Media Mum about Deranged Darwinist Gunman
| September 2, 2010 | Posted by scordova under Culture, Darwinism |
John West of the Discovery Institute Reports:
But when a gunman inspired by Darwinism takes hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel, reporters seem curiously uninterested in fully disclosing the criminal’s own self-described motivations. Most of yesterday’s media reports about hostage-taker James Lee dutifully reported Lee’s eco-extremism and his pathological hatred for humanity. But they also suppressed any mention of Lee’s explicit appeals to Darwin and Malthus as the intellectual foundations for his views. At least, I could find no references to Lee’s Darwinian motivations in the accounts I read by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC.
160 Responses to Media Mum about Deranged Darwinist Gunman
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Indium:
As usual, you jump to conclusions. For my beers, I am more picky.
Well Indium you state my monkey’s example is not ‘how evolution works’ but alas you provided zero evidence for evolution doing anything at all, besides your imaginative speculation for how it should work.
Actually I felt my ‘empirical test’ of monkeys in a zoo was far closer to reality than any of the ‘possible’ speculations you have ever presented. Do you disagree that you are making the absurd claim that blind processes have produced more information than the library of congress?
“Again, this is characteristic of all animal and plant cells. Each nucleus … contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of a body put together. … When you eat a steak, you are shredding the equivalent of more than 100 billion copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
(Dawkins R., “The Blind Watchmaker [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, pp.17-18. Emphasis in original)
http://members.iinet.net.au/~s.....8clml.html
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 1012 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 109 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 1012 bits.” – R. C. Wysong
http://www.why-the-bible.com/origins.htm
“an attempt to explain the formation of the genetic code from the chemical components of DNA… is comparable to the assumption that the text of a book originates from the paper molecules on which the sentences appear, and not from any external source of information.”
Dr. Wilder-Smith
Indium that you would argue about whether it is possible that protein could have perhaps. maybe. possibly, changed into another protein illustrates how completely disconnected you are from the real world for material processes have NEVER demonstrated the ability to produce ANY information, must less endless library shelfs full of information that exceeds man’s ability to encode information:
notes:
The Coding Found In DNA Surpasses Man’s Ability To Code – Stephen Meyer – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050638
The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel – Null Hypothesis For Information Generation – 2009
Any Goal Oriented bona fide system
To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: “Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.” A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis.
http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf
Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation)
1) Mathematical Logic
2) Algorithmic Optimization
3) Cybernetic Programming
4) Computational Halting
5) Integrated Circuits
6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium)
7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics)
9) Language
10) Formal function of any kind
11) Utilitarian work
http://mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/ag
Stephen C. Meyer – The Scientific Basis For Intelligent Design – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4104651
The DNA Enigma – Where Did The Information Come From? – Stephen C. Meyer – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4125886
The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity – David L. Abel – 2009
Excerpt: “A monstrous ravine runs through presumed objective reality. It is the great divide between physicality and formalism. On the one side of this Grand Canyon lies everything that can be explained by the chance and necessity of physicodynamics. On the other side lies those phenomena than can only be explained by formal choice contingency and decision theory—the ability to choose with intent what aspects of ontological being will be preferred, pursued, selected, rearranged, integrated, organized, preserved, and used. Physical dynamics includes spontaneous non linear phenomena, but not our formal applied-science called “non linear dynamics”(i.e. language,information).
http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf
The DNA Code – Solid Scientific Proof Of Intelligent Design – Perry Marshall – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4060532
etc.. etc.. etc..
Indium it is completely ludicrous for you to pretend you are being reasonable by saying material processes can generate information when the fact is that you clearly dwell in a self-imposed fantasy land in which reality is never allowed to ruin your delusions.
Actually you do it all the time.
You assert that evolution has been managed by design, that both mutations and selection have been influenced by design.
You cannot cite any examples of this happening. No one has ever observed it happening. No one is willing to characterized the designer or the designer’s methods or capabilities.
So your argument boils down to saying that a process that can be observed and which can be subjected to controlled experimentation is less plausible that a process that has never been observed.
Here is a direct reference for the e-coli quote:
http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false
gpuccio:
Oh, defensive mood? I did not want to ruin your day, my apologies!
@151: Only when people want red herrings dragged across the track of truth and led out to hominem oil soaked strawmen ignited to cloud, choke, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere. (Cheers to kairosfocus, too!)
@ba77:
Since your tornado approach is a straw man (see above) and does not take into account evolutionary mechanisms it is not worth discussing.
Indium you state:
“Since your tornado approach is a straw man (see above) and does not take into account evolutionary mechanisms it is not worth discussing.”
Let me fix this statement for you since you mis-wrote it:
“Since your sure-footed approach is a valid example of reality (see above at your post) and does not take into account my imaginary evolutionary mechanisms that exist in my fantasy world it is not worth discussing.”
There you go Indium,, all better now!
There, you did it. My IM exploded. Was to be expected I guess.
Now Now Indium, ‘exploded’ is such a real world term, let’s put your ‘evolutionary mechanism’ glasses on see what happened, your IM probably had a random mutation that is right now at this very Instant (pun intended) being selected for a new higher level function in your computer’s program! In fact in ‘evolutionary mechanism land’ you just got a free upgrade from Microsoft!!!