DNAunion

DNAunion: Nic, you seem to keep avoiding giving me a solid answer on this question I've asked you repeatedly.

Do you or do you not agree with pz's statement:

pz

I would appreciate it if you would state precisely what your claim is.

pz

I've got a better idea. Why don't you explain precisely what you find objectionable in the comment, and how it relates to your claims (vaguely and evasively stated as they have been) about ID?

[ November 23, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: I’d prefer to let Nic have a chance to answer it again first (this time he should be able to answer it better, what with my having explained a couple things about it to him).

DNAunion: Uhm, YOU were the one who made that statement in response to something I said. Isn’t it YOU who needs to answer how it relates to my claims? And if you can't answer that, then why the heck did you ever state it in the first place?

Nic Tamzek

Yes, PZ was correct here. The comment occurred in the context of whether or not Behe was right to

1) assume that "direct" evolution covered the bases his argument needed to cover

2) base his IC argument upon that, and then essentially completely neglect the obvious (to Darwin and everyone since) "indirect" routes where function changed, and then

3) Conclude that ID had been discovered, a discovery that rivaled those of Newton et al.

Behe was attacking a straw-man from the start, in that no serious biologist thing that "direct" evolution is all there is to evolution. PZ (like many others) was pointing out the flaw Behe's use of the straw-man.

However, this is not the same thing as saying "'Direct' evolution never happens anywhere". This statement is what you are trying to twist PZ's statement into so that it will contradict mine, so that (I guess) you can save some vague kind of face for the IC--&gt;ID argument which so far you've made a shambles of. Of course "direct" evolution (meaning, improvement-of-basic-function) happens quite a bit -- it's just not the exclusive method of evolution, although Behe sets up his strawman as if it is.

Enough semantic games, though. Why don't you start another thread afresh and give us your argument for ID from the beginning?

nic

DNAunion

DNAunion: Nic, Nic, Nic. You’re not paying attention. I said this many posts back in the thread.

DNAunion: You also seem to have missed my statements here at Infidels and elsewhere that I now fully accept undirected evolution as the explanation for common descent.

No wonder you think my defense of Behe's IC-&gt;ID inference is in a shambles - I wasn't even defending it!

Principia

So? That leaves open front-loaded ID -- a pet peeve of your master, Mike Gene, doesn't it now? Come now, I was just over at ARN last week, reading his desperate pleas for your ban to be reversed by the new administration. Surely, you don't want to disappoint your ol' chumps?

DNAunion

DNAunion: That’s just sad, Nic. That you would twist things around to defend party lines rather than to just simply answer a question honestly. Tisk tisk.

DNAunion: Gee, really? Looks like you added a lot of your own stuff in there. Here let’s look again.

DNAunion: Could you point out to us the stuff about Behe’s discovering ID? I didn’t see either pz nor I mention it. Oh, and while you’re at it, would be a good little boy and point out the stuff about Newton? You sure got good eyes – seeing all that stuff that isn’t there.

Now, is there a SIMPLER “interpretation” – one that doesn’t add a lot of new stuff, as yours did? Hmm… I mentioned DIRECT evolution in relation to Behe’s confident claim, and pz, after going off a little rant that didn’t really deal with what I had said, returned to me/Behe’s confident claim and stated, “Unfortunately for him, biologists don't ever argue that evolution is linear, direct, or by ever-increasing complexity.” The simplest way of looking at this is to DIRECTLY (pun pun) link my mention of DIRECT evolution with pz’s mention of it, and to NOT go trying to rearrange things the way we want to. If pz can’t speak intelligently, it’s not up to us to fix his errors.

I mean, where in the world pz get this crazy idea that someone had mentioned “ever-increasing complexity”? Anyone else see that mentioned in either of our statements? If pz wants to go off on little tangents, and not address the statement he is responding to for most of his response, and if pz wants to create topics that were never being discussed, then am I to blame for not being able to understand what he MEANT to say as opposed to what he ACTUALLY STATED?

Instead of simply saying something like, “yeah, I didn’t say that quite right. What I meant was…”, pz insisted that his statement was correct as stated. In fact, he even defended a literal interpretation of it by continuing to state that direct evolution doesn’t occur.

DNAunion: And Behe never said that all serious biologists believe that “direct” evolution is all there is to evolution. So now YOU are setting up a strawman.

DNAunion: And I was pointing out pz’s. For example, where did I or Behe say anything about ever-increasing complexity? Neither of us did. Yet pz claims to have shown Behe to have been wrong on this point – a point pz made up and stuck in Behe’s mouth.

DNAunion: Oh no, that’s what pz’s actual statement says. If he can’t formulate a coherent thought, it’s not my fault.

DNAunion: Uhm, it still does. Unless we go out of our way and add extra party-line-saving baggage – like you did.

For example, if you will go back and look, pz CONTINUED to claim that direct evolution doesn’t occur. Gee, how are you going to massage that little beauty to save the cause Nic?

[ November 23, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

pz

Ah, I'm beginning to see what he's trying to say. He thinks I'm claiming that you never, ever see direct or linear patterns in evolution. That's not it at all.

An analogy: if you throw a fair die, you might sometimes roll a '5' immediately after rolling a '4', but no one is going to claim that there is some intrinsic predisposition to roll numbers in sequence. Stating that there is no such pattern implicit in the process does not mean you won't occasionally see a coincidental series.

DNAUnion is trying to claim that because I said something is random, he can prove me wrong by interpreting some part of a series as having some order.

pz

That's correct. It doesn't even make sense to talk of "direct evolution". What is "direct evolution"?