quarter of all the money and research any scientist could ever have dreamed of in all of history, indicates that you are either a religious fanatic, for whom the upholding of orthodoxy has somehow become your notion of science, or else you are a reprehensible con, attempting to wave your silly credentials around as if they meant a damned thing in the absence of demonstration.
This is another logical fallacy- the Argument from Authority.
Every scientific discovery in history began life as a demonstrated proof of an intuition that was ridiculed by every other scientist in the world before said “proof” was forthcoming.
You got no proof.
Strike three.
In case you missed it, the Intelligent Design crowd had the perfect opportunity to make their case in the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA in 2005. There was a friendly judge who gave both sides as much time as they wanted. But in the end, most of the ID expert witnesses dropped out rather than submit to cross-examination. In fact, it was Michael Behe’s testimony that helped convince the judge that ID isn’t science.
Dear Lord is it past time for a good old fashioned scientific revolution to clean you acolytes out.
/me raises hand: “Does ‘stupid argument’ include continual relocation of the metaphorical goal posts?”
Thanks for reminding me: to go with the name change, it would be really nice if people demonstrated ≥ ε clue before leaving comments.
Fez:
Not sure. But if you can put a siren or bell on them as they whoosh past, I’d like to hear the Doppler effect.
Rick DeLano:
Could you please cite an evolutionary biologist who says that evolution should “turn goo into you”?
Can you please cite an evolutionary biologist claiming that this is what ought to happen if evolution is true?
(Aside: Aside from everything else, any descendants of said fruit flies will always be classified in the same clades as fruit flies. Even if they were bred to have six wings and eight legs, they’d still be Drosophilia because of their ancestral population.)
Please cite an evolutionary biologist who claims that this is what we ought to observe if evolution is true.
And why should they? Drosophilia are in a separate clade from Aves.
Bzzt! Thanks for playing. Proof is for mathematicians and bartenders. Science does not deal in proof, but in evidence.
At any rate, the fossil record contains evidence of evolution in the past. Experiments in the lab; plus things like antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticide-resistant pests are evidence of evolution in the present. The Luria-Delbruck experiment (among others) provides evidence that natural selection causes evolution. The various nested hierarchies provide strong evidence of universal common descent.
If you’re going to answer, then please address that last bit: how can you explain the multiple nested hierarchies if common descent isn’t true?
In other words, you don’t have any evidence for your position. Gotcha.
Now please cite an evolutionary biologist who thinks that evolution means that “a fruit [should] fly mutate a body part not present in the original genome”, or admit that you’re erecting a strawman.
Where, exactly, have I made any mention of my credentials? And who exactly alleges that I’m a scientist?
But be that as it may, I see that you continue to avoid providing any evidence for your position. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that evolutionary theory has been disproven. Now show me why Intelligent Design/creationism should be taken seriously.
Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft, Phylogenetic Patterns and the Evolutionary Process (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 2.
arenseb said:
could you please cite an evolutionary biologist who says that evolution should “turn goo into you”?
RKD:
Sure. “”all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form…”- Charlie Darwin, Origin of Species, First edition, p.484
Does he count?
Cuz if you want to get real cutesy pie, and say, “well, he’s not really an evolutionary biologist…..”
I would invite you to say so. Citations can be multiplied.
RKD earlier:
never once has Drosophila cooperated with said mutations and selections to become, say, a fly with a gill, or with the beginnings of articulated feathers, or, let us be very frank, any bloody thing whatsoever which was not already part of Drosophilia
arensb:
Can you please cite an evolutionary biologist claiming that this is what ought to happen if evolution is true?
RKD: Sure. See above.
arensb:
(Aside: Aside from everything else, any descendants of said fruit flies will always be classified in the same clades as fruit flies. Even if they were bred to have six wings and eight legs, they’d still be Drosophilia because of their ancestral population.)
RKD: (Aside: arensb is apparently unaware that the “primordial form” of Mr. Darwin above; that is to say, the “goo” in “from goo to you”, is asserted to have evolved not only into each and every individual fruit fly, but also into each and every individual member of each and every different clade. Needless to say, no evolutionary biologist is unaware of this necessary logical consequence of Mr. Darwin’s assertion above. It strains credibility to imagine the arensb is unaware of it. Perhaps I have radically overestimated his actual grasp of the Darwinian theory. Alternatively, perhaps he has simply started tap dancing like a two bit sophist. Let’s see…..).
RKD earlier:
Neither genetic drift, nor sexual selection, nor other mechanisms have successfully gotten poor lil ol Drosophilia to cooperate with the program and start turning into a bat. Or a buffalo. Or a termite. Or anything else other than what it was, is and apparently ever shall be, world without end: a fruit fly.
arensb:
Please cite an evolutionary biologist who claims that this is what we ought to observe if evolution is true.
RKD: Sure. See above.
RKD earlier:
Since none of these nice folks have come up with a Drosophilia sprouting feathers………
arensb:
And why should they? Drosophilia are in a separate clade from Aves.
RKD:
Since drosophilia descended through mutation and selection from a “primal form”, which was obviously in a separate clad from drosophilia and aves as well, your objection is an example of the logical fallacy “non sequitir”.
RKD:
In “science”, we provide “proof” before we insist that intuitions have been falsified.
arensb:
Bzzt! Thanks for playing. Proof is for mathematicians and bartenders. Science does not deal in proof,
but in evidence.
RKD: Bzzzt! Wrong again. Science deals in proofs derived from evidence. Often (Popper would argue, always) these proofs turn out to be wrong. But Galileo considered the parallax a “proof” of heliocentrism (it wasn’t, of course), not merely “evidence” for it. Einstein insisted that any observed anisotropy would constitute “proof” that Relativity was wrong, not “evidence” that it was.
Similarly, poor brainwashed victims of Darwinist hoaxsters are force-fed the crock of hooey that Darwinian evolution has been “proven” to as great a level of certainty as has the inverse square law of gravitation.
And of course this latter crock of hooey makes Galileo’s error regarding parallax seem like a paragon of scientific rectitude by comparison.
arensb:
At any rate, the fossil record contains evidence of evolution in the past.
RKD: The fossil record contains evidence of creatures who lived in the past. Any inference of evolution is merely that- an inference. In order to prove the inference, one must demonstrate, empirically, the mechanisms whereby goo has mutated and selected to become you. This Darwinists have colossally failed to do, and the cat’s out of the bag.
arensb:
Experiments in the lab; plus things like antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticide-resistant pests are evidence of evolution in the present.
RKD: Quite to the contrary. All of these decidedly NON-random experiments have failed to provide us with a single example of the kind of evolution Charlie Darwin asserts above– never has any “primal form” been induced, through laboratory experiment, to generate the kind of new information required to express characteristics not previously present in the genome.
arensb:
The Luria-Delbruck experiment (among others) provides evidence that natural selection causes evolution.
RKD: But this is absurd on its face. Natural selection cannot generate any new information in the genome. It can, at best, spread a mutation. Therefore, natural selection can NEVER “cause” evolution.
As for the Luria-Delbruck experiment, the DNA elements to yield the resistance were already present in the genome and had to be activated. Therefore no new information to get from goo to you.
Still up the creek without the proverbial paddle here, arensb………
arensb:The various nested hierarchies provide strong evidence of universal common descent.
RKD:
Actually, given the paucity of transitional fossils, they provide better evidence for common design templates with subsequent variation within braod types.
Also, Darwin himself disagrees with you, since he cannot explain why we do not see innumerable evidences of the transitional forms the development of his “nested hierarchies” would predict. Let’s let Charlie himself refute you here:
“LONG before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:–Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?(The Origin of Species. Contributors: Charles Darwin – author, Gillian Beer – editor. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1996. Page Number: 140.)
Also, a fellow out of Yale, Keith Thompson, has a rather less sanguine view than yours:
“No one needs reminding that we are well into a revolutionary phase in the study of evolution, systematics, and the interrelationships of organisms … to the thesis of Darwinian evolution … has been added a new cladistic antithesis which says that the search for ancestors is a fool’s errand, that all we can do is determine sister group relationships based on the analysis of derived characters … It is a change in approach that is not easy to accept for, in a sense, it runs counter to what we have all been taught. Thompson, K. (1981) “A Radical Look at Fish-Tetrapod Relationships”, Paleobiology, 7:153-156, see p. 153. Quoted in Denton, p. 139. Ellipses in Denton’s quote.
arensb:If you’re going to answer, then please address that last bit: how can you explain the multiple nested hierarchies if common descent isn’t true?
RKD:
How about special creation on basic design templates and subsequent variation within types?
arens:Now please cite an evolutionary biologist who thinks that evolution means that “a fruit [should] fly mutate a body part not present in the original genome”, or admit that you’re erecting a strawman.
RKD: Cite an evclutionary biologist who can show how information arises in the genome to turn a “primal form” into a drosophilia, or admit that half the money we give the Darwinians ought to go to somebody with a different model, since yours is one hundred seventy five years old and high and dry without a shred of empirical proof.
arensb:
But be that as it may, I see that you continue to avoid providing any evidence for your position. So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that evolutionary theory has been disproven. Now show me why Intelligent Design/creationism should be taken seriously.
RKD:
Since proponents of both have done an absolutely exemplary job of blowing hughe holes beneath the waterline of the Darwinian juggernaut, I say let’s give them a tenth the time and a hundredth the funding and see what they can do.
Fair enough?
Rick DeLano:
You creationists love quoting each other and hate original research, don’t you?
These two appear in Is Common Descent an Axiom of Biology? by Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells at ARN. You just cribbed this from them, didn’t you?
These two:
appear verbatim in this blog post by one afdave, right down to the punctuation, spacing, and capitalization. I conclude that either you copied from him, or else you both copied from the same source. In any case, you presented either afdave’s work or someone else’s as your own, without giving attribution. That’s called plagiarism, and college students get expelled for that.
But perhaps I’m wrong, and this is just a big coincidence. If so, then you can demonstrate that you’ve at least read the originals by:
quoting the paragraph of Eldredge’s and Cracraft’s in which ARN’s quotation appears,quoting the paragraph of Darwin’s in which the sentence fragment quoted by ARN appears,summarizing Darwin’s response to the rhetorical questions he asked in the bit quoted by afdave,filling in the ellipses in afdave’s quotation of Thomson (not Thompson, by the way), and pointing out where afdave or Denton skipped some text without indicating it.
But you won’t, will you? As I said, creationists are deathly allergic to original research. God forbid you might learn something that isn’t sanctioned by Holy Mother Church.
Having said that…
None of the quoted text you provided contained the words “Drosophilia”, “fly”, “gill”, “feather”, “genetic drift”, sexual selection”, or “bat”. Or “goo”, for that matter. In other words, you’ve utterly failed to support your assertion.
Why don’t you go read some real biologists to see what they say evolution is about? I’m not asking you to agree with them, just find out what their claims are.
I know, I know… you don’t want to learn what evolution actually is. You just want to continue fighting strawmen.
Before I respond to this, could you please define “information”? Basically, I’m asking you to answer the questions that I asked of Michael Egnor in the original post, above.
As far as I can tell, this is just “Goddidit”, but let’s go with it. Which “basic design templates” are you talking about? Do you mean mammals, birds, Lepidoptera, monocots, and so on? Then presumably the “basic” birds gave rise to sparrows, eagles, ostriches, penguins, dodos, etc.; “basic” monocots gave rise to wheat, onions, garlic, daffodils, rice, etc.
Except that all of the animal species have similar Hox genes that regulate their development (among other things), so maybe the “basic design template” was a primeval animal of some sort, from which pandas, squid, and butterflies appeared through variation within that type.
Except that animals and plants all have cells with nuclei, and use the same genetic code. So maybe the “basic design” is a primeval metazoan, and gorillas, amoebas, and redwoods are just “subsequent variation” within that type.
I also note that you haven’t provided any evidence to suggest that ID/creationism is worth looking into (you can start by answering these questions), nor apologized for your “attempting to wave your silly credentials around” remark.
In short, you’re a dishonest (see plagiarism, above), ignorant, run-of-the-mill creationist. You don’t know what evolution is, but you’re agin’ it anyway.
My, my, my.
It appears that the temperature be risin’….
Let’s get to it!
arensb: None of the quoted text you provided contained the words “Drosophilia”, “fly”, “gill”, “feather”, “genetic drift”, sexual selection”, or “bat”. Or “goo”, for that matter. In other words, you’ve utterly failed to support your assertion.
RKD: Quite to the contrary. Your above paragraph is an example of piffling cowardice. You will not engage the fact that Darwin asserts, in his “primal form”, precisely what I assert in “goo to you”, because you lack the intellectual courage to defend what he certainly had the intellectual courage to defend. You would rather trifle like a sophist with quibbles of semantics. In this respect you show yourself no different from the fundamentalist acolytes of any other fals, than dare to address what he dared to address (no matter if subsequent research has shown him to have been wrong). In this respect you yourself are no different than certain typical acolytes of any given religion: your founder had twice your brains and thrice your guts.
arensb:
Why don’t you go read some real biologists to see what they say evolution is about?
RKS: I am having ever so much more fun assessing the actuial prowess and integrity (or lack thereof, as the case may be) of their adherents.
arensb:
I’m not asking you to agree with them, just find out what their claims are.
RKD:
Their claims are that every living form descends from a “primal form”- in other words, they claim goo to you. I don’t agree with this, because there is no evidence whatsoever to explain how such an astonishing thing might have come to be in actuality.
Of course, someday someone might provide that evidence- although the failure to do so in one hundred seventy five years of heavy-artillery scientific political-lockbox-funding grabs certainly indicates the time has come for a little fresh air.
arensb:I know, I know… you don’t want to learn what evolution actually is. You just want to continue fighting strawmen.
RKD: You poor fellow. Darwin and I know precisely what evolution is. It is the assertion that all living things descend from a primal form. Why are you so determined to obfuscate this simple assertion? The answer is, that you lack the intellectual ammunition to establish it in debate, and hence you resort to the sophist’s semantic quibble.
It’s an old tactic, always employed by losers fighting a rearguard action as they retreat into the shadows.
arensb:Before I respond to this, could you please define “information”? Basically, I’m asking you to answer the questions that I asked of Michael Egnor in the original post, above.
RKD: Sure. “Information”, in this context, refers to the instructions in the genetic code, instructions not present in goo, but present in you, which are responsible for the differences between goo and you. Or, if you prefer, “information”, in this context, refers to the changes in genetic code, not present in the “primal form”, but present in drosophilia, which are responsible for the differences between the “primal form” and drosophilia.
Knock yourself out.
RKD:
How about special creation on basic design templates and subsequent variation within types?
As far as I can tell, this is just “Goddidit”, but let’s go with it. Which “basic design templates” are you talking about?
RKD: Oh, gee I don’t know. Give me one one hundredth of the Darwinist’s funding and one tenth the time and I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, let’s hear about where the information that turned goo into comes from. After all, its you guys who have dumped the trillions here, not me. I’m jes’ a lil ol layman, come in here to get my comeuppance from my betters…..
arensb:Do you mean mammals, birds, Lepidoptera, monocots, and so on? Then presumably the “basic” birds gave rise to sparrows, eagles, ostriches, penguins, dodos, etc.; “basic” monocots gave rise to wheat, onions, garlic, daffodils, rice, etc.
RKD< Oh, I imagine the daffodils and rice could safely be assumed to be a different template than mammals and birds, wouldn’t you? And I would even go so far as to hazard a guess that a template for mammals will differ from a template for birds. Tell you what. Let’s get some funding for new thinkers in these areas and compare notes in five years- fair enough?
arensb:Except that all of the animal species have similar Hox genes that regulate their development (among other things), so maybe the “basic design template” was a primeval animal of some sort, from which pandas, squid, and butterflies appeared through variation within that type.
RKD: Except, of course, that you fellas cannot account for the information gain which converts goo into you, or, if you prefer, the “primeval animal of some sort” into you. Since you are lacking that little bitty ol’ thingy, forgive me for not being too awfully impressed.
arensb:Except that animals and plants all have cells with nuclei, and use the same genetic code. So maybe the “basic design” is a primeval metazoan, and gorillas, amoebas, and redwoods are just “subsequent variation” within that type.
RKD: Gee, I’d love to buy into it, arensb, but where does that new information come from, not present in the primeval metazoan, that is present in gorillas, amoebas, and redwoods?
You really must forgive me for insisting that this question deserves an answer, and not a sophist’s two-bit tapdance.
arensb:I also note that you haven’t provided any evidence to suggest that ID/creationism is worth looking into (you can start by answering these questions), nor apologized for your “attempting to wave your silly credentials around” remark.
RKD: If you have no credentials, forgive me for having accused you of waving them around. What I ought to have said is: ‘waving the credentials of evolutionary biologists around as if they meant damned thing in the absence of demonstration”.
All better now?
arensb:In short, you’re a dishonest (see plagiarism, above), ignorant, run-of-the-mill creationist. You don’t know what evolution is, but you’re agin’ it anyway.
RKD:
You sound like a man whose faith has been profaned, arensb…….
You reprehensible coward.
You resort to censorship, because you lack the courage to face me openly.
It has been a pleasure.
Cheers!
Rick
In other words, you’re a troll.
You going to answer the first part of arensb’s statement or are you going to continue to dance around it like a schoolgirl getting a cold breeze up her skirt? Provide some scientific basis supporting ID/creationism.
So Rickey, why is it all about the money with you anyway?
arensb:You creationists love quoting each other and hate original research, don’t you?
RKD: Umm, let’s see here. Is the gist of your meaning here that Charles Darwin is only accurated when quoted from approved evoloutionary biologist papers, but is inaccurately quoted from unapproved evolutionary biologist papers?
Because, ya see arensb, the quote is the same in either case.
Which raises the troubling question:
Why are you so eager to ascribe some psychotically raving accusation of plagiarism to a quote from CHARLES DARWIN, for Pete’s sake, instead of simply answering the quote itself?
Hmmm.
Could it be because you have not a single wisp of hope, in your quailing heart of hearts, of being able to defend goo to you, or, if you prefer, “primal form” to you evolution?
Inquiring minds want to know, arensb…………….
RKD earlier:
Sure. “”all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form…”- Charlie Darwin, Origin of Species, First edition, p.484
RKD: You see that, arensb? The ATTRIBUTION, right up there? The one that says DARWIN? Are you claiming that it is false? Say so. Are you claiming it is plagiarism to cite and attribute a quote? The n you are mad.
Look at you tap dancing like a bloody three card monty con, here on your own ground.
I sincerely hope you can summon it up from somewhere within yourself to be ashamed.
arejnsb:These two appear in Is Common Descent an Axiom of Biology? by Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells at ARN. You just cribbed this from them, didn’t you?
RKD: You can’t possibly be this patthetic, can you? The quote is DARWIN’s. CHARLES. DARWIN. Look up and see. Who the bloody heck gives a hoot whether the DARWIN quote came from ARN or CBS or UCB or TNT?
Unless of course you are frantically attempting to divert attention from your singular failure to address the import………
arensb:These two:
“LONG before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:–Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?(The Origin of Species. Contributors: Charles Darwin – author, Gillian Beer – editor. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1996. Page Number: 140.)
Also, a fellow out of Yale, Keith Thompson, has a rather less sanguine view than yours:
“No one needs reminding that we are well into a revolutionary phase in the study of evolution, systematics, and the interrelationships of organisms … to the thesis of Darwinian evolution … has been added a new cladistic antithesis which says that the search for ancestors is a fool’s errand, that all we can do is determine sister group relationships based on the analysis of derived characters … It is a change in approach that is not easy to accept for, in a sense, it runs counter to what we have all been taught. Thompson, K. (1981) “A Radical Look at Fish-Tetrapod Relationships”, Paleobiology, 7:153-156, see p. 153. Quoted in Denton, p. 139. Ellipses in Denton’s quote.
aIn any case, you presented either afdave’s work or someone else’s as your own, without giving attribution. That’s called plagiarism, and college students get expelled for that.
RKD:
What a laugh. Plagiarism, in the strange universe inhabited by aresjb, consists in properly citing both the original source, and the secondary source, of a citation arensjb himself insisted I provide.
The Inquisition couldv’e learned a few things from you, pal 🙂
Rick DeLano:
Don’t get your panties in a twist. Your comments got caught in my spam filter, is all.
Does this mean you’re leaving? Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Rick DeLano:
It’s obvious that you haven’t actually read the book that you’re quoting from; that you’re just mindlessly parroting what someone else told you it says.
But there’s an easy way to prove me wrong: what’s the ISBN of the particular edition that you’re quoting from, the one on which the quotation you give appears on p.484?
And for extra credit: in the paragraph in which that quotation appears, Darwin gives a reason for concluding universal common descent, as well a specific example. What are they?
Ricky,
You’d love to bring back the Inquisition, wouldn’t you? Keep the populace illiterate and cowering in fear, mix in a little torture for the outspoken who dare to voice original thoughts that are at odds with your indefensible mythology-as-fact. Seems right up your alley.
You could teach the screenwriter’s guild a thing or two yourself, drama-queen.
So where is that scientific basis for ID you promised, sunshine? Thus far all you’ve accomplished in the name of Everyman is demonstrating much of what’s wrong with kids today; you demand instant gratification without the slightest comprehension of what’s involved in attempting to serve your own selfish needs, belittling the work of your intellectual and emotional superiors because you’re too lazy to expend the time to educate yourself while quote mining snippets from your group-think mindclave in a failed attempt to buttress your collapsing sense of relevance.
I’d almost pity you if you weren’t so amusing.
…in the name of Everyman…
….which was Ricky’s first claim and first falsehood. What Ricky is, by demonstration, is an arrogant chip-on-shoulder stupid ineducable bigot. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I have a better opinion of “Everyman” than that.
[Edited to restore missing text, per comment below — arensb]
Um, the first line of my previous comment disappeared into the ether (might have been bad tagging and inattention on my part). It was the following extract from Fez’ comment:
…in the name of Everyman…