Re: Defender of Ray - Intellectual Dishonesty

On Apr 15, 9:04 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 15, 10:12 am, "JustLurking" <justlurki...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



There is an element of intellectually dishonesty in telling Ray that
Humans are Apes just to tweak his nose. This is arbitrary based on
whether one wishes to include Pongids into Hominidae using
monophyletic grouping or excludes them using paraphyletic grouping.
Ray is repulsed by the idea of "apes morphing into humans". Yes,
this only happens on a population level, not on an individual level.
ToE does not say an individual can "morph" from an ape to a human in
their lifetime.

First, it is not arbitrary to include the former pongids in the
Hominidae. Genetic and protein comparisons show that chimpanzees and
gorillas are more closely related to humans than to their fellow
former pongids, the orangutans, so it makes sense to put us in the
same family as they. Second, living "apes" includes not merely the
former Pongidae but also the family Hylobatidae, the gibbons and
siamangs. Indeed, all known members of the superfamily Hominoidea,
except, in some usages, humans (with the distinction between human and
nonhuman hominins uncertain and arbitrary: is _H. erectus_ a human or
an ape?) are "apes." This difficulty of drawing a clear line between
human and nonhuman apes is one reason for not excluding humans from
the apes. Cladistic taxonomy was not createdjustto tweak Ray's
nose, and trying to get Ray to use words, when discussing scientific
matters, in the manner preferred and understood by scientists, is not
dishonest.

Ray is not familiar with caldistic taxonomy. You are using a
specialized language which he does not understand very much like the
catholic priests using latin which the people don't understand, or the
doctor using medical slang which the patient doesn't understand.

When his reply indicates he does not understand the specialized
language, he is ridiculed. Again, this is beating on a straw man.


Yet ToE requires that there must a definite individual lineage of
ancestry of successive generation leading from the ape ancestor to
human ancestor reflected in the genetic code, correct?

The genetic code is the correspondence between the 64 different
possible three-nucleotide DNA codons and the 20 amino acids used in
proteins. We use slightly different genetic codes for our nuclear
and
mitochondrial DNA, but we use the same nuclear genetic code as other
animals. I think you are thinking of the genome, the complete
sequence of DNA bases, including both genes and noncoding elements.

Yes genome, not genetic code.

Modifications of the genome during evolution could be inferred by
comparing our genome to that of other primates (although, so far,
only three primate genomes -- humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques --
have been sequenced).

Note that any ancestor of our ancestors is, itself, our ancestor: the
last common ancestor of humans and baboons was itself an ancestor of
the last common ancestor of humans and gorillas. Neither our
expectations of evolution nor the fossil record provides any clear
dividing line between "ape ancestors" and "human ancestors;"
australopiths are pretty clearly the former, and early _Homo sapiens_
surely the latter, but where do, e.g. the Dmanisi skulls (usually
assigned to _H. erectus_, but more primitive than, e.g. the classic
"Java man") fit in?

And in addition, this morphing from one species to another, called
speciation, must happen as a result of environmental influences
(natural selection) which select the beneficial fand reject the
harmful random changes in the genome (genetic drift or change).

Genetic drift is a change in the frequency of neutral variations.
There is in fact some question as to whether the mechanisms of
adaption are the same as the mechanisms for speciation, and genetic
drift may be a major factor in some instances of speciation.

Genetic drift is another method of random change in the genome.


Without invoking a creator or Godidit, one might say that the
mechanism of random genetic change followed by natural selection is
fine but does not explain speciation completely. It is outdated and
requires modification. The embryo morphs from a single cell to an
adult going through stages which resemble evolution, hence Haekels
embryos.

That was not quite Haeckel's point; contrary to the popular view that
Haeckel held that embryonic stages of development recapitulated
*adult* forms of ancestors, Haeckel held that they recapitulated
embryonic stages of those ancestors. The detailed similarities among
early-stage embryos of many different animals was a reflection of
inheritance of those features (those stages) from a common ancestor
whose embryo looked that way.

Yes of course.


A competing theory is that evolutionary change, speciation etc. the
"morphing" of an ape ancestor to a human ancestor over many
generations, unfolds under a control mechanism similar to the
unfolding of the developing embryo. This is the direction of new
findings from evo-devo based on embryology and molecular biology. Hox
genes, toolkits and body parts, etc. are some of the new evo-devo
findings which may lead to major changes (a revolution) in the theory
of evolution.

As I understand evo-devo, it does not posit some mechanism that
foreordains future evolutionary developments. Throughout the history
of evolutionary theory, there have been speculations about such a
mechanism, and the idea that evolution had built-in directions, but
evo-devo is not an attempt to rehabilitate those ideas.

As any new field, evo-devo is careful not to step on any toes, so it
must pay lip service to the old ideas as they give way to the new.


The entire argument here is over whether personhood ought
to be limited to, or synonymous with, humanity, and the advocates of
personhood for apes argue that it should be neither limited to nor
synonymous with humanity. For that matter, asserting that apes are
human would not be, necessarily, an assertion that they are persons.
From Roman laws dealing with slaves to modern arguments over abortion,
We don't have slavery any more, remember?

No. But the point is that personhood is a legal, social, or
philosophical category, and that humanity is a biological category.
The two overlap extensively but are not necessarily synonymous.

the idea that an entity can be human but not be a person has a long
lineage and distinguished defenders.
The idea that one human or a group of humans are not a "persons" is
the basis for racism, oppression and slavery. The distinguished
defenders are fascist dictators.

Are early-stage human embryos "persons?" I think at least it must be
conceded that those who hold otherwise are not, for the most part,
racists or fascists.
Discussion here was pertaining to adults, not embryos.


-- [snip]

For judeo-christian monotheists, and their subset of ID people, there
is no need for a pocket watch, or any observations from a science lab
or instrument, to point to the presence of God in the world. God is
intervening every microsecond in everything, and, paradoxically
restrained and not intervening at the same time. This is a paradox
which you are unable to understand, and not expected or required to
understand.

This idea, in a somewhat more coherent form, has been around at least
since the days of John Calvin, and probably longer. It is entirely
consistent with theistic evolution: if everything that happens in the
universe is an act of God, there is no reason to say that evolution
by naturalistic mechanisms excludes God. But again, there really are
creationists and ID proponents out there (Ray Martinez is one) who
insist that one can readily distinguish some aspects of biology as
not the work of God through his normal maintenance of the laws of nature,
but are special, extraordinary, "supernatural" interventions: things
that do not normally happen and which do not follow any discoverable
regularities of nature. Perhaps you should address your complaints
about paradoxes too sublime to be understood by unbelievers and
heretics to Ray (who is a heretic).

Perhaps Ray could jump in here and comment on this section.


Followers of judeo-christian monotheism can point to a flower, a
developing embryo, a rock, a Hubble telescope image of far away
galaxies, an electron microscope image of a virus, any household
object, any machine, any pattern and recognize the footprint of the
anonymous designer, the creator. Neither you nor any of your ToE
buddies have the ability or interest to recognize this footprint, nor
are you expected or required to. And there is no value judgment or
attempted conversion associated with this

Your point is, I think, understood, but it is not the point of most
people who call themselves ID proponents.

Dembski is on record as declaring that ID
is not theistic evolution and does not wish to be. The idea that God
exists and uses evolution to create, but does not intervene in ways
that can be clearly discerned from unguided natural processes is,
according to every IDist I've ever read, unacceptably similar to
either deism or atheism. That there are many Christians and Jews who
don't have a problem with distinguishing between creation and what
science can study is something I readily acknowledge, but such
Christians and Jews tend not to identify themselves as ID supporters.
There are many different versions of ID. I think you are selecting one
of your own making which you find most objectionable and then become
obsessed with it so you can create a straw man to beat up. Beating on
straw man is a very common pastime here.

I am selecting one of Dembski's making (and Phillip Johnson's making,
and Michael Behe's making, and in general of the making of pretty
much everyone associated with the Discovery Institute and the recent ID
fiasco in Dover). This is no straw man; it is a position argued
extensively and distinguished very clearly by its proponents from the
sort of theistic evolution that you are advocating. Now, if you want
to call your position "ID," well, I certainly don't hold the
copyright on the term, so I can't tell you not to do so, but most people who
believe as you do call themselves something else, and most people who
call themselves ID proponents reject your position: they hold that an
intellectually honest secularist, however indifferent or spiritually
blind, ought to recognize that the bacterial flagellum is something
inexplicable in terms of any possible natural laws or processes. And
this position (which is, apparently, not yours, but assuredly is
Ray's) is mistaken on multiple grounds.

When I think of ID, I think of the ancient origins of the idea going
back to ancient Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle in particular
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/Long.pdf

as well as Aquinas, Locke, and more recently William Paley. This is
the argument from teleology.
Teleology is the supposition that there is purpose or directive
principle in the works and processes of nature. By the way teleology
is a presupposition of scientific activity whose entire mission is to
uncover the as yet unknown mechanisms of nature.

The Discovery Institute perhaps has pushed the idea into more
controversial areas.


By definition, science detects only those things in the realm of
science. Therefore science cannot detect the presence of a creator.
No disagreement here.
Well, depending on the nature of the creator, science certainly might
be able to. As Dembski is fond of noting, secular, naturalistic
scientists routinely infer a designer or creator to explain various
archaeological or paleontological artifacts (e.g. pottery or
arrowheads). If we have a clear, testable idea of the methods,
motives, and/or design philosophy of a designer or creator, we can
make a scientific inference of his activity. There is no obvious
reason this might not be true of a Designer of life, but ID proponents
want to argue from ignorance (things that can't be explained by
current evolutionary theory) rather than from correspondence of the
evidence to a testable theory of design.
I do not think this is true. You are creating a straw man to beat up, again.

That straw man maintains a great many websites and posts under quite a
number of nyms, none of them sock puppets of mine. I think I have
described an actual, common position (which, again, is Ray's whether
or not it is yours).

On the other hand, how do humans come up with the idea that there is a
creator which leads to the fact that a majority of the population on
earth subscribes to this idea, and a minority subscribes to the
proposition that there is no creator.
Humans are wired by evolution
This is a statement from belief.

The question mark at the end of the sentence might have suggested that
this was being offered as a suggestion, not a demonstrated fact of science.

to be so sensitive to intentions and
agency (useful, when living in complex social groups of intelligent
designers) that they tend to detect these things even when they are
not present?
The statement God is not present is an atheist position. ToE does not
make this statement. As you know, ToE does not exclude the presence
of God or the creator.

Okay, but your position seems to be that God is present even in
things
that can be exhaustively explained by "law" and "chance" explanations
(to use Dembski's categories): that God is as much present, and as
perceptibly present, in the melting of a glacier as in the formation
of the mammalian blood-clotting cascade. Now, Ray and other IDists
will presumably concede that God is present in all things, but not
equally perceptibly present in all things, so again, Ray and his self-
appointed defender seem to disagree about what ID ought to be and how
the Creator ought to work.

Complete agreement is not desirable, nor necessary.


Or perhaps for some other reason. Do we need to know why people
embrace creationism or ID to point out the ways in which these ideas
contradict the evidence and logic?
Can't hurt to know motivations of both sides. Or can it?

I do not suppose it can hurt, but is it necessary for every purpose?

We have already established the fact that there is nothing in ToE
which excludes a creator, so there can be no contradiction between the
recognition of the creator (I wouldnt call this evidence), and logic
which I assume you mean science logic.
This apparent "contradiction" is an imaginary straw man to beat on in.
Example: a follower of judeo-christian monotheism looks up at the full
moon, and remarks how that reveals the presence of a creator. The
scientist in no way is disturbed form viewing the moon with
instruments and preparing for the moon landing. No contradiction
here. Science continues as before no change. It's a straw man.
A favorite pastime is ridiculing literal interpretations of the
bible. Again another straw man. The bible is not intended to be
taken literally as anyone with rudimentary knowledge will tell you.

There are people out there with rather more than rudimentary knowledge
(e.g. the young-earth creationist paleontologist Kurt Wise) who insist
on interpreting the six days of creation and the implied history of
the Earth in Genesis quite literally. Ray, on the other hand, deals
more in "typology" than in literalness, and is not a YEC; he gets
ridiculed more often for his nonliteral interpretations than for his
literal ones.

Example :
The Bible supports the old age of the universe. First of all, it says
that God was hovering over "the waters" right before he said "Let
there be light." This means there was something there already, before
what the YECs say was God's first act of Creation.
so the earth existed before light. tell me, what do stars emit?
In the biblical story of creation, heaven, earth and waters are formed
first, then afterwards light is formed.
The ToE question is why light appears after the planetary bodies
appear. This doesn't make sense to ToE. They should appear together
at the same time.

Normally, I worry instead about why the Earth is formed before the sun
around which the Earth orbits; the creation account seems determinedly
geocentrist.

I think this is the light issue again. Light in many biblical
contexts is a symbolic word meaning intellectual or spiritual light,
not electromagnetic radiation light.


Answer:
This question is irrelevant because the translation of the biblical
word as "Light" is not electromagnetic radiation, it is not visible
light. Of course it would be impossible for you to know this. The
translation refers to a symbolic form of light and means an inner
light, intellectual or spiritual light. There is an obvious a
monumental waste of bandwidth and time devoted to these straw men.

I do not recall arguing with or deriding Ray about light being created
after the heavens and the Earth.

Others have so argued..

Both you and he (you with your
spiritual meanings, and he with his typologies) seem to be adept at
arguing that the text means something that is discernable only to some
spiritual elite

No spiritual elite is not a good word here, this is an awareness of
a body of literature which contains this information. The science
counterpart is the science literature. This is a common misconception
that there is a spiritual elite. There is no spiritual elite any more
than there is a science elite.

Yes there is a body of literature which is quite voluminous which
discusses the meaning of the text in genesis. The volume is great
because there are many different interpretations.

(in which you rather casually assume your own
membership), and something quite different from what both atheists and
fundamentalists discern to be its meaning.

There is no membership to casually assume. Instead of feigning
arrogance, you might try a "thank you", for sharing one of these
alternative explanations of the meaning of the word "light" in
genesis. Apparently this is a new idea for you, alternate meaning of
the word light as used in the bible.

-- [snip]

Again, the annoying part is that Dembski and company insist that their
speculations are science, and that at least some of their ideas about
the Designer can be demonstrated by science.

The confusion arises in the use of science observation as a substrate
for recognition of the creator. The recognition itself is outside of
science, however. Same as you recognize of a face, this is an act of
cognition, not a science activity, and the ability may decline with
age, illness, alzheimer's etc.


Or, rather, the annoying
part is that to maintain this position, they need to lie either about
the evidence, or about scientific reasoning.
The designer can be demonstrated everywhere, scientific observations
are not required although they can also be used as the basis for the
recognition of the creator.

And, again, you seem to overlook the simple yet (to most people) crushingly obvious point that > neither Ray, whom you are defending, nor most self-proclaimed ID proponents and creationists > agree with you here. Dembski, in his discussion of the explanatory filter, is quite
explicit that the existence of design cannot be demonstrated in every
case of design; his "filter" is capable, on his own admission, of
false negatives (failure to detect design or creation where it is
present). It seems to me that most creationists and ID proponents
agree with Dembski here.

The Demski Filter idea is somewhat esoteric, and not readily
understood or accepted by all. I would argue as Korthof that there is
no need for a filter since everything is intelligently designed and
our ability to recognize it varies according to our state of mind,
state of physical health and other variables. A person starving in
the desert will not be concerned with discerning intelligent design in
nature when physical needs are more important.


-- [snip]

Doesn't Genesis two assert that God created humans and other land
animals out of the dust of the ground (which He had earlier created)?
Would this not constitute a claim that we are all composed of the same
starting materials, and that we are not related by common descent?
Typo here? .......we are related.....etc

In what respect are we related?

A creation story which has all life forms starting from the same
material (the earth) suggests to me a common ancestor (the earth).
The exact mechanism after that is an open question left for scientific
inquiry to fill in the blanks.

If you are stating that we are related to the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air by descent
(by sharing ancestors with them), then you are, again, in disagreement
with the person you are defendng (and many other, though not all, ID proponents).

As we have agreed, there is nothing in ToE which excludes a creator,
neither does a common ancestor exclude a creator. Perhaps Ray could
speak for himself and come in here with his thoughts on this and I
would be willing to comment after that..


Yes much of the bible supports the ideas found in ToE , with Genesis
decribing creation as proceeding from the basic to the more complex,
from elements, earth, water and then to to early life forms, then to
later life forms etc. Again , this is meant to be symbolic, not
literal and not intended to be a science discussion in genesis..

Again, this is not Ray's position. When you are defending him,
perhaps you should sound less like his opponents, or at least should
be aware that the positions you are defending are not ones he would
advocate.

Since there are many different interpretations of the bible. It is
acceptable to find differences here.

Strictly speaking, randomness in mutations is not a required element
of either natural selection or speciation. I'm not sure that mutation
is even needed for speciation, although it happens whether it's needed
or not.
I would disagree here and I think most others would disagree as well.
Random change in the genetic code is central and core to ToE. This
change is then acted upon by "Natural Selection".

Your disagreement would be more impressive if you knew what "genetic
code" meant.

Rather than genetic code, the word, "genome' should be used, here.
This was discussed above.


Natural selection and genetic drift will work even if
mutations are biased (as long as they are not too biased against
fitness to the environment). The conclusion that mutation is random
with respect to fitness is based on study of mutations, not on some
presupposition of the theory. It doesn't particularly matter, to
evolutionary theory, how large a role is played by non-coding elements
of DNA, since the entire genome is inherited, and subject to mutation
and selection.

-- [snip]

"Random" does not mean "for no reason." It means that the reasons for
an event are unrelated to the reasons for some other, connected, event
or situation. If I meet someone "at random" or "by chance" at the
mall, that does not mean that I have no reason to be at the mall, or
that he has no reason, but that our reasons have nothing to do with
each other. By the same token, if a mutation is "random" this does
not mean that the mutation happens for no reason, or that any mutation
is as likely as any other, or that a mutation can produce any effect
as easily as any other, but that the causes of mutation are unrelated
to and unaffected by the causes of a given mutation being beneficial,
harmful, or neutral. On a personal level, most things that happen to
you happen for reasons that have very little to do with your reasons
for doing things. Development, of course, is not a haphazard,
"chance" event in the way, say, a lottery is, but it admits of a sheaf
of possible outcomes, depending on the influence of various
environmental factors which neither the zygote nor, in many cases, the
mother has much control over.
Discussion of randomness and free will would require a new thread.
Remind me to discuss this later.

I am not your appointments secretary.

Wait until you see the perks.


-- [snip of arguments by unsupported assertion]

-- Steven J.
http://www.stickergiant.com/page/sg/PROD/funinsa/dcb606

-- Steven J.

http://www.stickergiant.com/page/sg/PROD/funinsa/dcb606

.

Relevant Pages
Loading