Creationist "PWNED" by Lenski

blutoski said:
No, I disagree about this. It's part of that distinction between evolution-the-fact (which was quite established before natural selection was proposed) versus natural-selection-the-mechanism.

Intelligent Design does not dispute the existence of evolution. It is the rejection of natural selection as sufficient to explain new features.
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And yet we have hundreds (thousands? more?) of examples of life evolving under selection pressures. I think part of the problem is that the creationist position is simply incoherent nonsense, which makes it difficult to argue about.

Behe is correct to assert that it's impossible for all the mutations we associate with a new function to happen simultaneously. However, it's a strawperson, because neodarwinists do not make this claim anyway. Scaffolding and redundancies are just two of many sensible explanations for how a new feature can arise from a longitudinal sequence of non-beneficial mutations.
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There was a long and useless thread here involving a creationist named kleinman. His/her main point was that evolution is impossible because the odds of all those mutations happening at once is too small. But as I was trying to say, it's obvious to anyone with a feel for probabilities that this is only because you required that they happen all at the same instant. If you spread out the instant a little, it becomes far less unlikely.

I disagree. Even given large numbers of mutation events, the statistical likelihood of multiple simultaneous mutations gets small enough to be considered impossible.
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You have to be very, very careful with that logic. The odds that you, blutoski, exist just exactly as you are are essentially zero - and yet you exist. Do we need an explanation for that?
 
BenBurch said:
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...They all say; "Show me anything evolving."

Industrial Moths they toss off as selection of an existing trait.

The lizards that appear to have evolved a new organ and lifestyle they claim were not watched the whole time and were replaced by a similar species that had that trait already.

This one they cannot wiggle out of no matter how many lies they tell; We watched this one happen and preserved the steps along the way.

It ends the debate on if complex traits can evolve, on if mutations are ever beneficial, and on the heritability and benign nature of "useless" mutations that potentiate a later change.

After this they have no rational objections left to herd in those who are less learned; All they can say is "It doesn't happen because the Bible doesn't say it happens."
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This amazing research directly answers Behe's recent book The Edge of Evolution too.

In that book, Dr. Behe actually brought up Lenski's research as evidence for his view. Specifically he said on page 142 "nothing fundamentally new has been produced". Well, maybe not at the time of his writing, but that is the thing with science, we just don't pack up and say goddidit and go home....we keep working.
 
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Schlafly slapped again

Not content with his original slapdown from Lenksi, Schlafly couldn't listen to wiser counsel and would not let things drop there.

He drafted a letter to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), pointing out a list of what he thought were statistical and methodological flaws in the Lenski study, and pushing for a retraction. PNAS have, after reading it, declined to print it, providing Schlafly with a lesson in statistics, and adding that his claim that Lenksi has not publically released his data is both unfounded and uncalled for.

Predictably, Schlafly is railing on Conservapedia, agreeing with someone who says "the only way to get the real truth is by suing in court". One writer on that page has however told him that in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, "Science was able to vindicate itself against the claims of intelligent design creationism. As for PNAS: It's not like the reviewer is saying anything that commenters here hadn't told ASchlafly already".

I need to quote that here because Schlafly is almost certain to remove it once he reads it.
 
“I think there’s a great deal of misunderstanding here from the critics of Mr. Schlafly and obfuscation on the part of Prof. Lenski and his supporters. The real data that we need are not in the paper. Rather they are in the bacteria used in the experiments themselves. Prof. Lenski claims that these bacteria ‘evolved’ novel traits and that these were preceded by the evolution of ‘potentiated genotypes’, from which the traits could be ‘reevolved’ using preserved colonies from those generations. But how are we to know if these traits weren’t ‘potentiated’ by the Creator when He designed the bacteria thousands of years ago, such that they would eventually reveal themselves when the time was right? The only way this can be settled is if we have access to the genetic sequences of the bacteria colonies so that we can apply CSI techniques and determine if these ‘potentiated genotypes’ originated through blind chance or intelligence. But with the physical specimens in the hands of Darwinists, who claim they will get around to the sequencing at some unspecifed future time, how can we trust that this data will be forthcoming and forthright? Thus, Prof. Lenski et al. should supply Conservapedia, as stewards, with samples of the preserved E. coli colonies so that the data can be accessible to unbiased researchers outside of the hegemony of the Darwinian academia, even if it won’t be put to immediate examination by Mr. Schlafly. This is simply about keeping tax-payer-funded scientists honest.”
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Is this individual actually suggesting that A) any scientist working in an evolutionary field who agrees that evolution is a valid reality is undeserving of being granted a measure of good faith when working in a field that he/she/or they are an expert in? B) That scientific observations can be explained away by saying "God is making a special exception here"? C) That Conservapedia can be considered an unbiased independant source? And D) That Conservapedia, Schlafly, and it's patrons are adequately funded, equipped, and trained to receive the E. Coli, ensure the safety of the reseachers, and study E. Coli bacteria in a scientific matter in order to deduce the occurance of beneficial mutations along the lines of those which occured in the report mentioned?
 
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Oh Your God... I hadn't read anything on Conservipedia other than the Lenski affair, so I decided to give it a look see. Put on your AFDBs kids. :tinfoil

In the "course index" there's World History and checking "lecture" 1 we find this offal.
When did mankind first begin? There is no reliable evidence of man existing before 3500 B.C. The oldest writing is a pictographic tablet called a “cuneiform” dated to about 3400 B.C. from Sumer (SOO-mur) in Southern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today). These cuneiforms look like chicken-scratches featuring wedge-like or arrow-shaped characters. The oldest western-style script is from the Indo-Aryan language, and one dated to 1550 B.C. was found in the Sinai. The oldest verified civilization dates to about 3000 B.C. We can also extrapolate backwards from modern populations to estimate that only about 300 million people existed in the world at the time of Christ, and extrapolating backwards further yields only one family in the year 3300 B.C. Languages can be traced backwards to about 3000 B.C., and some experts reconstruct a point of origin in southeastern Europe near the Black Sea, not far from the Ararat mountain range cited in the Bible in connection with Noah. Old trees never predate this time either; the oldest sequoias, which never die of old age, are only 4000 years old.
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:jaw-dropp

And a little lower:
History books speculate at length about “prehistory”, which predates writing. But there is no reliable evidence to support this speculation, and not worth spending time on. There is no reason to think that man existed for thousands of years without ever expressing himself in written form. But in case you are asked, historians describe the period of time known as “prehistory” as the “Stone Age.” They divide the Stone Age into two time periods: “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic”. The Paleolithic Age is older, when man relied mostly on hunting and picking nuts and fruit to supplement his diet. The Paleolithic Age was followed by the Neolithic Age, which consisted of the rise of agriculture. The “Neolithic Revolution” means the “Agricultural Revolution,” when farming became dominant. The dates of these ages are controversial, and historians have a bias for giving them older dates than proven by archaeology.
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Ummm. Ever hear of Lascaux or Radicarbon dating?
 
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Any obviously impartial caches of the original?

"RationalWiki" is proberly part of the global rationalist conspiracy and full of pinkos "lying for truth".
 
Not sure if you're being serious with that, but the Correspondence section of the RationalWiki article gives the Schlafly-Lenski exchange unredacted and without comment.
 
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Bill C I hoped that the purple typeface, and "proberly" would give it away...


But I was trying to make a serious point. It would be good if there was some website that would be more readilly seen to be impartial...

ETA: Open request to any mod: could you please change the typeface of my post #72 to comic sans...

ETA2:

BillC, I was talking about the bit which you quoted here (the red highlight):

Predictably, Schlafly is railing on Conservapedia, agreeing with someone who says "the only way to get the real truth is by suing in court". One writer on that page has however told him that in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, "Science was able to vindicate itself against the claims of intelligent design creationism. As for PNAS: It's not like the reviewer is saying anything that commenters here hadn't told ASchlafly already".
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OK, thanks for replying. However, I am still not sure what you mean about quoting the part in red text. Are you after an impartial cache of Schlafly's discussion about the PNAS letter (which is where the part in red came from), or an impartial cache of the Lenski-Schlafly dialogue?

The former can be obtained from the History page of the Conservapedia Talk:PNAS_Response_to_Letter page; however I wouldn't stake my life that posts won't get removed from its history. I doubt that any web archive has picked it up: the correspondence is only a little over a day old.

If the latter, the Lenski-Schalfly dialogue is available from a number of online sources, including Conservapedia itself, and may be compared word-by-word with the RationalWiki version. For online sources, you can google for key phrases from the letters. The ultimate source for the text of the letters is in fact Conservapedia, since Schlafly posted both his letters and Lenski's replies to it. All subsequent sources are derived from this. Unless I'm wrong, I don't think Lenski publicly posted either of his letters himself.
 
BillC I read the biot in red that on the conservapedia talk page, at one stage Schlafly agreed that they should sue in court, as the only way to get at truth.

I'd say it did in the case of Dover.
 
Someone else on that page said that court was the only way to get at the truth, and Schlafly thanked him for saying it. I doubt that even he will actively pursue a court case here, but who knows?
 
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