Dover Penn ID trial

[hammegk]

Mutation and natural selection are not the same process.

The depth of your understanding defies belief.

Implications... such as?

That's where the "thinking" comes in ... yours, not mine.

Does Cramer's Transactional Interpretation (or even Sum_over_all_paths) seem random recalling that no time elapses during the event?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Timing of specific environment & timing of rna-dna available for mutation is not random?

This bit of logic is used by many creationists. Indeed, the timing of specific environmental pressures is random with respect to the rest of the universe. But that doesn't matter, does it? What matters is that that environmental pressures last for a long time, long enough to nonrandomly select the more-or-less random mutations that occur in genomes embedded in that environment.

Or does environment specify and direct mutation? LOL.

It might to some extent, but what does it matter?

~~ Paul

 

[delphi_ote]

Perhaps. Which suitable studies that test your hypothesis do you find most convincing?

For future reference, I recommend:

a) Reading the post you are responding to.
b) Making sure you understand all the words used in that post.
c) Making sure you understand all the words used in the post when you string them together in the same way the author of the post strung them together.
d) Trying to incorporate some thoughts about that post in your response to it.
e) Making sure your response actually makes sense to other native English speakers (as opposed to being a meaningless jumble of incoherent nonsense unrelated to anything anyone is talking about.)

I also note you didn't take issue with my post about Genetic Programming being un-designed despite the fact that humans obviously designed genetic programming. Could it be that you don't understand the subject at hand? Or can you not define "design" sufficiently well? Or both?

 

[delphi_ote]

Timing of specific environment & timing of rna-dna available for mutation is not random?

RNA available for mutation? Go find a biology textbook. You need to do some reading.

 

[delphi_ote]

This thread is meant to be about the ID trial. Hasn't it been split once already to provide a suitable receptacle for hammy's incontinent drivel?

Good point. Hammy is boring. The trial is endlessly entertaining.

So to kick this thread back onto topic, why on Earth did the defense put Buckingham on the witness stand?

 

[drkitten]

So to kick this thread back onto topic, why on Earth did the defense put Buckingham on the witness stand?

Because they had to.

Buckingham's statements, as reported in the press, using words like "creationism" and statements about "two thousand years ago, somone died on the cross for us; won't someone take a stand for Him?" (I apologize if that's a misquote; I didn't bother to cross-check.) are direct and clear-cut evidence about the religious motivations of the government officials who made the policy. By extension, it's clear-cut evidence that the government policy itself is motivated by religious, not secular, purposes, violating the first prong of the Lemon test.

Without some way to refute those newspaper reports, the game is as good as over. And the only person who can credibly testify about what Buckingham said is Buckingham himself. (Imagine if the defense tried to refute those statements without Buckingham's testimony. Wouldn't you find that a little suspicious?)

I suppose another strategy might have been for the entire board to try to distance itself from Buckingham -- "Well, he may have had religious motivations, but I agreed with the proposal for sound pedagogical reasons, which I am inexplicably unable to articulate at this moment due to an acute confusion between whether my foot belongs in my shoe, or my mouth." However, I really doubt that dog would hunt either; the judge is demonstrably no fool.

Other than that, I think that all the defense can really hope for is to muddy the waters enough to make a credible case on appeal. I honestly don't see (from my reading of the transcripts) how the trial judge could make any finding other than for the plaintiffs.

 

[delphi_ote]

Other than that, I think that all the defense can really hope for is to muddy the waters enough to make a credible case on appeal. I honestly don't see (from my reading of the transcripts) how the trial judge could make any finding other than for the plaintiffs.

It just seems like nobody did their homework or got their stories straight (in Behe and Buckingham's cases, it seems like they didn't even bother getting their stories traight with themselves!) It couldn't be any more obvious these people are dishonest. I really don't see how they could hope to get an appeal at this point.

What were they thinking? Does it really just simply boil down to their being blinded by faith?

 

[hammegk]

RNA available for mutation? Go find a biology textbook. You need to do some reading.

Pedants are so interesting ... I tossed in rna to cover all terran life as it's usually defined by y'all.

For future reference, I recommend:

a) Reading the post you are responding to.
b) Making sure you understand all the words used in that post.
c) Making sure you understand all the words used in the post when you string them together in the same way the author of the post strung them together.
d) Trying to incorporate some thoughts about that post in your response to it.
e) Making sure your response actually makes sense to other native English speakers (as opposed to being a meaningless jumble of incoherent nonsense unrelated to anything anyone is talking about.)

I asked what peer-reviewed studies you based your "all Christians" thought on. Was I too quick for you?

note you didn't take issue with my post about Genetic Programming being un-designed despite the fact that humans obviously designed genetic programming. Could it be that you don't understand the subject at hand? Or can you not define "design" sufficiently well? Or both?

So much to repond to, so few of me. Sorry to keep you waiting.

I do like that "designed un-designed design" concept.

It might to some extent, but what does it matter?

IIRC there are some studies that imply microbes mutating at faster rate when stressed (er, and at pre-selected specific locales as well), yet the idea seems a bit too Lamarchian for The Theory.



And to all now dancing in the streets in glee, Scopes won the day and held it for The Theory many decades. Assuming ID losses this trial, how long this time until the next assault as Religion(vs. Science) tries again.

 

[Ed]

The history of science is the history of dead religions"

....Oscar Wilde

...

 

[delphi_ote]

I asked what peer-reviewed studies you based your "all Christians" thought on. Was I too quick for you?

Yes. You were too quick to lie and try to stuff words in my mouth. Like I said, read the original post before you respond. I never said "all Christians," but you still quote me as saying exactly that.

Buckingham and Behe are most certainly self described Christians and are most certainly liars. How do they justify this to themselves? Why is there not an uproar from the Christian community about these people who purport to represent the religion in public?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

IIRC there are some studies that imply microbes mutating at faster rate when stressed (er, and at pre-selected specific locales as well), yet the idea seems a bit too Lamarchian for The Theory.

If mutation and selection can conjure up something diabolical, it will. I won't even be surprised if things slightly Lamarckian are discovered. All you need is some mechanism to modify sex cells in a "controlled" manner. I believe there is already evidence that structures in sex cells other than DNA carry information inherited by offspring.

~~ Paul

 

[Dan Beaird]

...So to kick this thread back onto topic, why on Earth did the defense put Buckingham on the witness stand?

It's my understanding that Buckingham was called by the prosecution (hostile witness rules and all) out of turn becuase he was unavailable when they presented their case and allowances were made for just this sort of thing.

I think the defense would have been happier to have him spend the trial buried under a rock on some remote planet. I think everyone ought to get together and sign thank-you cards to the defense counsel and witnesses for shredding every vestige of credibility that ID claimed to have. Maybe we can give them some Darwin fish for their cars too.

 

[H'ethetheth]

I find out-of-the-box thinking more interesting than regurgitation of liturgy.

Though I tend to agree with this basic message, out-of-the-box thinking should stop where unsupported and unfalsifiable speculation starts, especially where the latter is combined with lots of grossly inappropriate finger pointing.

 

[drkitten]

It's my understanding that Buckingham was called by the prosecution (hostile witness rules and all) out of turn becuase he was unavailable when they presented their case and allowances were made for just this sort of thing.

According to the rather-garbled transcripts available from the NCSE, he was called as a defense witness.

Not that that means much.

 

[Spidey13]

Hey guys. There's a really funny article at Slate by William Saletan comparing Dr. Behe's testimony to a Monty Python sketch.

Last paragraph:

So, this is my theory, which belongs to me, and goes as follows. All intelligently designed things are brought about by an intelligent designer through a process of intelligently conducted design. If it's good enough for Monty Python, it's good enough for biology class.

 

[CFLarsen]

Miss Anne Elk!

 

[Euromutt]

Miss Anne Elk!

... who is an expert on elk-- dinosaurs!

 

[Euromutt]

Phooey. You are the author who neglected to use any qualifier. Got peer-review to support even "most" or "many" Christians? That is, actually back up your statement.

Where did delphi_ote use terms like "most" or "many"? He noted that Behe and Buckingham are self-professed Christians, that Christian scripture contains several prohibitions on telling falsehoods, and noted the apparent discrepancy between Behe and Buckingham's self-professed adherence to Christianity and their failure to avoid activity prohibited by scripture. The evidence to back up that statement is there for all of us to see, in the trial transcripts for starters.

Stop trying to be clever, hammy; you haven't got what it takes to pull that off.

I might add that your instruction to Chipmunk Stew to "either add something, or stfu" is the height of chutzpah coming from someone the majority of whose posts add exactly zero value to the conversation, consisting of messages to the effect that "you're wrong, but I'm not going to argue why; instead, you have to come up with the arguments I can't produce myself."

 

[bagtaggar]

Hammy, can you prove to us that Creationism and Intelligent design qualify as science, and belong in the science curriculum for high school students?

 

[headscratcher4]

"I find out-of-the-box thinking more interesting than regurgitation of liturgy."

How does that work when the "out of the box" thinking is designed specificallly to get you back to dogmatic regurgitation of liturgy...for the expressed motives of the ID movment isn't scientific, it is to bannish
"materialist" science and to return to education founded in religious dogma...and than they can, once again, turn on each other like they've done for thousands of years.

 

[Pastor Bentonit]

Egads! I´m away for a couple of hours and it´s troll heaven! Oh how fun these internets are! However, natural selection keeps on being anything but random. Oh, and there are many mutational mechanisms, all of them not strictly random either...and of course, there is no known mechanism of ID, short of those guided by humans, apes, crows etc, i.e. living organisms of the natural world. Now, let´s get ourselves a couple of fresh Kitzmiller vs. Dover transcripts and laugh our collective guts out. And btw, Hammegk, why not join us? It´s great fun!

 

[delphi_ote]

It's my understanding that Buckingham was called by the prosecution (hostile witness rules and all) out of turn becuase he was unavailable when they presented their case and allowances were made for just this sort of thing.

That would explain a lot. Any idea where you heard that, Dan?

Also, can anyone explain to me why Buckingham can't get in trouble for perjury for this? I'm definitely not Mr. Law, but his false statements seem to be a little too convenient to not be deliberate.

 

[bagtaggar]

Hammy... can you please demonstrate how ID qualifies as science? Pwease?

 

[hammegk]

Hammy... can you please demonstrate how ID qualifies as science? Pwease?

Of course not. I can offer some others' words regarding the ongoing debate, which as I see it, is not that specific question anyway.

Today, some read the evidence of nature and find no evidence for the existence of a Deity. Richard Dawkins, the contemporary biologist, notorious atheist, penned a book with the title "The Blind Watchmaker". He argues that "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference". In the context of the warfare between evolution and creationism in the United States, the problem is perhaps less with believers who read the Bible as a literal account of Creation and more with believers who read Richard Dawkins as a literal account of evolution.

The history of the anti-evolution debates in the United States is less about biology and more about morality. Going back to the 1925 Scopes Trial, the progressive politician, William Jennings Bryan, got involved largely because of his objections to Social Darwinism and Eugenics, which at the time were widely used to justify any number of social injustices. Thirty states had eugenics laws. Indeed, the "science" most used to justify Nazism was first published in the peer-reviewed journals of the United States.

Today, the anti-evolution arguments are quite similar -- evolution equals materialism equals atheism equals nihilism equals immorality. The last Supreme Court case to examine this question, the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard ruled against Creation Science not on the basis of the science, but that it was a sectarian religion and thus could not be taught in the public schools. The anti-evolution forces regrouped, reorganized, and united around a "science-only" tactic - calling evolution "just a theory" and requesting equal time for Intelligent Design Theory. The old Creation Science arguments have been resurrected, but without mention of the Bible or officially naming the reputed designer.

The problem, however, is not with the term "intelligent". The "intelligence" of nature is not in the eye of the scientific beholder, it is in the phenomena themselves. This "intelligibility" is the precondition for science. The metaphor of "design", however, is much more problematic.

Besides, God is either everywhere present in all processes of creation or God might as well be nowhere.

source http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?9284

 

[Dr Adequate]

Hammy... can you please demonstrate how ID qualifies as science? Pwease?

That was a "no".

Back on topic, does anyone know where I can find the latest transcripts on a normal webpage instead of this pesky .pdf?

I'm getting serious withdrawal symptoms.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, please, more transcripts!

 

[Ed]

Of course not. I can offer some others' words regarding the ongoing debate, which as I see it, is not that specific question anyway.


the problem is perhaps less with believers who read the Bible as a literal account of Creation and more with believers who read Richard Dawkins as a literal account of evolution.

The difference is that one is completely justified in saying to Dawkins "prove it" and he would have to comply or retire. I would love believers in absolute truths and omnipotant beings to be as self assured and not have to resort to verbal legerdermain.

 

[hammegk]

I see. And you find that Dawkins has proved "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."?

And more to the point, you also find it so, provably?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I hadn't run across that thinking before. I'd need to know more, but at first glance it might make more sense than 'natural selection' as y'all define it.

Here you go:

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20050323/01

Any such non-DNA inheritance is still under the influence of natural selection, of course.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Back on topic, does anyone know where I can find the latest transcripts on a normal webpage instead of this pesky .pdf?

Pesky, you say?

Talkorigins has them in HTML format:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html

~~ Paul

 

[Dr Adequate]

Behe plays it dumb, loses:

Q: And that's not what the Darwinian theory suggests, correct? It does not project that the sequence is in that order, liner, tuna, frog, turtle, chicken, horse, correct? That's not what Darwinian evolution states, correct?
A: You'll have to help me and tell me what Darwinian evolution does state.

... (agonising minutes later) ...

Q: But when Pandas says: "to use the classic Darwinian scenario amphibians are intermediate between fish and the other land dwelling vertebrates", that's not a correct characterization of the theory of evolution, is it?
A: No, that isn't, no.

I like this bit:

Q: But archeologists are involved in human design, so...
A: So he would have to conclude it had a human designer, correct?
Q: Not necessarily.
Mr Muise: Object. I believe counsel just testified.
Q: It seemed like so much fun I wanted to.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This is getting surreal. Dr. A., where is the transcript with those bits?

~~ Paul

 

[CFLarsen]

You'll have to help me and tell me what Darwinian evolution does state.

Behe didn't say that. He did not say that.

Show me where he said that.

My head is exploding....

 

[hammegk]

Any such non-DNA inheritance is still under the influence of natural selection, of course.

~~ Paul

Damn. I'd just been taken to task elsewhere for mentioning rna & mutation, too. delphi_ote: Interesting, huh?


So 'natural selection' is what is occurring even when higher powers (here, homosap) are messing about?

 

[delphi_ote]

It just gets better and better!

Heather Geesey, a Dover Area School Board member, said she came to believe intelligent design was a scientific theory based on the recommendations of Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham - both members of the board's curriculum committee.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15475356&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6

 

[Mojo]

More from Geesey:

“You can teach creationism without its being Christianity,” the Dover Area school board member wrote in a letter to the editor in the June 27, 2004, York Sunday News.

The judge seems to be on the ball:

Geesey testified that she recalled Buckingham and fellow board member Alan Bonsell discussing intelligent design at the June 2004 meetings. That contradicted her sworn deposition, in which she said board members hadn’t named what alternatives should be presented to balance evolutionary theory.

When Walczak questioned the discrepancy, Geesey said her letter to the editor, along with Eveland’s, had jogged her memory.

At the end of cross-examination, Jones was not satisfied and he began to question the witness himself.

Saying he was confused, Jones asked her to explain specifically how the letters triggered her memory. “I ask you because intelligent design is not mentioned in either letter,” he said.

http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/92176/

 

[CFLarsen]

Just out of curiosity, but has anyone noticed any howlers from the Evolutionist side?

It can't merely be the Creationists who mess up...

 

[delphi_ote]

Just out of curiosity, but has anyone noticed any howlers from the Evolutionist side?

It can't merely be the Creationists who mess up...

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said.

The Evolutionist science side isn't trying to cover up facts, so they probably have it easier.

 

[69dodge]

http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day8AMSession.pdf, p. 15:

A. He had asked us more than once if we teach man comes from a monkey. In response to that in utter frustration I looked at Mr. Buckingham and I said, "If you say man and monkey one more time in the same sentence, I'm going to scream." He did not do that, and I didn't have to.

Q. And that's because you're Italian, Mrs. Spahr, is that right?

A. Sicilian.

Q. I'll remember that.

A. Let's clarify that.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So 'natural selection' is what is occurring even when higher powers (here, homosap) are messing about?

That would depend entirely upon whether you are counting human effects as selection pressure. We are part of nature, after all.

Now you guys are starting to make this transcript stuff up. There is no way that it's really this absurd. We're through the looking glass for sure.

~~ Paul