Kenneth Miller: Darwin’s Weasel {Not to be confused with Dawkins’ weasel}

http://features.csmonitor.com/.....e-designs/

Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us)…

People who should know better are still invoking this belt buckle thing as the motto of the Nazis. Gott mit uns is the motto of the Wermacht and has been its motto since the late 1800s. Hitler’s Nazi Army (different from the Wermacht which pre-dated Hitler and the SS), the 900k strong Waffen SS had different uniforms and their motto was Meine Ehre heißt Treue or ‘My honor is called loyalty’.

I am an ardent supporter of ID, but (no offense) this post isn’t up to UD’s usual very high standards.

Does Miller have an evolutionary explanation that requires no recourse to intelligence? The cell contains high-tech machinery. Why isn’t this evidence for design?

That’s begging the question. Sure we can say “evolution has no explanation for the beginning of life” - but the evilutionists themselves admit that. We can’t just say “ID is true by default”. That makes us look like… Well… I don’t really want to say.

Of course there’s evidence for intelligent design — if there weren’t, Miller wouldn’t be spending so much time denying it.

Of course atheism must be true? Otherwise we wouldn’t be spending so much time arguing against it, right?

Come on now everyone! We all know ID is true. We’ve convinced the general public. It can’t be long until the scientific community follows - but we have to avoid elementary errors of logic.

Just wait until the Biologic Institute starts publishing it’s results. Then we’ll see Big Science quaking in its boots!

If snowflakes are complex, and if sand dunes are complex, and if whirlpool galaxies are complex, then who designed those?

America is like Modern Day Israel - fights of truth starts there and they get first blow in the face! How’s that?

To be honest, i dont believe a liar such as Kenny Miller believes in God or is a God fearing person. I mean, come on: “According to Stein, science leads you to killing people.”

WOW!

“Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science.”

Just to point out - one of the reasons I didn’t go into biology was because Darwinism looked, well, BORING. Darwinism - the way they teach it in the school - is waiting for something to happen, and then ascribe the cause to nothing particular. If the way they teach it in the school is bad, why aren’t Darwinists joining with ID’ers to promote a more realistic picture? The reason - they are worried what the public will think. THEY are destroying science because they don’t like admitting to the public the possibilities that the evidence allows.

If the cell is full of such high tech machinery, then why are gonadal stem cells prone to make errors in the production of eggs and sperm. Errors in cell division can lead to the formation of egg and sperm cells with inappropriate numbers of chromosomes because the cellular machinery fails to move chromosomes properly to new daughter cells. In humans, some of these errors lead to spontaneous abortions or to children born with an extra chromosome, as is the case in Down’s syndrome. This is documented in a study of one million conceptions where 7.0% of spontaneous abortions result from failures in the cell to properly divide their chromosomes (see Sankaranarayanan, K. 1979. The role of non-disjunction in aneuploidy in man: An overview. Mutation Research 61:1-28). Is 7.0% an acceptable failure rate for such a superbly designed system?

JAB wrote: “If snowflakes are complex, and if sand dunes are complex, and if whirlpool galaxies are complex, then who designed those?”

Are snowflakes complex? The question you should be asking is not, “How pretty or intricate do snowflakes look?” But rather, “In how few bits can one write a computer program that generates a snowflake pattern?” A: a handful.

Then, “How many bits are required to write program that generates the information in a genome?”

As I understand it, the information required to construct snowflake shapes is effectively built into water molecules. Its like enjoying the hexagons that form on a boiling pans of rice or porridge. (Perhaps someone else could correct me I’ve misunderstood this phenomenon.)

Rob

P.S. Expelled won’t turn anyone away from science. It might turn them away from Miller.

johnnyb says “Just to point out - one of the reasons I didn’t go into biology was because Darwinism looked, well, BORING. Darwinism - the way they teach it in the school - is waiting for something to happen, and then ascribe the cause to nothing particular.”

Excellent point!! I propose that we apply for a grant from the National Science Foundation to survey selected school children, randomly broken into two groups.

To the first group we will make the statement: “Many scientists believe that life, with all of its complex features, evolved by means of directionless genetic variation.”

To the second group: “Many scientists believe that life, with all of its complex features, is the product of design, along with other natural processes.”

Now, both groups are asked: “Will you consider, among all your career choices, to dedicate your life to discovering engineering mechanisms found in living organisms that can be applied to assist humanity? And, students, keep in mind, if you do not find useful engineering mechanisms, you probably will be out of a job and lose the ability to pay your bills and avoid foreclosure on your house.”

OK, should we ask the taxpayer to foot the bill for this survey to the tune of millions of dollars? Or will common sense give us the answer, and we can use the money in much more beneficial ways?

“But Darwinism didn’t just baptize Nazism — it provided the theoretical underpinnings.”

Genocide has been going on much longer than we’ve known about the theory of evolution. It’s not exactly like there’s a shortage of rationalizations that leaders use for it. Not the least of which is religion itself.

And why exactly did they choose the Jews to wipe out anyway? It’s not like they were obviously less fit than the rest. That would really be the only possible evolution-based rationalization to picking them out specifically. They weren’t using the science of the day to pick them out. They were using their own pre-conceived biases.

Plus, micro-evolution would be the only thing necessary to provide the same theoretical underpinnings. As I understand it, you guys also accept micro-evolution, so where does that leave your claims? Supposedly you guys accept the same things that can “provide the theoretical underpinnings” to the Holocaust, but it really doesn’t mean anything.

“Funny, we never see Mother Teresa being used to justify abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, bestiality, etc.”

Now that comment is honestly just silly. We can
see easily that it’s not too hard for people to find religious underpinnings for violence and whatnot.

DobyGS, (#10) by your reasoning, the Blue Screen of Death means that Windows wasn’t designed either.

Bear, well it does imply that it wasn’t designed by a perfect designer.

If the cell is full of such high tech machinery, then why are gonadal stem cells prone to make errors in the production of eggs and sperm.-DobyGs

No one said the design had to be perfect. And even if it started out “perfect” no one has said it had to remain that way.

Read what Stein said in context, Dr. Miller. The Nazi’s looked to science — the “best” science of the day, notably Darwinism — to justify murdering people (in addition to setting up very efficient, scientifically based mechanisms for doing so). Do you deny this? Do you really think that Stein was saying more than this?

I’m not Dr. Miller, but I’d certainly deny that’s what Stein said.

Listen for yourself (Go to the Behind the Scenes tab, and to the 21st April, ), 27.25 minutes in:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

The ellipsis contains a description of Stein’s experiences in Germany.

Notice he uses that he uses his German trip to back up his statement that “…last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed…” - i.e. this is what the scientists were doing. Not, indeed what Nazis were doing, or that it was the Nazis who were perverting science.

Also note what else he does not say. He does not say “Nazi’s [sic] looked to science — the “best” science of the day, notably Darwinism — to justify murdering people”. He says that scientists - the scientists themselves - were killing people.

There is nothing in what Stein says about the Nazis using the best science of the day to justify their actions. He says that it was scientists who were doing the killing, and concludes that “science leads you to killing people”.

fdsa: “Bear, well it does imply that it wasn’t designed by a perfect designer.”

Or that the designer’s intent wasn’t to build something that we recognized as perfect? Maybe the designer knows something you do not and therefore you can’t appreciate his/her/its work? There are a wealth of possibilities that I (

Apparently HTML is enabled… I tried to use an angled bracket to make an arrow and everything after it disappeared. Can an admin fix that on the previous post? Otherwise that last sentence isn’t terribly important.

fdsa:

Not necessarily. It simply implies that either:

1. The perfect designer deliberately designed an imperfect product.

2. Or, the design was originally perfect, but has been damaged since. This is the position taken by Christianity. You may object that a perfect design wouldn’t allow a perfect design to become damaged, but the position of Christianity is that the Perfect Designer in fact did allow the design to become damaged as part of an overall redemptive plan in which free will must be maintained.

All of this is, of course, apropos of ID, because ID in its purest sense doesn’t require the designer to be either perfect or imperfect.

fdsa: “And why exactly did they choose the Jews to wipe out anyway? It’s not like they were obviously less fit than the rest. That would really be the only possible evolution-based rationalization to picking them out specifically. They weren’t using the science of the day to pick them out. They were using their own pre-conceived biases.

Plus, micro-evolution would be the only thing necessary to provide the same theoretical underpinnings. As I understand it, you guys also accept micro-evolution, so where does that leave your claims? Supposedly you guys accept the same things that can “provide the theoretical underpinnings” to the Holocaust, but it really doesn’t mean anything.”

non-partisan kudos.

Correction to #20: I meant that a Perfect Designer would not allow a design to become damaged.

Invective should never be found on our Web page. That’s a low debating tactic that the other side stoops to. We have good science on our side, so we don’t need to do that. “Pedant” and “elitist prig” are unhelpful terms of abuse, which do nothing to further our cause.

fdsa:“And why exactly did they choose the Jews to wipe out anyway? It’s not like they were obviously less fit than the rest. That would really be the only possible evolution-based rationalization to picking them out specifically. They weren’t using the science of the day to pick them out. They were using their own pre-conceived biases.

I had questions about this as well - not having seen the movie. (To me, that’s not entertainment - unless there’s a musical montage version of it.) U.S. eugenicists weren’t targeting Jews, so my question would be, did the Nazis exploit eugenics, targeting the feeble-minded first, and then when the infrastructure was in place, throw Jews into the mix as well (without the scientific justification starting with them). So I spent an hour trying to hunt up quotes of how the Nazi scientific rationale would have targeted Jews specifically. Here is what I came up with:

“Nazi racial and anti-semitic policies, which were explicitly expressed in biological and medical terms and developed as public health measures, culminated in mass murder. Through a series of distortions, and help from researchers and scientists (geneticists, anthropologists, and psychiatrists, to name a few), the antithesis to what science and medicine should stand for emerged. Jewish doctors lost their licence to heal and were portrayed as sexual predators. Medical schools expelled their Jewish members and rose willingly to saluting, “Heil!” in the faculty assembly under no external pressure. Antisemitism was rendered scientific, framing genocide as a national antisepsis…” -Medicine’s Dark Past

Also:

“Indeed, the interaction between science and politics during the National Socialist era was manifold. Many scientists were on expert advisory committees, directly feeding the system with scientific justification, many of them scientists from the KWS. Through them, the violent anti-Semitism was claimed to have scientific backing.

Society was to be cleaned of all alien contamination, hence the German phrase ‘Rassenhygiene’ meaning ‘racial hygiene’. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and people with hereditary diseases were deprived of their human rights, herded into concentration camps, used for scientific experimentation and murdered. And the scientists who provided the scientific backing were respected university professors or researchers of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS), the predecessor of the Max Planck Society. Many of them remained in renowned positions even after 1945, influential enough to delay an unbiased historical confrontation

in 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Law, prohibiting marriage and extra-marital intercourse between Jews and German citizens. Otmar von Verschuer, Fischer’s successor as Director of the KWI for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics stated, ‘It is important that our race politics-also in the Jewish question-get an objective, scientific background, which is also acknowledged in broader circles’

Wolfgang Abel, a scientist at the KWI proudly gloated in an interview: ‘I had become the expert in the field of human facial and cranial shape because of my genetical studies-just as the Norwegian, Dr Quelprud, in our institute was the expert in the inheritance of the shape of the ear’ ” -“In the name of science
The role of biologists in Nazi atrocities: lessons for today’s scientists”,EMBO Reports

However, there was also the following, from the abstract for an article that was not available:

“In the early twentieth century, German natural scientists carried out sophisticated studies based on empirical research methods. The Nazis sought to situate their racism in this tradition. They were supported by many scientists, who thereby conferred legitimacy on Nazi racism. Even today some historical works imply that Nazi racist ideas were in line with scientific understandings of the time. However, the following examination of the work of Otmar von Verschuer, a leading Germany hereditary pathologist of the 1930s through the 1950s, and a key proponent of Nazi racial policies, shows this view to be ill-grounded: Nazi racist ideology was not “scientifically valid” even as the term was then understood.“-Legitimization of Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy, Oxford University Press

Miller is jealous ’cause he didn’t get in the movie.

And he isn’t confusing at all, just deeply confused.

#5 JAB — I think you should look at Dembski’s “explanatory filter” (the non-naturalized version).

Snowflakes would appear by this filter to have contingency and complexity but lack specification, thus they are not designed.

“1. The perfect designer deliberately designed an imperfect product.”

Or perhaps you don’t know all the reasons for the design. Perhaps there is no perfect-possible world but only an optimal-possible world. [Or the Designer never meant all things to have a perfect design in the first place since it is not His purpose to be the perfect Engineer. Secondly, sub-optimal design is still a design.]

Darwinists put forward many a-teleological examples only to have those examples refuted by new discoveries. Junk-DNA isn’t junk. The panda’s thumb is a well-designed piece of bone that allows it to get to its food. The list goes on and on…

The problem is that you’re arguing against the Anglican, Victorian-era, natural theology of Darwin’s day instead of contemporary design beliefs. Cornelius Hunter covered this in “Darwin’s God”.

“2. Or, the design was originally perfect, but has been damaged since. This is the position taken by Christianity.”

That’s not exactly true. That’s the explanation for evil and in terms of biology, genetic defects, but that would not be the explanation for so-called ‘imperfect design’.

“You may object that a perfect design wouldn’t allow a perfect design to become damaged, but the position of Christianity is that the Perfect Designer in fact did allow the design to become damaged as part of an overall redemptive plan in which free will must be maintained.”

The Free-Will Defense is one defense but not the only one. The Providential explanation is the one put forward in Scripture (which includes many of the minor defenses as well).

DobyGS you wrote

If the cell is full of such high tech machinery, then why…

Your premise is not one that evolutionists usually start from when trying to make the point you are trying to make i.e if species or cells are designed then why are there apparent imperfections?

You won’t usually find opponents of ID who claim that cells are not “such high tech machinery” since it is empirically obvious to everyone that they are. What you should have said is “If the high tech machinery of cells is due to a designer then why are there apparent imperfections?”. That is a common pseudoscientific criticism of ID. It is pseudoscientific because the criticism is not of the scientific rationale for claiming design detection, it is a criticism of the nature of the designer. For example if I claim that due to defects in Microsoft Windows XP that those defects prove that the software had to be a product of matter and energy under the influence of nothing more then unguided non intelligent causation (i.e sunshine, rain, lightning, random chemical interaction) then I would be rightly seen as lacking in knowledge of how computer software can and cannot come into existence. The errors in software programs are not scientifically valid as an argument against the origin of software programs because there is the mathematical certainty that sunlight, rain, lightning and random chemical interactions are insufficient to cause the development of a software program.

The simplest cell is much more complex then any software program and any machine built by man. To make the criticism that because there are imperfections in some cells, therefore that leaves us with no other option but to discount that a cell needs to be engineered in order to exist, is a pseudoscientific theory because it is making the assumption that if someone can build a cell that person could not be anything less then perfect according to a subjective philosophical standard.

Basically your argument is a theological criticismwhich seeks to make the point that “If God is real and he/she created life then why isn’t life perfect?” That is a suitable question in theology or philosophy, but it is pseudoscience to use it as an argument against design in the search for an understanding of the origin of a cell. If a cell cannot come into existence by random chemical interactions, if it can be proven that the complexity of a cell needs to have been caused by intelligent cause, then that should be accepted without a recourse to sham arguments against design by claiming that the designer must be perfect to some subjective standard. It is a copout and pseudoscience.

“it’s elitist prigs like yourself who pretend that evolutionary biology has all the answers”

Nobody ever claimed that we have all the answers. We have a great framework for making discoveries. We’ve refined it, and will keep refining it as new evidence comes in to change our understanding of how evolution progresses.

“Stifling the freedom to dissent…”

Oh, you always have the freedom to dissent. It’s just that everyone else has the freedom to tell you exactly why you’re wrong, too.

Interesting factoid:
According to the About page on this site, only one or two of the contributors/friends (Red and Lee) have any credentials related to Biology. Yet this blog is one of the prime sources of criticism for it. Interesting…

“Genocide has been going on much longer than we’ve known about the theory of evolution. It’s not exactly like there’s a shortage of rationalizations that leaders use for it. Not the least of which is religion itself.”

Yes, however in the particular case of the Nazis, which I believe was the topic being discussed, Evolutionary theory(or at least a very warped understanding of it) played a key role.

“And why exactly did they choose the Jews to wipe out anyway?”

The same reason they went after my slav ancestors, western europeans such as the Germans, Brits, Italians and the French, have a notion of nobility and those who are not of certain descent are often ostracized/looked down upon.

In the harshest of extremes, they can even be viewed as under-evolved sub-species.(A notion I find funny seeing as western european nobility are a bunch of crooked toothed inbred disgusting looking people)

In the case of World war 2 Nazism, Germans used the differences in appearence between Slavs, polish and jewish peoples to themselves as an excuse to claim they were mongoloid under-evolved ape men…

You ask why did the Nazis target the jews? They needed a scape goat, with the jewish people they had a group who had significantly more money than the normal German citizens, this was due to both the immigration of Jews into Germany, and the Jewish people doing what today’s italian and German business owners do, keeping their Jewish communities/businesses to themselves.

When the German mark hit negative billions to the dollar, people became angry.

The Nazi’s looked to the people with money, they then gave the German people’s anger direction, with the easily identifiable difference in appearence between the jew and the aryan, they had something to attack, something that appeared more justifiable than just money.

“These under evolved hook nosed people! How dare they claim to be God’s chosen people!”

Of course, the same is applicable for their treatment of Slav, Russian and Polish people. Eastern Europeans are somewhat wider built and different looking then what those seen from many Western European countries.

Nazi persecution in WW2 can be attributed to many factors, evolutionary theory(a very warped version of it anyway) was one justification used.

As for the science of the day

Nazi Germany had some of the greatest scientists innovators and engineers in history.

During the late 30’s early 40’s eugenics was still going on in America, is it any shock then that the Nazi’s wouldn’t allow certain people to breed? Is it any shock they killed the old and disabled who were slow?

… No they were very much of the time and even during the war they gained a foot hold in America.

Look up American Nazism if you don’t already know that history.

Than those seen from western european countries* my bad.

“If the cell is full of such high tech machinery, then why are gonadal stem cells prone to make errors in the production of eggs and sperm. Errors in cell division can lead to the formation of egg and sperm cells with inappropriate numbers of chromosomes because the cellular machinery fails to move chromosomes properly to new daughter cells. In humans, some of these errors lead to spontaneous abortions or to children born with an extra chromosome, as is the case in Down’s syndrome. This is documented in a study of one million conceptions where 7.0% of spontaneous abortions result from failures in the cell to properly divide their chromosomes (see Sankaranarayanan, K. 1979. The role of non-disjunction in aneuploidy in man: An overview. Mutation Research 61:1-28). Is 7.0% an acceptable failure rate for such a superbly designed system?”

Perhaps those are failures only in your eyes.

Perfection is to perform exactly to maximum function, in relation to the intended purpose of the engineer/designer.

If we cannot say for fact a cell was designed, how can we say that the paths cells take are or aren’t exactly as a designer intended? …

Ultimately what you regard as an error is only an error from your perspective.

The same can be said of purpose as well…

Then the question becomes if there’s a designer of the designer and the immaterial designer created the material organism who would later design the cell, did that immaterial designer intend for the material designer to create the cell to function in the manner which it does?

*Headache*

fdsa (13): “And why exactly did they choose the Jews to wipe out anyway? It’s not like they were obviously less fit than the rest. That would really be the only possible evolution-based rationalization to picking them out specifically.

JunkyardTornado (24): “I had questions about this as well…

Adolph Hitler during a lunch with Heinrich Himmler (the leader of the SS, which carried out Hitler’s order of genocide against the Jews), 17 February 1942:

The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilization of the underworld against the established order. This enterprise of Christianity had no more to do with religion than Marxist socialism has to do with the solution of the social problem. The notions represented by Jewish Christianity were strictly unthinkable to Roman brains…

It was necessary for the Jew to appear on the scene and introduce that mad conception of a life that continues into an alleged Beyond! It enables one to regard life as a thing that is negligible here below — since it will nourish later, when it no longer exists…

The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world — in order to ruin it — reopened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social question. It’s the same sleight of hand as before. Just as Saul was changed into St. Paul, Mordechai became Karl Marx.

Peace can result only from a natural order. The condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy amongst nations…

It is Jewry that always destroys this order. It constantly provokes the revolt of the weak against the strong, of bestiality against intelligence, of quantity against quality… The more we render the Jew incapable of harming us, the more we shall protect ourselves from this danger. The Jew plays in nature the role of a catalyzing element. A people that is rid of its Jews returns spontaneously to the natural order.

So, according to Hitler, besides being implementers of the natural order, the Nazis were also the defenders (and definers) of it as well.
__________

Stash, use of invective and vulgar language degrades your post.

Since eugenics and ID are both prominently mentioned in this post, check out this list of the 10 books that screwed up the world:

http://listverse.com/literatur.....the-world/

Check out what’s at #1. Wow. That’s pretty sad.

Barb (35), Notice the absurd claim they make. “This book has helped to fuel (through pseudo-science and untruths) the idea that evolution is false and that a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is the only possible manner in which the earth was created.”

For a list that is supposed to be opposing deceptive and misleading practices, it is ironic in the extreme how misleading this description is.

Behe of course believe that evolution has taken place and does not reject common descent. He doesn’t even reject the reality of Darwinistic mechanisms that cause microevolution, though he finds them insufficient for macroevolution. He does not advocate Young Earth Creationism and does not base his arguments on the book of Genesis.

Most commentators recognized the huge discrepancy and many wondered if the list author had read the book. One commentator tried to justify the summary, arguing the summary doesn’t exactly claim Behe’s book itself takes the positions described in the summary, but rather that “fundamentalists” take parts of his book as encouragement (for something they already believed, even if their position is not Behe’s position).

So Behe’s book is “bad” not because of what it actually says or what he actually believes, but because of the positions of other people who agree with some parts of Behe’s position — even though they differ on the points given in the summary!

Incredible.

BTW, they claim the list is in no particular order, but then it is odd in the extreme that they bother to do a count down to number one. What is the point of counting down, when that is usually used to emphasize suspense and increasing significance?

For someone who supposedly opposes misinformation, that site needs some critical self-examination.

There is a current non fiction book titled

“10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help”

It is currently #334 on Amazon

Some of the books are the same but one that made the list is Darwin’s The Descent of Man. I doubt that anyone would give Behe’s book the distinction on the list. Even if it did reinforce the problems of Darwinian evolution, it certainly was not first and probably not most important.

EricB (#36) - I noticed their comments, too, which is why I stated that it was sad. It really sounds like someone’s critizing something he (she) hasn’t read.

Sigh . . .

Re FDSA, 30:

Interesting factoid:
According to the About page on this site, only one or two of the contributors/friends (Red and Lee) have any credentials related to Biology. Yet this blog is one of the prime sources of criticism for it. Interesting…

FDSA, you have this precisely backwards:

1 –> Science works by empirically anchored inference to best explanation, and when predictions [especially unexpected ones] are confirmed, then it lends high credit to a given theory. (And of course empirical disconfirmation hurts a theory; directly or indirectly as it has to build up so much of an ad hoc patchwork to cover gaps that iot loses credibility.)

2 –> Predictions include not only those within the formal range of a theory, but the implication of what can be called bridging concepts. For, when a theory or research programme opens up a bridge to another domain in science, suddenly it is exposed to the full range of data and explanation from that domain, which often leads to exciting times. (Think of the power of the Newtonian synthesis in C17 - 18 when it bridged the earth and the heavens through one theoretical framework.)

3 –> As the always linked through my handle [LH column] Section A, discusses, this has happened to modern biology ever since the turn of the 1950’s, once it was discovered that the DNA molecule was a code-bearing information storage molecule, with associated computer language, algorithms and algorithm-implementing companion nanomachines.

4 –> Thus, a bridge was opened to the knowledge base of the fields of information theory, computer science and associated domains in mathematics etc. This immediately means that knowledge and expertise in this cluster of fields is highly relevant to evaluating the credibility of darwinian thought on origins of life and biodiversity.

5 –> The theory of intelligent design in part [there are other domains that it addresses] addresses that bridge, and it powerfully shows that evolutionary materialist paradigm is in deep trouble, and why.

6 –> In very compressed summary, mechanical necessity accounts for natural regularities [low contingency]. Where there is high contingency, chance and/or intelligence are implicated, and we have a reliable filter for identifying sufficiently complex, functionally specified cases of complex organisation.

7 –> Namely, if something exhibits functionally specified complex information and so would exhaust the probabilistic resources of the cosmos to find it through random walks or the equivalent [i.e. per Marks & Dembski, it is active, insightful information injected by intelligence that significantly outperforms random search] in the relevant configuration space, then we are well-warranted to infer to intelligence as the cause. (For instance, we would find it incredible to see a claim that this post was created by lucky noise.)

9 –> DNA exhibits an extreme case of such FSCI: 300 - 500,000 4-state elements at the lower end, up to ~ 3 - 4 bn at the upper end. Just 300k bases is a config space of ~9.94 * 10^180,617, and even if we were to see 10^1,500 islands of functionality of 10^150 states each, these would be so isolated in the available space that no undirected search on the scope of our observed cosmos [~ 10^150 quantum states across its lifetime] would be likely to find even one such state.

10 –> And if one posits instead a quasi-infinite array of sub cosmi to expand the available search resources, one is indulging in ad hoc, empirically unsupported metaphysical speculation. The inference that on what we know about the origin of FSCI intelligence is the best explanation for DNA-based life, gains force from seeing the other major live option being forced to such a resort!

Consequently, FDSA, biologists and their intellectual kin no longer have an intellectual monopoly on speaking with relevant expertise on matters linked to the origin of and diversity manifested by DNA-based life.

Thus, too, the importance of a blog like this one, where those knowledgeable in teh bridged to fields can have their say without being “expelled.”

GEM of TKI

PS: Moderators, again, this underscores the need for a FAQs and 101 tutorial section.

fdsa:

Nobody ever claimed that we have all the answers. We have a great framework for making discoveries.

Well, I have to reiterate what that great intellectual, Ben Stein, said. Evolution doesn’t explain gravity. So you better get to work on that. It would be the first relevance to your dying theory.

“one is indulging in ad hoc, empirically unsupported metaphysical speculation.”

*cough*God*cough*

Stone, I don’t think we disagree on very much. My question was purely rhetorical, and meant to point out that the Nazis weren’t starting out with evolution and committing genocide because of it. They were starting out with needing a scapegoat, as you said, and finding any justification they could for it.

Was evolution used? To some extent.
Was religion used? To some extent.
Was racism used? To a great extent.

My beef is that Expelled (not that it came up with the idea itself) draws the conclusion that evolution directly lead to the holocaust, therefore evolution is bad.

poachy:
“Evolution doesn’t explain gravity.”

WTF? LMAO!

Non-sequitur anyone? Next you’ll be complaining that Cell Theory doesn’t explain gravity, I suppose.

fdsa you wrote

My beef is that Expelled (not that it came up with the idea itself) draws the conclusion that evolution directly lead to the holocaust, therefore evolution is bad.

Don’t you remember in the movie when Ben mentioned Malthus as one of the motivations of the Nazis but the museum guide didn’t know about Malthus and insisted that it was Darwin who was responsible for Nazi policies. Ben also made it clear that he wasn’t making the claim that Darwin led to Nazi ideology. You had Myers and Dawkins and those other fanatical atheist evolutionists telling us how religion is bad for society and that to get rid of belief in God would be good for society. The whole point of that 7 minute segment (that went on for hours according to Dawkins) was to show how a belief in “SCIENCE” as the ultimate moral authority can lead to very dark places.

Evolutionists love to point out how religious belief has led to violence throughout history, making the claim that faith directly leads to violence. The leading atheist evolutionists constantly make this claim. But when it is pointed out that a morality based upon a purely “scientific” ethic led to large scale violence then they throw a fit. They refuse to look at religious violence in a nuanced way to take in factors other then religion e.g politics, economics, ethnicity, etc. But when Nazi and communist morality and ethics can be shown to have been largely influenced by Darwinian precepts they scream and rant and cry foul. Cry baby hypocrites is what they are.

“Stone, I don’t think we disagree on very much. My question was purely rhetorical, and meant to point out that the Nazis weren’t starting out with evolution and committing genocide because of it. They were starting out with needing a scapegoat, as you said, and finding any justification they could for it.”

I don’t know about that, the ideology came first, which could have included evo.

They needed to be in power before they could attack the scape goat, but then again I don’t pretend to read the thought processes of men, especially ones who died over a half century ago…

“Was religion used? To some extent.”

Religion is an interesting one, isn’t it amazing that some of the most brilliant engineers and theologens came together and created a world view that combined all the elements of human thought, and in the end, this is what they did ?

I imagine if the Nazi party had been what they claimed to be in the beginning, they would be the dominant empire right now.

I look back to panzer divisions running through Americans, Brits and Russians like nothing.

All of that power disolved away because of one man’s greed, stubborn nature(should have listened to his officers, could have stopped D-day)
and hatred.

I only wish I were so blessed as to have the resources he had.

“My beef is that Expelled (not that it came up with the idea itself) draws the conclusion that evolution directly lead to the holocaust, therefore evolution is bad.”

I think the idea they meant to convey(even though they did not do the best job of it) was that scientific beaurocracy subjects us to a form of intellectual coercion that is harmful to our civilization, as the ideas it condones are biased and go unchallenged.

Evolution itself doesn’t lead to Nazism, but the community that supports neo-darwinism certainly operates very similarly.

They leave no room to be objective, on top of that they black ball certain people, and on top of that, if someone of moderate intelligence questions them they resort to credentialism.

Since it is a beaurocracy bent on making money through grants, state regulated education is easily corrupted. The problem is bigger than the evolution issue, in America we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking X amount of people + X amount of money = y amount of progress.

Human beings are not a commodity, innovation does not come from the majority, and when you standardize education, all you make is a nation of secretaries and yes men.

Grades, test scores, exams, all worthless. They do not explain how to engage opposing ideas.

Infact, you may even say the majority is weaker, they are unable to think outside of certain ideas.

More over, Neo-darwinism extends into a broader world view, and that’s when things get ugly.

As a Bisexual, I don’t feel the need to hurry and reproduce, I’ve been celibate for 2 years and it’s not because I have a psychosis or a disease, I just don’t think in a civilization that does artificial insemination, we’re really competing to keep our genes here on earth.

I feel no connection to relatives I don’t speak too. The family is not a set of common genes but rather a vague idea.

I think competition for survival is redundant when members of a species willingfully commit suicide.

I see romantic world views full of noble ideas and elegance in Darwinism, for that very reason I find it repugnant.

There is no such thing as beauty it’s an illusion, there is no such thing as nobility or superiority, just false pride via self righteousness.

Re FDSA:

GEM, 39: 10 –> {[Left OFF in 42] And if one posits instead a quasi-infinite array of sub cosmi to expand the available search resources,} one is indulging in ad hoc, empirically unsupported metaphysical speculation. {[Left off in 42]The inference that on what we know about the origin of FSCI intelligence is the best explanation for DNA-based life, gains force from seeing the other major live option being forced to such a resort!}

FDSA, 42: *cough*God*cough*

1 –> Let us first observe the little exercise in manipulative out-of-context citation by FDSA just above. [In short, there is a very specific point where there is a highly specific reference to OBSERVED after-the fact ad hoc metaphysical speculation on the part of evolutionary materialists.]

2 –> Moreover, note that this was a remark on the 10th point in a set of responses to FDSA’s attempt [cf 30] to claim that Biologists are privileged from external critique [esp. here at UD], to which I directly responded that once information and cybernetic systems were shown to be at the heart of the cell, those who know about such systems and associated issues [including BTW, statistical thermodynamics ones] are very much in a position to have to say something about biology.

3 –> Where is the original objection FDSA raised, now? SILENCE. Just, the sadly familiar tactic of rushing on to the next tangential objection, as though there is no accountability over FDSA’s having in effect invited readers to infer that the contributors here are ignorant, mischief-making intellectual busybodies confusing hoi polloi on what they do not know anything about. The rhetorical strategy seems sadly familiar: objection answered on the merits — well just raise the next objection as if nothing has happened.

4 –> But also, FDSA seems to be labouring under the grossly mistaken impression that reference to God is a latterday, Johnny-come-lately after-the-fact ad hoc metaphysical speculation to explain away otherwise fatal evidence that has recently been discovered.

5 –> This dismisal as if design — or even more specifically God as leading candidate to be designer — were an unsupported metaphysical speculation, on its face, evidently reflects a now common but ill-advised supposition of too many evolutionary materialists that their form of “Scientific” atheism — notice, such [often militant] atheists and their fellow-travellers cannot properly assume that they are being objective and neutral on philosophy by simply putting on a lab coat — is the “default” intellectual/ “scientific” position. Never mind how utterly and inescapably self-referentially incoherent said position is, once one seriously addresses the origin and credibility of the minds required to think even evolutionary materialist thoughts.

6 –> It is also grossly out of line with the centuries up to today in which countless millions have testified to knowing God personally and in powerully, even miraculously life-transforming ways, much less the fact that theism has been a major worldview at the very foundation of our civilisation and very specifically of the 300+ year long modern scientific revolution. Not to mention, design-minded, indeed even theistic [not to mention, outright, Biblically minded, Judaeo-Christian . . . ] scientists and thinkers have centuries long since predicted and/or observed that the cosmos evinces clear signs of design; to which the C19 on evolutionary materialist speculations were intended to be a “scientific” answer. But this is now itself scientifically being answered by evidence that fits in with the lognstanding expectations of deisgn thought, and to which evo mat thinkers now have to put up ad hoc speculations to try to stave off collapse. For telling instance, cf Newton’s remarks in his general scholium to the Principia! That is, excerpting . . .

. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler . . . from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect . . . . We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [That is, implicitly rejects chance, Plato's third alternative and explicitly infers to the Designer of the Cosmos.] But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from. the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy . . .

7 –> Now, too, as Newton pointed out in the just linked — the evidence that points to design of the cosmos raises the issue as to who or what is responsible for the design. For, on evidence, our cosmos is contingent and exhibits unified, complex, fine-tuned functional, information-rich order. These are well-known as signs of design; and design is characteristically and reliably a mark of intelligence in action.

8 –> The longstanding view that God is a very viable candidate for the designer, is thus precisely not after-the-fact or ad hoc.

9 –> But — in the face of having discovered an astonishingly precise fine-tuning of the observed cosmos — to have to come up with the notion that well, then maybe there is a quasi-infinite array of sub-cosmi with randomly scattered parameters and opportunities for evolution of life, so that ours just happens to have the utterly precisely fine-tuned values that make us possible and actual, is exactly an after the fact ad hoc speculation without independent empirical support.

10 –> There is a big and all too telling difference between expecting or observing signs of design on the one hand, and seeing those who so confidently dismissed such sigfns from C19 on, now having to scramble to try to explain a growing mountain of such signs away.
____________

Not to mention, the original issue of substance in the thread, which FDSA in part tried to brush aside by making an improper appeal to the authority of the dominant school of biologists: Miller’s rhetoricaly calculated misrepresentations and distortions of the substance of the Movie, Expelled, starting with the assertion that inference to design is to be equated with Biblical, especially Young Earth Creationism. (Miller MUST know better than that, and as a declared, educated Catholic MUST also know that willful misrepresentaiton of another is wrong. He must do better than this, a lot better.)

On that, I cite a remark by that notorious fundy redneck Creationist from Dayton, Tennessee circa 1925 — NOT, Cicero, which is at the head of my always linked [and we can of course revert to Plato's remarks in The Laws, Book X, too inter alia . . .].

Namely:

Is it possible for any man to behold these things, and yet imagine that certain solid and individual bodies move by their natural force and gravitation, and that a world so beautifully adorned was made by their fortuitous concourse? He who believes this may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them. How, therefore, can these people assert that the world was made by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, which have no color, no quality—which the Greeks call [poiotes], no sense? [Cicero, THE NATURE OF THE GODS BK II Ch XXXVII, C1 BC, as trans Yonge (Harper & Bros., 1877), pp. 289 - 90.]

GEM of TKI

PS: A look at the Social-Darwinist, racialist, CONSCIOUSLY eugenics-supportive remarks of Darwin himself in not only correspondence but also his Descent of Man, chs 5 - 7 [pull it from Infidels.org for yourself through a web search; then compare Chapter 11 from Hitler's notorious Mein Kampf, which you can also look up for yourself . . . ], and the onward lines of intellectual and historical influence from Haekel on that Weikart et al show, is far more than enough to highlight that Darwinism was indeed, historically, a key enabler of the Shoah. The objection to Expelled at this point is because of the consequences of that inconvenient link becoming too well-known by hoi polloi, not the underlying merits on the facts.

kf

2 –> Moreover, note that this was a remark on the 10th point in a set of responses to FDSA’s attempt [cf 30] to claim that Biologists are privileged from external critique [esp. here at UD], to which I directly responded that once information and cybernetic systems were shown to be at the heart of the cell, those who know about such systems and associated issues [including BTW, statistical thermodynamics ones] are very much in a position to have to say something about biology.

fdsa did not claim that biologists were privileged from external critique. He simply pointed out the relative paucity of scientific expertise in biology on the UD masthead. Would you accept as valid the criticisms of cybernetics by biologists who have no expertise in computer science?

On a separate note: does any part of nature look natural to you, or does it all look designed? If so, what would “natural” look like? Are there any outcomes of random events that are chance to God? (”Not even a sparrow falls.”) And if God designed the laws of nature, why does it seem he has to reach in now and then to give the clockwork a nudge?

Newton’s remarks reflect only hopelessly romantic thoughts.

There is absolutely no evidence backing the notion that uniformity in the cosmos is evidence of a designer. I regard the examples by Behe much higher for the reason that components of the flagellum almost seeem modular and on top of that serve to increase a singular maximum function.

What function/purpose is there in the many galaxies? You cannot say to create life because it would make no sense in the light of the many outside of the milky way which likely don’t have any life.

Footnotes

1] TMH: Please read no 39, then comment again. [I think you will see that there was a rhetorical reason for the note by FDSA (an improper negative appeal to authority), to which I responded to by highlighting that the issue is that we have now bridged from biology to information science; thus relevant skill-sets are broader than FDSA was willing to accept in making the sort of dismissive remark in 30 I commented on at 39 above.]

2] Stone; please, don’t be the live donkey kicking the safely dead lion. Observe that Newton was a design thinker, which is what the cite was meant to show. It also so happens to come from the most significant scientific book ever published, by the most significant scientist who ever lived — believing in design [and the Bible] did not prevent N from being a scientist who made key discoveries. And, extending to our more modern understanding of cosmology, the inference to the design of the cosmos per its finely balanced order and complexity is stronger than in N’s day — don’t tilt at strawmen. [Cf the summary in the always linked, section D.]

GEM of TKI

“2] Stone; please, don’t be the live donkey kicking the safely dead lion.”

Your lion had no teeth even when he was alive, at least in reference to this argument…

There is no objectivity in his remarks, it’s different for a man in this day and age to believe in the God of Judaism/christianity as the evidence that has been uncovered in the past century is real.
His comments weren’t based on observation or science, rather the culture of his time.

“Observe that Newton was a design thinker,”

LOL I’m sorry, a “thinker”? That’s what you’re using to promote your view ? Ultimately his notion of design was nothing more than a gut feeling based on belief, it does nothing for ID to quote things of that nature.

It makes ID look frail.

“It also so happens to come from the most significant scientific book ever published, by the most significant scientist who ever lived”

False idol, the man’s significance is only the moment he lived in. It is coincidental he was born when he was born with the level of prgoress yet to be made in his time anyone of his intelligence could have done what he did. He simply found the right niche at the right time… luck… that’s all it is.

The significance of scientific innovation is the school of thought itself, not the people behind it.

“— believing in design [and the Bible] did not prevent N from being a scientist who made key discoveries.”

NO, but it may have hampered the level of progress he made. Suppose there was another set of discoveries he could have made had he let go of his dogma, you nor I can say for sure what COULD have happened.

That’s not really an argument.

“the inference to the design of the cosmos per its finely balanced order”

Finely balanced order? That’s a matter of perspective, not fact. That’s the same mistake Paley made just on a much larger scale.

The evidence for design in the cosmos is robust. Mathematics is evidence of design as a clear cut intelligible language, however, order and balance are hardly evidence of design.

I ask again, why is it only our galaxy seems to be hospitable to life? Doesn’t seem finely tuned to me…

With the sheer size of the universe, why is it so unbelievable an improbability such as the one surrounding our planet could exist through coincidence?

Sorry but I cannot go along with something like that.

That’s just pitiful…

“and complexity is stronger than in N’s day — don’t tilt at strawmen.”

There is no strawman being burned here, just a very sad sad attempt at infusing minute religious feeling with science.

kf

1] TMH: Please read no 39, then comment again. [I think you will see that there was a rhetorical reason for the note by FDSA (an improper negative appeal to authority), to which I responded to by highlighting that the issue is that we have now bridged from biology to information science; thus relevant skill-sets are broader than FDSA was willing to accept in making the sort of dismissive remark in 30 I commented on at 39 above.]

I did. Your contention that fdsa claimed biologists were privileged from external critique remains unsupported. If the tenor of his comment bothers you, well…I won’t fight his battles. But surely you would agree that if the two domains (biology and information science) are somehow bridged, then expertise in both would be needed, yes?

I had several other questions for you in my post (45). Care to tackle any of them? Admittedly, I covered a lot of ground. Pick one.

False idol, the man’s significance is only the moment he lived in.

How do you figure that you’re significant enough to say that?

It is coincidental he was born when he was born with the level of prgoress yet to be made in his time anyone of his intelligence could have done what he did. He simply found the right niche at the right time… luck… that’s all it is.

When someone says that something happened by “luck” or “chance” all they’re really saying is that they’re ignorant of what caused an event to happen. Or they are arguing that nothing caused it. Perhaps you are thinking yourself significant based on nothing?

The significance of scientific innovation is the school of thought itself, not the people behind it.

What form of scientia/knowledge is possible without sentient beings?