Slashdot Mirror

And the Neanderthal man was declaired in 1958 by the National Zoological Society to be a man suffering from arthritis.

Can you provide a link? I'd like to see this claim in context, but a quick Google search doesn't seem to turn up anything from the horse's mouth. Are you referring to the 1957 paper by Straus and Cave referenced here?

but microbiology has proven that evolution is no longer a valid argument.

Got a citation for that? I don't know enough about microbiology to evaluate such claims (especially when they lack specifics), but if you could link to an abstract of a paper published in a major peer-reviewed journal of science, which states that the current model of evolution has been falsified by observing irreducible complexity in a microbiological structure (or any biological construct for that matter) then I'll start to consider the possibility that what you've just said here is true.

Until then, it has about as much credibility as any random sample of technobabble from Star Trek, as far as I'm concerned. I may not be able to explain exactly why any particular bit of it is nonsense, but it is a sensible conclusion to reach.

Still, evolution does not prove or dis-prove the creationism,

Depends on what you mean by "creationism." Evolution doesn't disprove the idea that there is a creator who set the whole universe in motion according to an unfathomably complex plan, resulting in the intentional evolution of human beings and every other species on the planet, but it does pretty soundly debunk the accounts of most folks who call themselves "creation scientists" and believe in a 6,000 year old Earth and other nonsense derived from literal interpretations of the Bible.

DNA is a digtial code, it does not change. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box is a great read.

Maybe you should re-read Darwin's Black Box, then.

Here is how evolution works. You've got an organism, with genes (physically manifested in DNA) which dictate how the organism gets built. Genes can mutate (the DNA changes). Most genetic mutations have a negative impact on a organism's ability to reproduce (pass on their genes), though some improve the lifeform's odds of survival/reproduction. Naturally, the beneficial genes tend to get passed on and are more widely represented in a population than the "negative" mutations, and this is what we call "natural selection." It is this process of genetic mutation acted on by natural selection which was/is responsible (over millions/billions of years) for producing all of the diversity of life seen on the planet, from a single common genetic ancestor (that is, humans descended from some kind of chimp-like ape, who if you go back far enough, probably descended from some sort of shrew-like mammal, who if you go back far enough ... you get the picture).

Behe is in agreement with my entire description of evolution.

The difference between Behe and other scientists working in the field is that he think that gene mutations (DNA changes) sometimes happen as a result of the meddling of an intelligent designer. Most everyone else thinks the genes mutate randomly (that is, with no guidance or overarching purpose) and that these mutations happen often enough and in such a way that natural selection is the only "guiding" mechanism required to produce large scale morphological changes, speciation, etc. and the scientific literature reflects this.

It's a review of Behe's latest book (not Black Box), but check out Jerry Coyne's article titled The Great Mutator for a lengthier distillation and robust criticism of Behe's claims.

You seem to be a pretty good example of why I have a problem with ID and other forms of pseudo-

I'm not sure I agree. Creationism seems to be the "traditional" God creation myth from the Bible. I think "intelligent design" advocates could arguably be a bit more enlightened. Consider the following argument.
[snip AI argument]

In the end, ID removed from explicit creationism is vacuous. There is at most a trivial amount of science to it. When formalized, it falls apart. Heck, even when examined critically (yet short of formalization,) it falls apart.

Cheers,
Craig

I was wondering what all the fuss was about, so I recently purchased a book of Dembski's on Intelligent Design. It's fascinating to read, and is based in large part on number theory.

Reading through the various posts on this topic, I have yet to read one that appears to even really know the various arguments ID makes.

That's funny because I was wondering why Dembski's "mathematics" aren't addressed in the mainstream media either. Could it be that it's heady stuff, befitting a scientific mind with degrees in math, philosophy and theology--more the solid foundation the theory is based on, unnecessary to understand for most people? Like the solid foundations of genetics, geology and paleontology, whose details (mutation, stratigraphy, the molecular clock etc) aren't necessary for understanding the basics of evolution? And so easily ignored by their opponents?

Well you're in luck because in the latest issue of Skeptic, Mark Perakh takes Dembski's science to task, and finds it thoroughly lacking. I don't want to give away the ending so I'll quote from the introduction:

"Dembski's many degrees and scores of published books and papers cannot conceal, however, that he has never conducted real scientific research. Moreover, Dembski's literary production contains no real mathematics but instead a lot of philosophizing, often saturated with unnecessary mathematical symbolism. . . . In this article I shall concentrate on the most salient features of Dembski's prolific literary output, almost all of which turns out to be poorly substantiated, contradictory, and often self-aggrandizing."

Maybe that's why the tireless arguments of the mousetrap, the eye and the flagellum are endlessly repeated, and Dembski's work largely ignored, or unpromoted: because Dembski's work simply won't hold up. Maybe not. But it's worth noting what Perakh goes on to say:

"Dembski is selective in deciding which critique to respond to and which to ignore. For example, his (mis)use of the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems . . . was subjected to a strong critique by Wein and Wolpert. In two lengthy rebuttals Dembski spared no effort to reply to Wein, but he never uttered a word in response to Wolpert. It is not hard to understand why. Wein, as Dembski stresses in his posts, has only a bachelor's degree in statistics. This irrelevant factoid, according to Dembski, makes Wein insufficiently qualified to dispute Dembski's work. . . . Dembski could not use such silly arguments against Wolpert, because Wolpert is a highly respected mathematician and a co-author of the very NFL theorems Dembski misuses."

Instead, the posts generally just rant about creationism. Intelligent posts would take the ID arguments and actually debate them one by one.

Perakh does that very thing. If you want to save US$5.95, you can find the whole article here: The Dream World of William Dembski's Creationism.

This article stood up to peer review, but was withdrawn because of political pressure.

No, it didn't. But it's always nice to play the martyr persecuted by the establishment.

This article stood up to peer review and was published

This article has very little to do with ID; it merely computes a probability for a certain type of mutation, using some assumptions. In order to make it into an example of irreductible complexity, you have to assert that the assumptions the authors used in the paper are valid in reality, and are the only ones possible; that's not correct, for a number of reasons. See a critique of the paper here

Dembsky

Dembsky's work is not accepted as valid by most scientists. See more on wikipedia if you're curious.

This article was done by a young-earth creationist, with creationist results

This is an interesting article, but it's only creationist if you go for the "God of the gaps" interpretation. There are indeed problems and unknowns in modern science. But that only means they need to be solved; they don't imply that the Earth was created 6000 years ago or all the associated mythological farrago.

You can also use Talk Origins, Talk Reason, Talk Design, EvoWiki and Panda's Thumb to find lots of info on why these people are wrong. If you want to donate money, donate it to the NCSE or Talk.Origins, or perhaps buy some of the books of creationism refuters - I'd reccomend Robert Pennock's book 'Tower of Babel' as quite a good introduction.

Even my lowly blog has a few things on the ID/creationism debacle.

In creationism, YHWH created it all. In ID, there is an unknown, unseen designer who might be YHWH, but might also be Mongo Bongo, god of the congo.

And the difference is...?

In evolution, it is assumed a priori that random mutation is the only factor.

Please try to understand evolution before making false statements like this.

In evolution, ALL structures are assumed to be achievable by random mutation alone.

This is incorrect. First, mutation is not "random." The driving force is genetic diversity within a population, filtered through natural selection. The process of genetic diversification is not fully understood, and this leads a *lot* of otherwise-intelligent people to assume there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory of evolution through natural selection.

Secondly, the filtering via natural selection is hardly random either. There are definite driving forces behind the selection, but they are not "intelligent."

Life is a structure of the universe, guided by nothing more than other expressions of mathematics within the universe. Claiming divine intervention in the creation of life is like claiming the mostly-elliptical orbits of the planets, or the statistical decay of subatomic particles, are proof of God.

The platelet thing has been debunked so many times, I'm not going to repeat it here-- just look for "platelet behe." Or, here's a decent link.

But I would urge those ranting and raging to consider whether their oppositions to Intelligent Design is founded in a considered evalution kof the theory, or in a knee-jerk reaction against your perception of where it will lead?

My problem with intelligent design is that it relies on something more preposterous than random chance: it presupposes a divine being guiding the universe. Our inability to fully understand something does not necessitate a divine being. The existence of God is about a quadrillion times more unlikely than platelets evolving, fer crying out loud.

Finally, and I cannot scream this loud enough, ID IS NOT SCIENCE!!! There. I'd try to make it louder, but I'm in a library. ID enters into the argument with an agenda-- to "prove" the existence of God. In science, if God became a necessary part of the explanation, a scientist would think of certain necessary predictions based upon the existence of God, and design and perform experiments based upon those predictions.

Since God cannot be tested for in the universe, God is outside the realm of science. For all I know, there is a divine hammer in the universe. But, since I cannot test for God, nor can I make predictions based upon the "knowledge" of God, it is outside science altogether.

Saying "irreducible complexity is proof of Good" is just as cirular as saying, "The bible is proof of God." Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean God had a hand in it. It just means we're limited in either our knowledge or our capacity to understand.

Sure, if you assume evolution is based *purely* on random mutation, Spetner's analysis seems logical. The problem is, evolution *isn't* just about random mutation. It's about random mutation coupled with the non-random element of natural selection based on fitness. Moreover, the idea that you can measure the amount of "information" in an organism is more than a little silly... how do you define "information"? If I had six arms, I'd be less fit for survival (I'd require more energy, be less agile, etc), but my DNA would arguably contain more "information".

You can read a longish countering of Spetner's book here.