> "Stephen E. Jones" writes
> in message <200004261214.UAA04507@muzak.iinet.net.au>:
>
> <snip>
> > Quite frankly I am not as inclined to take a message all
> > that seriously when I encounter an "out-of-context" quote allegation
> > or other ad hominem. If Tedd wants me to take him seriously, then he
> > will need to learn to repay the courtesy.
>
> Just for the record, I don't consider anything I've said ad
> hominem. What I've tried to get across to you is that it is
> highly unlikely that any evolutionist you quote would agree that
> your use was fair and presented accurate context, precisely
> because you use quotes in an attempt to expose fundamental flaws
> in evolution and fundamental reasons why intelligent design,
> ala conservative Christianity, should be reconsidered. Second,
> your quotes don't have enough context to easily understand what
> is being claimed and I'm not going to go look up a quote just
> because that's the only way you want to argue. Third, quotes
> do not take into account changing views over time or new
> discoveries and thus may misrepresent the current views of any
> given scientist.
Chris
Good points, Tedd. Stephen seems intent on "proving" things with quotations
at any cost necessary to *truth* or objectivity. Because of this, his
"proofs" are only "convincing" to those who are already convinced. Not a
very effective use of propaganda-time, if you ask me.
Notice also that, despite the large number of examples of quotations he has
taken out of context, he considers charges that a quotation *is* out of
context to be an ad hominem. Pretty soon, at this rate, he will have
expanded the concept of an ad hominem to include the bare fact of
disagreeing with him!
Of course, whether a quotation is out of context is a *factual* matter, and
whether it is being abused this way is *also* a factual matter that happens
to be *relevant* to his arguments, since his arguments often *consist*
primarily of quotations (i.e., the fallacy of appealing to authority rather
than to *reason*). Thus, *if* the quotations do not *actually* mean what he
claims they mean, he often has effectively no argument left. How can the
virtual disappearance of an argument when the truth is known about a
quotation be considered irrelevant and merely an ad hominem? If you were to
quote someone as saying: "A is C" when what the person *actually* said was:
"It is not the case that A is C," then your use of the truncate quotation is
invalid and your argument that A is C based on that person's *alleged* claim
that A is C is unsound. If someone were to criticize your argument on the
basis that the quotation was taken out of context or abusively edited, would
*that* be an ad hominem, or the simple and relevant truth about my argument?
No, the *fact* is that such misquoting produces unsound arguments, and
criticizing them on such grounds is *not* an ad hominem but merely a
legitimate rebuttal. Oh, but I forgot: Stephen doesn't want mere *facts* to
get in the way of people believing his claims, so naturally pointing out
such misquoting must be ad hominem (in his eyes).
>
> The alternative to quote mining is to specifically address
> evidence and arguments. Quotes are great for preaching to your
> choir, Pastor Jones, but they do not persuade those not a part
> of your congregation.
>
> > TH>No, if there is a good supply of imperfectly replicating molecules,
> > >natural selection can act on them to produce levels of complexity
> > >logically limited only by time and energy supply. I would
> > >argue that complexity is a prediction of the laws of physics
> > >and Darwinism is merely one combination of those.
> >
SJ
> > I rest my case! That is not even a prediction even of life.
Chris
You don't *have* a case to rest. We've been waiting for at least a year now.
Just *when* are you planning to trot the sucker out and let us see it?
>
Tedd
> Almost unlimited complexity is not a prediction for life? How
> do you figure that?
Technically, he's right, since complexity, per se, is not life. But energy
use (and therefore information use as well) by such complex structures in
the furtherance of their own existence or their "genetic" information
(whether stored in DNA or some other way) *would* be life. I think life
*can* be predicted in such cases because a species of thing that can
*actively* promote its continued existence or reproduction would obviously
have advantages (in some environments) over a species of thing that could
only passively sit there until a suitable environment responded to it by
producing more copies of it, as viruses do. Thus, once life did evolve, it
would very likely tend to stick around and become a very popular mode of
evolution.
>
> > It agrees with my quote from Popper saying that Darwinism would
> > not be refuted even if we found *no* species on another planet:
>
> I'm not sure what Popper's argument is, but if you want to defend
> it in detail, please do so. On the face of it (which might not
> be fair to Popper) it has some obvious flaws. The claim
> of variety would be easily falsified if we found only the same
> life forms over time and over a variety of conditions. Your
> quote assumes wrongly that the hypothetical bacteria we observe on
> Mars can not have any fossil record and that nothing can be
> known about their history. However, if we observe three species
> that persist in stasis over geologic time intervals despite
> changing conditions (on Earth, we've been able to reliabile infer
> each item seperately), Darwinism is certainly falsifed.
>
> > I've deleted the rest of Tedd's post because: a) it ignored my main
point:
> >
> > "Despite its biological importance, positive selection is seldom
> > observed at work in nature. A few well-known, and constantly
> > cited examples are industrial melanism in moths (Kettlewell,
> > 1955, 1956, 1958), DDT resistance in insects and antibiotic
> > resistance in bacteria." (Kimura M., "The Neutral Theory of
> > Molecular Evolution," 1990, p.118)
> >
> > Even if "industrial melanism in moths...DDT resistance in insects and
> > antibiotic resistance in bacteria" were granted to be examples of
"positive
> > selection" (which they aren't),
>
> Oh, but they are! Or at least, your criticism of them is misguided.
>
> > if that's the *best* examples that Neo- Darwinists can come up
> > with, then it shows how weak is the evidential base of their
> > theory;
>
> I'm not so sure. The question is what evidence you expect for
> Darwinism that can not be extrapolated from what we observe now:
> the evolution of new genetic information, new functions, new
> species. You apparently want to see macroevolution happening
> before your very eyes, but such an event would more likely
> falsify evolution than confirm it.
Chris
Not necessarily. It would depend on the mechanism. We *do* see evolution
happening right before our eyes, anyway, in the bacterial realm (because of
the speed of reproduction), and in animal breeding (because breeders don't
*induce* changes, but *only* select them when they appear naturally), and in
*many* examples like "industrial melanism." A few of these examples might be
spurious, or merely the appearance of evolution caused by poor observation,
and some such evolution (as in the beak of the finch) is minor, at best, but
they make the critical point: naturalistic evolution does occur.
However, once Stephen admits that it happens at all, his case for a designer
is ultimately *totally* destroyed, anyway, because of the uncarryable burden
of proof that that admission imposes on his position. He must then prove
that there is some ultimate "barrier" to such change that forcibly
*prevents* "macroevolution" from occurring.
In a sense, the strict creationists have a better position, because they
claim that *no* evolution occurrs, and, if they took it strictly, that would
have to exclude *all* genetic variation, including recombination. That's
*utterly* unteneble, because there obviously *is* variation, both in the
morphological effects of genes and in the genes themselves, but at least it
put the burden of proof on the evolutionist. Stephen (and Phillip Johnson),
by admitting that the offspring of an organism *can* be at least *slightly*
different genetically from the parent organism(s), thus is stuck with
implicitly accepting the burden of proving that there are some changes
claimed by evolutionists in general that are prevented from occurring by a
series of such small changes. Thus, Stephen *must* show that there is some
sort of barrier which permits a certain amount of variation but absolutely
prevents *further* variation beyond that barrier. Since there is in genetics
no evidence of such a barrier, this will be a hard row to hoe. But hoe it he
*must*, or flat out *lose* the debate by giving up the only thing that
distinguishes "mere" variation from actual full out macroevolution. That is,
*if* there is no such barrier, then genetic evolution can cross any of our
human-imposed distinctions between any one species and any other genetically
"adjacent" species (especially if the second species has a genome that is a
superset of the first species' genome).
Can Stephen and Johnson carry this burden of proof, or will they try to
shift it back, even though they've given away their case by admitting that
genetic change can occur?
Tedd
> As I have argued in other threads, why do you not use the same
> request to geologists to highlight how "weak the evidential base
> is" for their theories for the formation of the Grand Canyon or
> Yosemite Valley? You have not observed glaciers carving out
> valleys from scratch, nor rivers cutting thousands feet into
> the ground. Therefore, erosion theories are weak?
Chris
Actually, believe it or not, some creationists, such as Duane Gish, make
exactly such ludicrous claims, even though their own proposed "causes" for
the geological
features resulting from them would be incompatible with the existing
empirical facts. Duane Gish proposes, somewhat irrelevantly, that the Grand
Canyon was created in some incredibly short period of time (weeks? I don't
remember exactly what he said), but flooding massive enough to produce such
a result would not have been the right *kind* of force to produce that
result. Such massive flooding would have just washed a many-miles-wide
*swath* through the entire area, and there would be no *canyon* at all, but
only a wide *valley*. Canyon-making occurs only when the "flooding" is small
enough to follow shallow channels and gradually make them deeper. A massive,
*true* flood would cover too wide an area. Gish doesn't care though, as far
as I know, because his whole goal is not science. It is, in fact, the same
as Stephen's and Phillip Johnson's; persuasion of the ignorant and
unthinking, or at least those who are *way* too casual in thinking about
this topic. Sucking in the gullible, the stupid, and the merely distracted:
What a choice for a life-work.
I say "somewhat irrelevantly" in the first sentence above because it is
irrelevant to the issue of evolution whether the *canyon* was formed quickly
or slowly. What is *relevant* is the slow laying down of layer upon layer of
fossils and sediments over a geologic period of time. Even if a gigantic
flood gouged out the canyon in ten seconds flat, all the canyon does is
reveal, for all to see, miles and *miles* of evidence, thousands of feet
deep, *for* evolution. Only the most bizarre and irrational "readings" of
this evidence could possibly allow anyone to conclude that it was either not
evidence for evolution at all, or, even more bizarrely, that it was evidence
for design. Note that there is *nothing* of this hugeness and quality
supporting or even *tending* to support "intelligent design" theory.
Your point is well-taken. Scientifically, Stephen's claims are nearly as
ludicrous as Gish's. This is why, when he wants to use evolutionists against
evolutionism, he nearly always has to misquote or edit or rip out of
context. Evolutionists disagree heartily on a number of issues, but the
*fact* of naturalistic evolution isn't one of them, and the *basic* pattern
(of genetic changes occurring, some of which are pruned away by death,
leaving only the "fitter" ones) is also not one of them, so it really is
silly for Stephen to keep trying to cram his and Johnson's views into
*their* mouths and words. Oh, but I forgot: He's after the ignorant, the
unthinking, and the causal. Here *we* are, trying to get people to *think*,
and here *he* is, telling them, "Don't think, just agree with these words
from some evolutionist that I edited or ripped out of context, and don't
read them closely enough to see that, even then, my claims about them differ
from what they *actually* say." What gall he has, and what contempt for his
intended audience. If I were among them and one day happened to be a little
bit more careful and noticed what he's doing, I'd be outraged.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 27 2000 - 23:02:45 EDT