Ed Brayton – Hypocrite Extraordinaire
| January 13, 2006 | Posted by Dave S. under Darwinism, Education |
Ed Brayton posts this seemingly virtuous opinion that anonymous ID proponents should not have their real names exposed.
Yet among my first experiences with Ed Brayton was him exposing my real name in a public comment on Panda’s Thumb. Ed lifted my real name from a private email I sent to him. I don’t particularly try to hide my real name, which is why Ed got it in a private correspondence, but I don’t advertise it either.
Now I ask you, when you catch a guy redhanded in such duplicity how far can you trust him in other matters?
About as far as I can throw the Oskaloosa High School Football Team…
Charlie
I don’t think it’ll take another George Bush, but Jeb Bush is primed and ready to go. He’s done as governor of Florida due to term limits. I think it’s about time we had a governor from Florida for president.
Anyhow, I’m thinking Sam Alito replacing Sandra O’Connor is what it’ll take. The exclusionary NeoDarwinian stranglehold on evolutionary hypotheses is being kept up by judicial fiat and nothing more. It’s been a theory in crisis for decades. Alito should be confirmed soon. The democrat attempt to derail his nomination was pathetic and impotent.
Bing
If Ed sounded at all remorseful about outing me I’d say you have a good point. But he ain’t and you don’t.
Bling Bling
“Holes in evolutionary theory abound but the theory in it’s totality appears to work to predict how species will react to given external pressures etc.”
You seem to be confused on how standard evolution works. Species don’t react with beneficial heritable modifications in the NeoDarwinian world. That’s Lamarckism and in eukaryotes its falsification is considered settled science. It was once considered settled in prokaryotes too but that’s changed recently. I suspect Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters is going to be resurrected in eukaryotes too but that’s a different argument.
In the NeoDarwinian narrative, random undirected mutations are the only source of heritable modification. Random and undirected means that if a mutation happens to be beneficial it’s pure luck. Species don’t react with heritable changes to external pressure. They can only get lucky. Or so the narrative goes.
It’s not a reaction from my limited knowledge. It’s a numbers game. Lots of mistakes and one get’s lucky and passes on that gene. If I remember right Lamarck hypothesised that traits aquired basically after birth could be heritable. Now, with our understanding of genetics we are pretty confident that doesn’t happen. But let’s say, you’re a fish. You’re out there fishing around and your species is doing great. THe ones that stick to the basic plan work pretty good. the ones that don’t basically die out. Unless of course one is born with the ability to better exploit the niche the species is exploiting. But that’s not really evolution. It is in a very limited way, but all you get is a fish that is better at being a fish. Not much difference really. It’s like michael Jordan is a good basketball player and his kids might be too. But lets say your shallow sea begins to dry out. Your species just drew its unlucky number. But, one of your offspring just happens to have a mutation which allows it to exploit a gene which grows a small lung. Not very useful in a nice ocean but pretty useful for burrowing down in the mud and waiting for the rain. He has maybe 50,000 babies because he is one of the last survivors of his species, the fishyfishyichthyes, so he gets to fertilize a lot of eggs. maybe 20 or so of his offspring share the trait of having a small lung. Now the water goes away for a while every year and he and his 20 offspring have no real predetors left and a new niche that they are a little suited for. At least they dont die. Now, the rains come in the next year and the next and so on and one day the great to the 10th power grandson is born with pretty big flippers. He figures out how to hobble over to the next pond where there is a bunch more food. His kids now have an advantage and fishyfishyicthes is now fishyfrogyicthes. Not the same critter at all. Still like a fish but suited for a different environment and probably not able to mate with his ancient relative fishyfishyichthyes. But if no fish was born with a small lung that made it so they could live buried in the mud for a while way back in fishyfishyichthyes time, fishyfroggyichthyes never would have happened and they would have gone extinct. In fact that is probably what would have happened to most of fishyfishyichthyes’ neigbors in the old sea and, in fact, it is what did happen to all the fishyfishyichthyes who didn’t get on the bandwagon with the lung thing.
So, that’s not Lamarckism if I am indeed correct about what lamarckism is. And it makes a pretty plausible story too. So, what I am saying is that to tell the darwinists (whose world view is that everything boils down to matter and physics and that spirit and wonder are just simple byproducts of physics) that spirit and wonder are real and observably separate from the physical world, to tell them that nature shows even the most obstinant person evidence for design, to say things like this requires proof. We need to demonstrate for them by showing them the flaws in their science. Debate those flaws. It is possible that we might see a flaw where none exists simply because we are so exaspirated at their obstinance. It is better to concede where we might be wrong so that we have all the credibility when we are right. Like the flagellum thing. Ok, bubonic plague has the same protien structure and uses it to inject cells with toxin. But just because it appears to be an intermediary stage, doesn’t mean it is. Isn’t there one peer-reviewed, scientific, published paper that casts light on this? That, I believe, the smug folks over at Panda’s thumb would listen to.
Damn hilarious. Glad I came. Needed a laugh. Thanx.
“Darwinism is a worldview that states that the full diversity of life is explanable in terms of material causes only.”
Well, that depends on what the definition of is is. If is implies the future tense, possibly explainable in terms of material causes only, then I agree. However, if is implies the present tense, assuredly explainable in terms of material causes only, then I disagree.
So is there any room for doubt? There certainly is!
Is that clear enough now?
“Now, with our understanding of genetics we are pretty confident that [inheritance of acquired characters] doesn’t happen.”
Guess what. The most tested theory in science was wrong. Twice.
Darwin hisself said in Origin that inheritance of acquired characters was the primary mechanism of evolution in domesticated animals and, he presumed, lacking evidence to the contrary, was also the operative mechanism in the wild.
Then along comes NeoDarwinian theory (the modern synthesis) which (30 years after Mendel published his work in genetics, better late than never to admit he was right) combined Darwin’s theory with genetic inheritance and officially falsified Lamarck at the same time.
It was once a fact as solid as gravity that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters was falsified. But lo and behold, it’s now common knowledge that Lamarck was right at least about bacteria which are known to modify DNA on the fly in response to the environment and pass along the changes.
This is where I come in with a perfectly reasonable question. If prokaryotes are capable of Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters, and eukaryotes are descendents of prokaryotes, isn’t it possible and reasonable to assume that eukaryotes are capable of Lamarckian inheritance too and evolutionary biologists screwed the pooch on that conclusion as well?
This is what happens when falsified theories, which Darwinian evolution most assuredly is, are, instead of being discarded when their predictions don’t pan out (hahahaha – pan out – that’s a pun played on the sifting of rocks for bits of fossilized bone and teeth which is the major prediction that didn’t “pan out” for the Darwinian narrative) are propped up time after time after time with ad hoc modifications to explain the failed predictions. Karl Popper is rolling over in his grave! But that’s okay. You know our motto here Freud, Marx, and Darwin. The three pillars of modernism. Two down and one to go! It’s just a matter of time. Evolution is a theory in crisis don’t you know.
Thunar’s comment links to an article which contains serious accusations against Dr. Dembski. Has he answered these charges? If so, could someone post a link to his response to the accusations?
bradcliffe
Mark Perakh is a crazy Russian physicist known to say all sorts of crazy things. Russians are notoriously paranoid conspiracy theorists and bald faced liars. My favorite example was when I questioned his credentials and his response was essentially “the communists took my papers”. Evidently Mark doesn’t know the classic American excuse “my dog ate my homework”. I had a field day with that one.
In this case, it would again appear that Mark’s proof disappeared in an unfortunate circumstance beyond his control. A mysterious software glitch in Amazon Canada magically and momentarily revealed the name “William Dembski” behind an anonymous reviewer’s handle. Wow! What’re the odds? At any rate Mark’s “the Canadian software ate my proof” is par for the course for this guy.
The short answer is Perakh, like a million other lunatics, doesn’t deserve a response to his paranoid accusations.
[troll]
A Friend’s Loss and an Adversary’s Viciousness
Wes Elsberry has already posted about this on his blog, but our friend and fellow Panda’s Thumb contributor Mark Perakh has suffered a terrible tragedy: his house has burned down, taking with it virtually everything. The good news is that…
Well, I can’t say I never learned anything at Panda’s Thumb. I learned about this cute little plugin they use called a Disemvoweler that strips all the vowels from a troll’s comments.