Annoying creationists

[kjkent1]

Has this thread ?

Kleinman's claim lived by the computer model, died by the computer model. And I really haven't been able to get too excited or concerned one way or another about John Hewett's theory or beliefs. Creationism and ID are important because they're politically significant in a way that can affect science education. The main reason Behe matters is that his claim can be easily conveyed to, believed by, and repeated by, local school board members: "If something is irreducibly complex it cannot have evolved." Somehow I don't see them getting any comparable political traction with "Data, not genes, is the replicator."

So... anything else to say about annoying creationists?

Respectfully,
Myriad

Kleinman's argument has "devolved" into the bare, unsupported speculation that:

(1) Unnamed's selection method is unrealistic, and
(2) Random mutation is too slow to ever produce a living organism which can benefit from natural selection.

For #1, Kleinman needs to produce some evidence showing what a "realistic" selection method would be, so that it can be programmed.

For #2, there needs to be some consensus as to just how small a living organism could have been at the time that life supposedly developed. Hewitt produced a post from a science conference which suggests that the minimum genome would be about 318kbits.

I don't know if that's good science or just philosophy, but for argument's sake, does anyone care to estimate how long it would take for a genome like that to appear by random chance? I'm sure this would be extreme speculation, but I'm still curious.

 

[The Atheist]

Indeed, but Dr. A said that science triumphs over the fraud nonetheless. In the long run, the fraud is exposed because some young turk forgets to play along and does the science instead.

There no magic fraud-free human endeavor. There's just dogged pursuit of better explanations.

~~ Paul

Are you forgetting about all those christians?

I doubt that science will ever triumph over religion. I even suspect that some scientific discoveries drive people to religion. For science to have triumphed over religion, there will need to be a time when there are zero christian scientists and god has been proven, beyond reasonable doubt, to originate in the human mind and exactly why and how the big bang happened.

You may one day get parts 2 and 3 of the victory parade, but #1, never.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I doubt that science will ever triumph over religion. I even suspect that some scientific discoveries drive people to religion. For science to have triumphed over religion, there will need to be a time when there are zero christian scientists and god has been proven, beyond reasonable doubt, to originate in the human mind and exactly why and how the big bang happened.

I don't expect science to triumph over religion. I just expect it to triumph over its own foibles, in the long run.

~~ Paul

 

[The Atheist]

I don't expect science to triumph over religion. I just expect it to triumph over its own foibles, in the long run.

~~ Paul

Nope, never.

As long as humans fear death there will be gods.

 

[John Hewitt]

For #2, there needs to be some consensus as to just how small a living organism could have been at the time that life supposedly developed. Hewitt produced a post from a science conference which suggests that the minimum genome would be about 318kbits.

I don't know if that's good science or just philosophy, but for argument's sake, does anyone care to estimate how long it would take for a genome like that to appear by random chance? I'm sure this would be extreme speculation, but I'm still curious.

I think that link was as good a piece of scientific speculation as is available at the moment - those papers seem to have been invited for the benefit of the space program. They are the size estimates for a complete modern, self-sufficient organism.

The calculations people do for random emergence are usually based on a replicator of about 300 bases rather than 300,000 bases. That is because it is assumed that a primitive prebtiotic organism could not replicate its genome with high fidelity. One or two percent is about the fidelity of RNA synthesis. Hence an RNA replicator would rapidly degenerate if it needed a genome larger than a couple of hundred bases. (DNA is replicated much more accurately because of error correction.)

The calculations of the likelihood of an RNA molecule emerging by chance is usually done in a probabilistic way and the results are such as to suggest that random emergence would never occur in the lifetime of earth.

In principle, I think one could consider modifying such a calculations using thermodynamics. (I've never seen that done but that may be ignorance on my part. There will be book values for the free energy change for the formation of one nucleotide base and the energy of its polymerization. The back rate could be estimated fairly easily and hence an estimate for the forward rate of formation of 1,2,3 etc bases obtained.) The estimates from probability calculations are exceedingly low, even for a few hundred base pairs, so low that it is deemed to amount to an impossibility. The formation of polynucleotides is endothermic and reduces entropy so I think that inserting thermodynamic factors would reduce this probability even further.

Hence my belief that there must be an evolutionary process in chemistry that led up to the emergence life, not just one or more random events of emergence. And, of course, that is just for a few hudred base pairs, not 300,000.

 

[Yahzi]

<snip>

You seem to have rather badly missed every point I made.

Read what you wrote, here. According to that paragraph, accepting the rules of physics and chemistry is a statement of faith.

For instance: no.

He was evasive in the face of a concerted attack.

Several of us asked a simple question. We explained why we thought the question was justified.

If being questioned is a "concerted attack," then I suppose you are right.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Nope, never.

As long as humans fear death there will be gods.

But since god has nothing to do with science, I'm not sure what this has to do with what I said.

~~ Paul

 

[Yahzi]

I have read no posts about philosophical naturalism except from you.

I would go back and point to the various posts by others that dealt with the topic, but at this point I don't expect facts to really make any impact.

I have read much of Plato but I agree with Popper about him – he was an authoritarian and an enemy of the open society.

WTF has that got to do with his epistimology?

Are you saying that because Plato was a fascist, his epistimology didn't touch on issues of metaphysical naturalism?

As a side not, possibly totally unrelated to the immediate discussion, do you know what the ad hominen fallacy is?

In my opinion, materialist naturalism, as expressed by you, is an exercise in dogmatism, a demand that everyone else will begin by accepting your premises.

Indeed it is. I demand that everyone else begin by accepting my premises. Here are my premises:

1. There is an external world.

2. It is knowable, at least in approximation.

3. We can tell the difference between approximations.

Do you know anyone who disagrees with these premises?

Other forms of metaphysics do not reject these premises; they simply add a few of their own. Well, except for Idealism, which does reject #1. Are you saying that you think the Idealists should be taken seriously?

I do not know all possible human experiences, all possible explanations or whether or not you can explain them all and I do not believe you do either. I see no point trying to reason with someone who believes otherwise.

In other words, you see no point in trying to reason with someone who expects reasons for everything.

I suppose that makes sense - if you're starting out from an unreasonable position. And you'd like to stay there.

Kleinman does not demand that I follow his faith – you do.

What faith? You mean the one that says "everything can be explained by naturalistic means?"

I'm sorry, but isn't that called "science," not "faith?"

Who is the authoritarian bully? You are free to follow whatever irrational faith you will; you are not free to demand that I follow it.

I'm not demanding that you be rational and naturalistic. I'm demanding that you stop pretending you're doing science.

My epistemology is that of rationalism and of evolutionary epistemology as described by Popper.

Popper is an idiot.

Note the above is not an ad hominen. I am not asserting that Popper's arguments are wrong because he is stupid; I am concluding that Popper is stupid because his arguments are wrong. So very, very wrong.

My work simply uses evolutionary epistemology to generalize evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary epistemology?

I do know a thing or two about epistemology, having studied it in college. I've never heard of this flavor. I don't think I can even guess what it means.

Thank you for providing your feedback but you show no evidence of having read my work

You're a little slow on the uptake, John. I quite explicitly stated that I did not read your work. And that I was not going to, until you gave me reason to. Thus, you are entitled to a stronger statement than "you show no evidence."

and your comments seem trite and empty. I do not wish to engage with them.

Ah... what a brilliant response to my actual attempt to address your theory.

After pages of telling us we're just being petty, the one time I actually try to talk about your theory, you tell me I'm not good enough to talk about it.

Everyone who is surprised, raise your hand.

What's that, Atheist? Oh, you just wanted to sneeze? Sorry, my bad.

 

[articulett]

You should read Broad and Wade "Betrayers of the Truth," Kohn "False Prophets," Sabbagh "A Rum Affair" and Dan Agin is pushing his own book at Science Weekly. You might also join the Scifraud listserver and read through some of the archives.

Why don't you just cut and paste a summary of your strongest cases.

Also, do you believe that your salvation depend on your believing a particular way? If so, how can you pretend this doesn't bias your results?

 

[articulett]

My post was a commentary about Articulett's rudeness and repetitively ad hominem behaviour. As such it was not a commentary directed to science as such and did not address scientific facts. Would you expect it to?

John you asked why I mentioned god in relation to you and why I thought you were a creationist. My answer is not an ad hom. I am more than willing to back all my statements about you with evidence-- Ad hominen attacks are attacks of the person rather than the argument. I can barely understand your argument. And I'm not sure calling someone a "creationist" is an ad hom. Of course, I recently learned (at TAM5) that spoonbender can be defamatory.

 

[articulett]

I don't expect science to triumph over religion. I just expect it to triumph over its own foibles, in the long run.

~~ Paul

Yep, science works. It's creates cumulative and useful knowledge. That beats religions and beliefs and QM new age foolishness hands down. It may not be as fun or as easy, but it can't be beaten when it comes to results. If "truth will out" then scientific evidence is the path there.

P.S. Kudos to Yahzi for saying it with brevity, clarity, and humor once again.

 

[The Atheist]

For instance: no.

Check again, it certainly does.

 

[The Atheist]

But since god has nothing to do with science, I'm not sure what this has to do with what I said.

~~ Paul

Since you said this:

I don't expect science to triumph over religion. I just expect it to triumph over its own foibles, in the long run.

~~ Paul

I was just responding to it.

 

[The Atheist]

Popper is an idiot.

[Just a quick one first. I take it you mean "was"]

Knighted for his services, acknowledged as the father of modern NZ university methods, he was hardly an idiot. Sure, some of his own work is now falsified, but being wrong doesn't make him an idiot. He led UK philosophy for nearly half a century.

What have you done?

 

[articulett]

Has this thread ?

So... anything else to say about annoying creationists?

Respectfully,
Myriad

Well, like zombies and roaches, they are really hard to get rid of.

And I just am tickled by how annoying creationists flock to a thread that says "annoying creationist". They can be amusing, and that's worth something right?

Plus, I think it's been a good thread to find out whom to ignore. Some folks just can't seem to fathom that they are on a whole different page than the majority. In fact, they are probably reading a whole different book... in a whole different language...

 

[kjkent1]

Hence my belief that there must be an evolutionary process in chemistry that led up to the emergence life, not just one or more random events of emergence. And, of course, that is just for a few hudred base pairs, not 300,000.

Do you have any experiments which you could propose that would confirm your belief?

If so, have you tried to get funding?

If not, why not?

If you tried to get funding and were refused, why?

If you succeeded in getting funding, then where are the results?

 

[articulett]

Do you have any experiments which you could propose that would confirm your belief?

If so, have you tried to get funding?

If not, why not?

If you tried to get funding and were refused, why?

If you succeeded in getting funding, then where are the results?

Pay very close attention to his answer...and/or the ignoring of the questions.

 

[tsig]

Nope, never.

As long as humans fear death there will be gods.

Death is the way the word works,

To fear it is to fear reality.

 

[John Hewitt]

Do you have any experiments which you could propose that would confirm your belief?

If so, have you tried to get funding?

If not, why not?

If you tried to get funding and were refused, why?

If you succeeded in getting funding, then where are the results?

The theory of prebiotic oscillations suggests a number of operational approaches that would involved model tests or computer simulations.
I have not attempted to obtain funding for them and have no plans to do so. One goes where one can and, at this time, my work has been primarily theoretical for several years. I do not think I would get cooperation to reverse that.

 

[tsig]

The theory of prebiotic oscillations suggests a number of operational approaches that would involved model tests or computer simulations.
I have not attempted to obtain funding for them and have no plans to do so. One goes where one can and, at this time, my work has been primarily theoretical for several years. I do not think I would get cooperation to reverse that.

Your words gush meaning nothing