Freethought & Rationalism Archive

RufusAtticus · 02-07-2002, 11:46 PM

Check out the latest from the creationists at BaptistBoard. <a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=36" target="_blank">http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=36</a> Not only are there Gould quotes against transitionals, but also references to Jonathan Wells failed attempt to criticise cutting edge research. (The DI hasn't yet seemed to grasp the concept. "Research? What's that?")

And the peasants rejoiced.

-RvFvS

theyeti · 02-08-2002, 06:26 AM

What are you waiting for, Rufus? Nail 'em with the NCSE article. Show them what a pathetic weasel Wells is.

theyeti

jhallum · 02-08-2002, 09:23 AM

Interesting sidelight, both Rufus and I posted the Guold quote. But they censored out a word....

Dishonesty.

Weird. Guess they're trying to be sensitive to the needs of their readership.

Darwin's Finch · 02-08-2002, 09:28 AM

The funny thing about their censoring your posts is that, having forgotten exactly what Gould wrote, I filled it in with "stupidity." Of course, that applies, too.

RufusAtticus · 02-08-2002, 01:53 PM

I posted the NCSE article. Wells claims go bye bye.

They have their board set up so that "stupid" is automaticall replaced by "*****." I don't think that the editors actually touched the quote. They also cut out the first part of another post where I pointed out that Helen was completely wrong and linked to the pertinate discussing on BB.

Quote:

Helen:I and others have tried to point out that speciation is a
variable concept depending on the mating cues of the animals involved
and is therefore not a reliable pointer genetically or physically.

I would like to point out that the above statement has been thoroughly discredited in the following thread.
<a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000109" target="_blank">http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000109</a>

Helen has clearly shown a lack of knowledge on the subject of speciation. "Mating cues" is not what speciation is all about. There are very important genetic and evolutionary factors that effect the division of one panmictic population into several reproductively isolated gene pools. I suggest that the readers do not take my word for it but pick up an evolutionary biology textbook that covers the topic of speciation and explore the literature for themselves. If you can get hold of "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection," R.A. Fisher has a very good, although slightly outdated, discussion about the topic in Chapter VI.

The editors are amazing aren't they.

-RvFvS

bluefugue · 02-08-2002, 02:09 PM

The message board automatically censors the word "stupid"?

theyeti · 02-08-2002, 03:35 PM

Now if only it would censor everything that is stupid!

RufusAtticus · 02-08-2002, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theyeti:
<strong>Now if only it would censor everything that is stupid!</strong>

But then what would their beloved Helen post?

-RvFvS

pangloss · 02-09-2002, 08:03 AM

My latest reply to Helen in the 'Haldane's dilemma' thread was sent back, with an admonission to 'remove the inflammatory and insulting language.'

I submit the original post here:
****************************************

Quote:

HELEN:
FORGET the theoretical stuff. What I was trying to do was agree with you in the first place with the slight proviso that, being a mathematical theory, error catastrophe was somewhat more substantial than it might be if it were purely philosophical. You missed that point in your desire to deny everything I ever say, I think. So forget it.

I do not deny everything you say, Helen. I do take issue with your unnecessary extrapolations and so on, and your many claims premised solely on 'worldview protection', such as your implicit claims about knowing the details of that obscure Kimura paper I had mentioned on the old BB. If your point was that error catastrophe is 'better' than a purely philosophical construct because it has a mathematical component, then you missed MY point. If you want to rate hypotheses based on whether or not they have a mathematical component, go ahead. The REAL point is that THAT doesn't matter in the least if actual data contradict them or if there is no data in their support.

Quote:

You wrote: It is creationists, such as Dembksi and ReMine, that prefer their favorite mathematical scenarios to actual empirical evidence. There is a huge difference between mathematical models based on theoretical constructs and those based on data.

Dembski is proposing a testing mechanism. If the mathematics of a testing mechanism bother you there is nothing he or anyone can do about that.

Whats to bother me about it? Dembski hasn't done a thing that he has claimed he was going to do - and in fact had alluded to being already done. Rigged elections and fallacious applications to the bacterial flagellum are not exactly going to convince those that are skeptical of his methods. Especially when even fellow ID theorists[sic] have found fault - circularity - in his definition of specified complexity.

Quote:

ReMine does the same thing Wells does in one sense - he shows simply that the evolution models are untenable even in their own admissions, bit by bit.

If you think that, I have to wonder if you actually read his book, and, more importantly, bothered to see if he was correct in his claims. One of the things that struck me the most in ReMine's self-aggrandizing pap is the FACT that he offers nothing - not even his beloved quotes - to actually support his claims! It is amazing. His book is like a more sophisticated Woodmorappe essay.

Quote:

So using these two men to try to say something about people you disagree with using mathematical scenarios rather than physical evidence is a wrong argument. You chose the wrong people with that one.

Great. Prove it. Please provide citations from any of either chap's writings in which they provide physical evidence (or rather, since neither of them actually do any sort of scientific research, citations for primary source literature) for their creationary claims.
And sorry - attempting to poke holes in some aspect of evolution, or pointing out issues of contention between evolutionists or unknowns is NOT physical evidence FOR creation.

Quote:

However, have you ever even bothered to notice, let alone count, the number of evolution scenarios which are based purely on the mathematics of computer models?

No. Why don't you name some and explain how they are based solely/purely on mathematical models.

Quote:

And I guess you missed the relevance of the paper I quoted. The fact is that if a seeming beneficial mutation (and they are certainly rare enough) can turn out to be damaging in the long run, then how on earth are you going to get one mutation to build on another to turn a fin into a leg or a scale into a feather, or a unicellular organism into a butterfly? In fact, the University of Calif. At San Diego just came out with great excitement over finding a gene that caused shrimp to lose a pair of legs. You know what they claim this shows? How shrimp later became insects! You know what it really shows? Deformed shrimp which have NO advantage over their fully legged relatives!

You are assuming that all mutations will be just like the one in the paper that you quoted, which I'm sure made the rounds on CRSnet or something. Maybe AL (aka PLA) sent it to you. As for the paper that Wells and now you are disparaging - before it has even come out - did YOU actually read it? Or the pertinent material about it? I would say no, because it is hardly as you and Wells describe it. Wells, of course, accuses them of exaggerating and the like. He would know, eh Helen? What, being a molecular biologist/embryologist/researcher extraordinaire with only 2 actual scientific publications to his name.
As is so often the case, it is actually the creationists that are doing the misrepresenting, and failing to see the significance of the actual science being done.
<a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020207075601.htm" target="_blank">http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020207075601.htm</a>

Quote:

You asked how we find good mutations? Pat seems to know. Check with him. But nothing he mentioned indicates anything that can even begin to change one sort of thing into another sort of thing, no matter how slowly.

Like I had predicted�.

Quote:

In addition, how do you find ANY mutations? Aside from presuming them, you have to look at the genetic structure. I know you know how to do genetic comparisons. You ridiculed me about it before when I said I wanted to learn more about it. You told me it was quite simple and how much time did I need? So I'm sure you can look at genetic comparison charts and spot mutations and, by your admission, it is just a matter of technology and time before you find out where the good ones have been!

I 'ridiculed' you before when you presented yourself as being able to understand data matrices and then 'playing dumb' when I presented you with the very thing you said you would 'find troubling' for creationism - a steady gradation of genetic distance between different taxa. I have the old thread archived - shall I dig it up for you?
It is easy to spot mutations. Look here:
<a href="http://www2.norwich.edu/spage/alignment1.htm" target="_blank">http://www2.norwich.edu/spage/alignment1.htm</a>
I'll bet you can spot some.

Quote:

Then you told me here that is was arguing against a straw man for me to mention that sexual reproduction was not doing a very good job ridding the human race of deleterious mutations. But that was exactly the point of my argument, Scott! You had stated, "Sexual recombination accelerates the rate at which harmful mutations are removed and the rate at which beneficial ones are accumulated." I didn't claim, nor did you, that all had to be eliminated. I simply said that, given the number of problems we associate with these harmful mutations, as evidenced by the NG list, that sexual reproduction was not doing what it should in this area!

And therein lies the REPEATED strawman. Don't you see it? Of course there will be an accumulation of harmful mutations, just as there will be an accumulation of beneficial ones. It is easier for us - especially considering the amount of money poured into medical research - to find the bad ones than to find the good ones. If you say that SR is not doing its job because there is an accumulation of harmful mutations, you are arguing against something that was not in evidence.

Quote:

We have quite a build-up of nasty stuff there. And if the positive mutations are only those Pat can list, then we are in serious trouble as a human race.

Yeah� Error catstrophe�

Quote:

Did you miss what I was trying to say? It was in response to the statement you had made, so there was no 'strawman' about it.

See above.

Quote:

And although some claim the human race is in a condition of error catastrophe, I did not say that. It may or may not be true. I don't know.

It is not.
<a href="http://www.open2.net/truthwillout/evolution/article/evolution_walker.htm" target="_blank">http://www.open2.net/truthwillout/evolution/article/evolution_walker.htm</a>
This is an interview with Dr. Eyre-Walker, who is regarded by many creationists as a leading expert on mutation in the human genome. He says in the article:

"Whether we are likely to go through that mutational meltdown I very much doubt it. It's much more likely that what will happen is that we accumulate mutations through improved living conditions, modern medicine, and then if those sort of props are removed then we may find ourselves in a rather sorry state. But it's always very important to remember that this is only true of the developed world. The developing world natural selection is much much more potent, selection is not relaxed anything like to the same extent as it is in the developed world."

BTW - 'mutational meltdown' is a dynamic version of error catastrophe.

He has also complained that creationists are misrepresenting his work�

Quote:

What I did say was that there is a mathematical theory regarding error catastrophe and the rate of heritable damaging mutations in a population, and that the human race does seem to have a bit of a buildup of genetic load. Whether these two things are on a collision course I don't know.

And that is where sexual recombination, among other things, comes in.

Quote:

And finally, when I asked, But again, where are the positive mutations?, you responded: They are the ones that DON'T make us ill. Again, tell us all what - exactly - we should look for.
I am hoping dreadfully that you really did not mean that healthy people are that way because of mutations! If health were not our somewhat natural condition, we could not have survived even as long as YEC viewpoints say, let alone as long as evolution says we have!

Since mutation (all categories) provides the 'raw material' for evolution, I most certainly mean that 'health' is the product of mutation. The 'natural condition' as you call it is the product of what we can call the 'wild type alleles' that govern the processes involved in regulating homeostasis. Harmful mutations in these genes will doubtless be selected against, beneficial changes will be selected for.
*****************************************

I guess calling people on their performance is inflammatory?

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: pangloss ]</p>

Darwin's Finch · 02-09-2002, 08:25 AM

Pangloss: Have you asked the moderators at BB what they found objectionable? I have been following that particular thread (indeed, all of their CvE threads) with great interest and am disappointed at their -- BB's -- utter lack of integrity. Having read your excellent responses to Helen (and knowing from my time lurking there that she is their resident "expert"), I can only agree that they are attempting damage control: their big hitter is getting her clock cleaned, and they can't let it happen publicly. Cowards!

Since Helen is so cocksure about evolution/creation, perhaps a formal debate at II is in order. Why not challenge her? I'm sure there are many around these parts who would find it quite entertaining and enlightening. Not that I think she would actually rise to the bait.... But at least she would have to cop out in front of her own people.

02-07-2002, 11:46 PM	#1
RufusAtticus Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: NCSU Posts: 5,853	Woah, Baptistboard update. Check out the latest from the creationists at BaptistBoard. <a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=36" target="_blank">http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=36</a> Not only are there Gould quotes against transitionals, but also references to Jonathan Wells failed attempt to criticise cutting edge research. (The DI hasn't yet seemed to grasp the concept. "Research? What's that?") And the peasants rejoiced. -RvFvS

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02-08-2002, 06:26 AM	#2
theyeti Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Denver, CO, USA Posts: 9,747	What are you waiting for, Rufus? Nail 'em with the NCSE article. Show them what a pathetic weasel Wells is. theyeti

02-08-2002, 09:23 AM	#3
jhallum Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 26	Interesting sidelight, both Rufus and I posted the Guold quote. But they censored out a word.... Dishonesty. Weird. Guess they're trying to be sensitive to the needs of their readership.

02-08-2002, 09:28 AM	#4
Darwin's Finch Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Gardnerville, NV Posts: 666	The funny thing about their censoring your posts is that, having forgotten exactly what Gould wrote, I filled it in with "stupidity." Of course, that applies, too.

02-08-2002, 02:09 PM	#6
bluefugue Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,427	The message board automatically censors the word "stupid"?

02-08-2002, 03:35 PM	#7
theyeti Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Denver, CO, USA Posts: 9,747	Now if only it would censor everything that is stupid!

02-09-2002, 08:25 AM	#10
Darwin's Finch Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Gardnerville, NV Posts: 666	Pangloss: Have you asked the moderators at BB what they found objectionable? I have been following that particular thread (indeed, all of their CvE threads) with great interest and am disappointed at their -- BB's -- utter lack of integrity. Having read your excellent responses to Helen (and knowing from my time lurking there that she is their resident "expert"), I can only agree that they are attempting damage control: their big hitter is getting her clock cleaned, and they can't let it happen publicly. Cowards! Since Helen is so cocksure about evolution/creation, perhaps a formal debate at II is in order. Why not challenge her? I'm sure there are many around these parts who would find it quite entertaining and enlightening. Not that I think she would actually rise to the bait.... But at least she would have to cop out in front of her own people.

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