[...]
>
>"...There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely
>none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations." (Behe
>M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution",
>Free Press: New York, 1996, p185)
>
>This last, "supported by pertinent experiments or calculations"
>qualifies what Behe means by "that describes how molecular evolution
>of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have
>occurred."
>
Steve, could you summarize for us the "pertinent experiments or calculations"
which support Intelligent Design? Thanks.
>JB>It's not very good.
>
>Thanks. You may have saved me the trouble of checking the web site
>for myself. I expected it would be "not very good" simply because of
>the time lag. Behe's book has been out for several months, and if he
>was wrong about his central claim above we would have heard about it
>almost immediately, especially from outraged authors and journal
>editors.
>
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho
Thanks for giving me my good belly laugh for today. Wait, you did mean this
as a joke didn't you?
[lots of deletions]
>
>JB>In sum, I find this critique of Behe in keeping with most of the
>>chest beating claptrap that comes out of talk.origins.
>
SJ:=====
>Which in itself is evidence against the theory. If they really were
>secure in their faith, they would not need to beat their chest. The
>only evolutionists (and creationists) that impress me are those who
>can argue their points calmly, politely and clearly.
>
Funny, you said something different awhile back when Walter
ReMine's, er ... uh ... , "style" of debate was being discussed.
Now, about Keith Robison's review. I have avoided getting into any
details on this since I haven't had time to do anything other than give
it a real quick lookover. So, I can't say much about this specific case
but I can say that I have read Robison's posts to various newsgroups
over the past several years and have been extremely extremely impressed
by him (I don't say that about too many folks ... :). While I would readily
agree that there are many chestbeaters on t.o, I don't believe that
Robison is one of them. In fact, calling him a chestbeater is just a bit
of chest beating as far as I'm concerned :).
Let me give you one example wherein Robison forever earned my respect.
Some time ago Yockey was being inexorably bashed on talk.origins by
people who hadn't even bothered to look at his book. One fellow, the
infamous weemba (Matthew Wiener, who I believe is a physicist at some
research institute associated with Penn State) said he wouldn't even order
the book through interlibrary loan since he didn't want to waste the money
of his institution. This didn't keep him from saying really stupid things
about Yockey's position, like that Yockey believed in some imaginary
principle of conservation of information. Robison stepped in at this
point to correct this obvious absurdity. Weemba also made a statement
that Yockey wasn't a physicist and that real progress in the field would be
made by physicists not information theorists. When I pointed out to
weemba that Yockey had his PhD in physics, studying under two
Nobel Laureates, and had published extensively in Physics journals
he adamantly refused to retract his statement.
Well, I'm starting to wander, the example I was intending to give came
after another infamous chestbeater, Steve LaBonne (a post doc at some
Canadian university [Yockey pointed out to me privately that LaBonne
means housemaid in French :), when I ran my spell checker it suggested
LaBored as a replacemnet :) ] ) asked what Yockey's alternative was
to the origin of life scenarios he bashes in his book. Robison answered
as follows:
============================================================
He explicitly makes none:
I have no scenario to explain the origin of life. My purpose
is to demonstrate that for a successful explanation to emerge
it is important to eliminate _factoids_ and clear away
the encumbrances of failed scenarios and paradigms. (p.291)
Of the abiogenesis theories discussed, Yockey is most charitable
to Waechtershaeuser's sulfide theory and the RNA world, though
he finds serious fault in both. And the major difficulties he
cites are quite real and must be dealt with by any abiogenesis
theory:
1) The significant information content contained by
the simplest known genomes
2) The formation of biomolecules of a single chirality
And, of course, Yockey is not alone in the scientific community
in being interested in these.
I strongly suggest that people interested in this debate procure
the book, preferably through a library (Hahvahd was good enough
to spring for it, and the date due slip shows significant activity).
Yockey is not a crank. I have met him, and he is a
charming older gentleman and he keeps company with other serious
thinkers in the information theory & biology community
(I met him at a Biological Information Theory & Chowder Society
get-together at the NIH).
His net behaviour may fall a bit short, but he is worth taking seriously.
The book has its obvious flaws (the mitochondrial genetic code
business being the most glaring one to me), but it does seem
to be rational and well-argued and therefore deserving of
serious & informed criticism.
Keith Robison
Harvard University
Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology
Department of Genetics / HHMI
robison@mito.harvard.edu
=====================================================================
Given the heat of the debate and insults being thrown around at
random I was quite impressed by a statement like this coming
from someone who obviously disagrees with Yockey.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University