Principia

From <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000081" target="_blank">ARN</a>, a post by one of 5 moderators:
And here we have it: evidence of how legitimate IDists would have debates about their own ideas -- censorship. The thread was about how Dembski's ridiculous probability calculations were without any biological foundations. I actually didn't see anything wrong with the ensuing conversation except that the proponents were being destroyed on their own turfs. Of course, the only face-saving course of action was to blame it on the rhetoric of the ID critics.

My only real complaint is that the moderators also post under different names and engage in the rhetoric.

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: Scientiae ]</p>

hezekiah jones

I was reading that earlier. They locked the thread! The guy who started it was doing Dembski's work for Dembski, trying to relate it to actual biological entities!

None of the IDers could reply except for remarks about "foaming at the mouth" and quotes from Richard Wein's big article! So they lock the thread! Hahaha. It's as bad as ICR. And they want this nonsense in public schools?

Principia

This blind antagonism is really common among the ID proponents (including one who keeps finding himself in RRP). They just don't know when they've been offered a life line. The questions rafe was asking were not entirely death knells to the theory, but if sufficient answers were given, they could actually save Dembski's calculations. What do they offer instead? Commentaries. Inane and baseless commentaries.

And then the Moderator locks the thread as a form of last-wordism...

Lizard

I don't think the fact that ARN IDers can't come up with rational arguments for ID *necessarily* means there aren't any. (I don't think there are, but I'm only pointing out the above is not a valid assumption.)

The problem with ARN is that there are few or no actual scientists on the ID side. The rationale for scientists posting valuable information there, only to be completely misunderstood or subjected to insults, is that perhaps "lurkers" may learn something. But I don't imagine the lurkers are any more versed in science than the active participants. So I really don't know what the point is.

Most of the time, the scientists' earnest efforts to educate the IDers at ARN seem as futile as explaining alternate-side-of-the-street parking to a cranberry.

Principia

<a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000080" target="_blank">Ibid</a>:

Huh? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Camaban

Not sure how much relevance this has to the rest of the thread (too tired to read much)

but.

Males have nipples because in the beginning (up to a certain time after conception) a boy-to-be is a girl. nipples are simply something there wasn't a real reason to get rid of on males.

We only become a boy after a few months

On another note:
Genesis: Boy came before girl
Biology: Girl comes before boy.

Principia

Ibid--

Another cheerleader in desperation.

lpetrich

Male nipples come about because both sexes have essentially the same genes, except for certain genes that act as a master control switch. So they grow no matter what, even if they grow more in one sex than in the other.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in certain parthenogenetically reproducing lizards (Cnemidophorus uniparens). They have an interesting vestigial feature: each member of their species must be stimulated to lay eggs. And this stimulation comes about when an older lizard mates with it and bites it in the neck, as a male of some related two-sex species would do. So although this species is essentially all-female, it still has genes that specify male behavior.

And knowing what many fundies think about homosexuality and gender ambiguity, I'm sure that they won't want to think about that.

Also, some species have temperature-determined sex; the hotter eggs become male in some species, female in some others.

And there are even some species that change their sex over the course of their lives; certain fish do that.

In both the temperature-dependent and the sex-changing cases, the same genes must be able to code for both sexes.

I phrase it that way, because genes for female features and genes for male features suggests a kind of naive beanbag genetics. Thus, ovaries and testicles are essentially the same organ, but induced to produce eggs or sperm, respectively, by something like some hormone.

(edited for more detail)

[ June 05, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

pangloss

I have it on good authority that one of the moderators is "Jazzraptor", who is one of the more annoying and inflammatory anti-Darwinists over there. My experience on the CARM board of old is that it is DISASTER when the moderators take part in discussions. Two of the CARM moderators was infamous for goading evolutionists into writing things that they would then use as deletion/banning justification.

Looks like a similar activity goes on at ARN, at least in certain topics.

scigirl

Hey Camaban, and welcome to infidels!

Hey that is priceless! I'll have to remember that.

About the male nipple thing: I just read about this in a book by Michael Shermer, but I think he was paraphrasing either Dawkins or Gould. Here's my paraphrase from that paraphrase, since the book is at home and I am not:

The incorrect question is, "Why do males have nipples?" The correct question is, "Why do females have nipples?" The answer to that is, of course, for feeding their young. Males have nipples simply because it was easier to make both have nipples, than to re-code the genetics for removing them from males.

scigirl