pseudobug

Just curious as to whether anyone has read <a href="http://www.communiquejournal.org/q6/q6_johnson.html" target="_blank">this interview in Communique</a> with the father of the modern ID movement.

This quy has some audacity--even for a Cal-Berkeley schyster. The man lacks even a shred of objectivity.

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: pseudobug ]</p>

theyeti

Thanks for posting that. Johnson's hypocrisy is extremely irritating. Here's a few parts from the not-so-objective opening that I found interesting:

Heh, right. Funny they didn't mention his earlier controversial venture into the field of science, where he also found himself on the outside, when he strongly denied that <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001486" target="_blank">HIV causes AIDS</a>, which incredibly, despite massive evidence to the contrary, he still denies! There's some obvious parallels to these two "controversies" and the way that Johnson approaches them.

A logician!?! Now I've heard it all. Johnson is a lawyer whose expertise is in making persuasive sounding arguments, not logical ones! He is trained in arguing his particular case, not in seeking the most likely answer as the scientific method demands. The logical holes in his arguments are such that one could drive a garbage truck through them.

Mabey later I'll pick out individual tidbits to chew on.

theyeti

CodeMason

Lawyers are trained in lying. It's no wonder the simpletons think he makes such a convincing case.

lpetrich

One of PJ's arguments is that we have not figured out exactly how our minds work and how the features of life have developed, therefore we must take seriously the "Goddidit" hypothesis. To me that's a cop-out.

Here's a historical analogy: chemistry two centuries ago. At that time, many chemists made a distinction between inorganic and organic compounds, with the latter requiring the intervention of living things to manufacture them. Organic compounds could be turned into other organic compounds in the lab, but creating them could not be done in the lab. And PJ would have smugly sneered at the advocates of mechanical views of nature as intent on denying a soul which is so readily manifest in the production of organic compounds.

However, in the early 19th cy., chemists started making organic compound after organic compound from inorganic ones, and the inorganic-organic distinction was reinterpreted as a composition difference. But PJ would have smugly pointed to the numerous compounds that chemists were still unable to create in their labs.

And starting around then was a lot of research on metabolic pathways which has gradually elucidated their Rube Goldbergian details. Even though a human chromosome, for example, would be extremely tedious to manufacture in a lab, we do know how to do it, and the pathways by which our cells would do so have been mapped out, and it's all "inorganic" in the old sense of the world. And PJ would have retreated into the question of origins, while going to great lengths to avoid acknowledging defeat on organic-compound synthesis.

And he considers the idea of our species as very chimpanzee-like to be "anti-Christian", claiming that being "in the image of God" to be more dignified. But can God commit sins? Does God look human? And what great purpose is served by having chimpanzees look almost human -- and having very similar gene sequences? The biochemist Russell Doolittle started sequencing proteins in the 1960's, and was very shocked to find out how close human and chimpanzee proteins were.

I'm confident that a lot of details will be uncovered as research continues. For example, "evo-devo", the evolution of development-control systems, is a very active area of research. Which gives me hope that I'll live long enough to see the resolution of some very big questions in evolutionary biology.

Research into brain function continues to be difficult, but I've seen some interesting progress there.

lpetrich

Elsewhere in that interview, PJ takes refuge in irrationalism and celebration of the seemingly inexplicable, like the TV series X-Files. However, many people embrace forms of irrationalism that he might dislike, such as astrology and New Age beliefs. I'm not sure he enjoys seeing Jesus Christ viewed as a New Age guru, which is what some New Agers seem to think.

And, of course, he claims that natural selection cannot be creative. However, gene duplication is an extremely cheap source of new raw materials for selection.

He is also very cagey about the age of the Earth. It's as if he wants to appeal to both young-earthers and old-earthers.

And he feels sure that Charles Darwin will become some footnote in history, as he is sure that Marx and Freud will become -- a brief footnote in the history of 19th-cy. British ideas.

However, Darwinism has been an extremely successful explanatory paradigm, and any successor would have to be some superset of Darwinism, the way that relativity and quantum mechanics are supersets of Newtonian mechanics.

Finally, someone ought to challenge him about the hypothesis of extraterrestrial-visitor engineering, such as is advocated by the Raelians.

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

bluefugue

I don't understand why our being similar to chimpanzees would in any way undermine the idea of us being "made in God's image." Whether God made us out of a lump of mud (which looks considerably less like a human than a chimpanzee does), or out of a chimpanzee-like ancestor, we are now a distinct animal. How is it any more "ennobling" to be fashioned out of a bit of dirt, than out of great-ape DNA? Is it also anti-Christian to point out that humans, like rodents, are mammals; or that, like lizards, we are amniotes; or that, like fish, we are vertebrates; or that, like geraniums, we are eukaryotes?

It's absurd. The most cursory, superficial anatomical comparisons reveal that humans share similarities with other living things. It logically follows that, of all the other living species, one or a few would be most similar to humans. And obviously the great apes are the most similar to us. It requires no presupposition of evolution to see that.

theyeti

No kidding. See for instance this <a href="http://www.arn.org/docs/pjweekly/pj_weekly_010709.htm" target="_blank">Wedge Update</a> where he includes parts of a correspondance with Richard Dawkins.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement for an old Earth. Notice how Johnson is careful to leave himself an escape hatch in order to appease the YECs and keep his 'big tent' from rending asunder. To claim that he has made no attempt to investigate the subject is ludicrous; it's a very simple thing to investigate, much simpler than the ins and outs of Darwininan evolution. Instead, he uses the opportunity to take a cheap shot at the latter. And I always get a hearty chuckle when I hear him use the phrase, "complex specified genetic information," as if the phrase actually means something. And I also find it hilarious that he quotes Richard Lewontin, whose beef with Dawkins and Wilson stems mostly from his leftist philosophy, the exact opposite of Johnson!

Not to mention his cheap rhetorical ploy of constantly trying to conflate Darwin with Marx and Freud, who he knows conservatives already take a disliking to. He seems to think the status of Marx and Freud actually has something to do with the status of Darwin, and that he can win the debate just by claiming the others to be bunk. Some logician!

theyeti

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: theyeti ]</p>

pseudobug

I find several things striking about the interview.

First of all he states that intelligent design has no "answers that are true":

Then he claims that ID has nothing to do with the Bible:
OK, Phil. I'm right with you bud. Evolution is "flat wrong", scientists aren't asking the right questions and they have no evidence to support the wild claims of macroevolution.

But later, Phil's true color's begin to shine through.

When asked what question about human origin must a Christian reconcile to remain Christian, Phil's reply is:
The exposure of of the ill-founded logic of the master logician and judicial scholar's argument is found in the next two quotes:
and this ditty:
So Phil wants to show that the mountains of evidence supporting evolution are wrong and, if successful in refuting that evidence, creation myths are validated in the absence of evidence?

But Phil, YOU are validating something you want to believe IN THE ABSENCE of evidence.

Is the man demented or what? A ten-year old should be able to see through the hypocrisy behind these statements.

I honestly can't see how Johnson could convince a jury of anything using this type of pretzel logic and implementation of double standards of proof.

lpetrich

I personally find this PJ statement to be especially bizarre:

"If Darwinists would like to have more time, however, I am happy to grant them 46 billion years, or 460 billion."

As if the age of the Earth is determined from estimates of the rate of biological evolution. It is not, which is something that some supposed expert like PJ ought to be aware of.

He also states:

"Regardless of the time available, their system of evolution cannot work because it never gets started with the essential job of creating new complex specified genetic information.

Whatever "specified" is supposed to mean.

bluefugue

He just seems to be stacking Dembski/ID buzzwords on top of one another. I'm only surprised he didn't throw in "irreducible" for good measure.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>