Re: Defender of Ray - Intellectual Dishonesty

On Apr 16, 3:18 pm, "Just Lurking" <justlurki...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.


Given that Ray refuses to learn anything about taxonomy yet insists
that all the scientists who have ever studied the subject are wrong,
this is not much of an argument. He is in the position of knowing
nothing about medicine yet telling all the doctors in the world that
they are wrong about the treatment of a common disease.

A normal human being would try to learn something about the subject.

Ray prefers to stew in his own ignorance.



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.

....which shows how little you know about science in general and evo-
devo in particular. New fields are developed by "stepping on toes".
Evo-devo in fact augments evolutionary theory by providing a better
understanding of how evolutionary pathways are constrained. It's a
field in which I take a particular interest, as it can help to explain
how plesiosaurs evolved long necks in at least two and possibly three
different lineages. If we can gain an understanding of how the
development of long necks is constrained at a genetic level we may be
able to produce testable hypotheses of what effects such a mechanism
may have on other aspects of plesiosaur anatomy.






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.



Asking Ray to provide a coherent argument supported by evidence is
stretching his powers of logic beyond their apparent constraints.

RF


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

...

read more »



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Relevant Pages

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