Has Dawkins lost credibility?

[Hawk one]

I and others (Dr Imago, Cyborg and Hawk One...) have given you reasons why Dawkins paused, you have not responded to those reasons in any way. Where is the substance in your accusation?

Well, I can only assume that Justin (T'ai chi's real name) has put me on ignore because I've been keeping on asking questions he's incapable of answering. In Justin's world, asking him difficult questions and calling out his lies and general dishonesty amounts to trolling, see.

 

[Dr. Imago]

Examples of actual mutations which increased the entropy of the genome? I very much doubt there are any specific examples of that in the literature.

The concept of "entropy", and what that actually means, in the genome is baffling to me... a tendency to move towards a state of disorder? I am a medical doctor, not a geneticist, and I just don't know what that means. But, I'm not sure geneticists widely agree on this "theory" (offered primarily by a retired geneticist and self-proclaimed born-again Christian). There are known mechanisms that add to and change the genome, and part of the human genome project now elucidates that a large portion of our genetic material may be viral in origin. But, I don't think anyone is convinced that they have this all figured out, and even perhaps large sections of the genome previously thought inactive may actually serve some function other than structural.

Fragile X syndrome is a good example, if I even remotely understand what that question is asking, where there is a decrease in "entropy" and genetic material is actually added to the human genome in a heritable pattern, with some deleterious consequences. We can observe this and understand the basics of why this happens through successive generations.

At first I'd been concentrating more on the deception of the interviewer's tactics, which dismissed any further considertaion of the actual question surrounding the incident. But, the more I think about it, you guys are convincing me that this really, REALLY was a stupid and confusing question in the first place as it demonstrates a complete basic lack of understanding of genetics, a science that is arguably still in its relative infancy in the first place (in that we seem to understand what the forest looks like, have been able to define a few trees, but certainly don't have a very solid and complete description of the bark on those trees).

-Dr. Imago

 

[Biscuit]

No, not in any real sense. There is no history of its usage, and it is only put in for purposes of being funny. Can you give some examples of its use in real life, outside a comedy show?



This was already provided to you.



No one has claimed that there aren't good and bad religous and atheistic groups. But if you're paying attention, the original query was for examples of religion doing good.



Well that's nice. But I'm asking for the exact counterpart to a religious group, which would be a group that is actively promoting atheism.

Your responses to my examples were nice. You basically admitted they occured.



I think you hit the nail on the head. Of course, the same argument applies to religion.

Because a word is used in jest it is not a word? You are just amazing.

You have not provided me with anything other than dodging and non answers like that one.

No, the original query was for examples of religion solving a problem. As someone else pointed out you gave examples of religion helping people in need, not religion itself solving a problem. Like say, vaccinations or a cure for polio. You need to pay attention and stop rephrasing the discussion.

What would really be the differeence between an aetheist charity and a secular one? Both would be based on doing good for the sake of doing good and not for the sake of spreading their faith. Regardless I found one so shove it.
http://earthward.org/index.shtml
And no I am not a member or have any affiliation with this group. You asked for one I gave it to you.

I did more than admitt they occured, I showed how they were useless as evidence for your argument.

No the same argument does not apply to religion in all cases. When a nutty loan gunman with a love of christ guns down 10 people it applies. When the catholic church went on crusades or torture binges it does not apply. Science has never organized itself for the purpose of death and destruction. Something religions do on a regular basis. This is because science is not afraid of being wrong, science loves new ideas provided you can back them up.

This is my first interaction with and I fear my last as you have no ability to actually answer questions and quite frankly are so dogmatic as to be about as interesting as watching paint dry.

 

[sol invictus]

The concept of "entropy", and what that actually means, in the genome is baffling to me... a tendency to move towards a state of disorder? I am a medical doctor, not a geneticist, and I just don't know what that means. But, I'm not sure geneticists widely agree on this "theory" (offered primarily by a retired geneticist and self-proclaimed born-again Christian).

Sorry - I should have used the word "information" rather than "entropy". I'm not sure which "theory" you're referring to... there's a very profound connection between entropy and information, which was first elucidated by Claude Shannon in the 40's and has since given rise to an entire academic discipline (information theory), which is central to computer science, cryptography, coding, etc. The fundamental point is that there is really one unique way to define both entropy and information, and both are maximized when the signal is maximally disordered. That sounds counterintuitive at first, but I can explain further if you're interested.

In any case I agree with your basic point, which is that how to apply this to the genome is very unclear. The science of bioinformatics is still in its infancy, and it's not clear this is a useful way to think about thinks. Furthermore, even though the fundamental definition of information is essentially unique, you can't calculate it exactly - and therefore you must choose a functional definition, and those choices will differ (which is why I said different definitions will sometimes disagree).

I suspect the interviewers didn't have a clue about any of this - they probably meant "information" in some very naive and imprecise sense, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. But there actually are a set of interesting questions on this topic - it's just that asking about a specific mutation that increases information isn't among them.

 

[cyborg]

In any case I agree with your basic point, which is that how to apply this to the genome is very unclear.

Well one obvious starting point is with the sequence of symbols consisting of ACGT.

 

[Dr. Imago]

Well one obvious starting point is with the sequence of symbols consisting of ACGT.

Well, it has to be not quite so simplistic, though. Those are the basic building block (amino acids) structures of DNA, but these are further organized into 3-base groups to provide the genetic recipe, if you will, for cells to build proteins and other molecules that trigger different cellular functions.

It's just not so simply, I feel, to surmise that this "information" is static. I think the key to the anti-evolutionists/pro-ID proponents argument is that such changes, in order to be heritable, would have to occur within gametes. And, since gametogenesis (at least female) is formed before birth, then it would be unlikely that such meaningful and additive changes could be passed to offspring at the time of conception.

But, we know this is the case. Fragile X syndrome is an example of a deleterious addition to oocytes that occurs during gamete formation in female fetuses. Secondly, spermatogenesis occurs regularly by Sertoli cells within the testes, and there is ample room for genetic variation at that level. Therefore, I don't know what it is unreasonable to suspect that this could not occur. Lastly, there is clearly evidence that genes jump and move, as well as rearrange themselves, early developmentally. We don't always directly observe these changes because these changes are either deleterious and result in fetal loss, they occur in what are currently believed to be "unimportant" regions of DNA, or they are so subtle that it is currently hard to observe them without actually mapping individual genome and comparing it to a reference set.

I'm not sure how "informatics" would apply to genomics, but this may just be that I don't know enough about informatics. Some theories, though, look enticing and may be helpful in letting us to begin to understand how processes interact. My analogy, however, is that the human genome is probably more like one big Sudoku puzzle: as we think we've figured out the specific regional effects of one area, some new information will come back and cause us to rethink what we had already solved. The knowledge with the genome, and genetics as a field, is exciting because of this fact, namely that the knowledge is turing over rapidly. But, the fundamental knowledge (the forest) is already well established, born out by rigorous scientific study, and unlikely to change. So, a lot of this discourse with the current state of knowledge is like arguing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

That's why I think the question posed to Dawkins is a no-win trap that doesn't really have a meaningful answer in the first place. If he'd answered it definitively, there's a high likelihood that later down the road someone could say, "See, here now is proof that he didn't know what he was talking about back then." No-win situation.

-copro

 

[CFLarsen]

Well, I can only assume that Justin (T'ai chi's real name) has put me on ignore because I've been keeping on asking questions he's incapable of answering. In Justin's world, asking him difficult questions and calling out his lies and general dishonesty amounts to trolling, see.

No, no.

Merely asking Justin a question will land you on his ignore list.

Sure, he can't answer most questions put to him, but it isn't a requirement.

 

[articulett]

No, no.

Merely asking Justin a question will land you on his ignore list.

Sure, he can't answer most questions put to him, but it isn't a requirement.

Ignorance is necessary to keep his delusions of grandeur and god alive.

 

[SomeGuy]

I'm just picking up this debate, and I have a number of points to make: there are a lot of worms in this can! In case anyone wants to address any of them, I'll call them (a), (b), etc, but they're not in any particular logical order. I'll limit myself to 3 issues here rather than rewrite "War and Peace". By the way, I am a lifelong atheist/evolutionist.

a) This discussion is self reinforcing: the "information question" is now perceived as "nonsensical" and "pathetic", but is actually not so. Dawkins writes at great length about "information" (check out the index of "The Ancestor's Tale" for example). The issue is that (according to orthodox Neo-Darwinism) starting from some simple replicator maybe 3 billion years ago genomes containing huge amounts of information have evolved. The mechanism (the sieving of random mutation by Natural Selection) has been reagrded as inadequate by many (e.g. Crick and Orgel - see "Life Itself") - obviously a mathematical justification is necessary.

b) Dawkins is not apparently up to the task of tackling the mathematics even in a simple way. Read his "Methinks it is like a weasel" argument if you are in any doubt about this. There's no particular reason why he should be - "It doesn't make you a bad person" - but if he makes a strong claim about the adequacy of the Neo-Darwinian account of evolution, he either needs to have his own answer to the problem, or be able to rely on somebody else's.

c) Dawkins and his allies regularly sidestep this issue in at least three dubious ways. Firstly, they refuse to acknowledge that there may be some validity in the ID challenge (but see Crick/Orgel, Hoyle). They do this by refusing to accept that ID as an hypothesis is different from religious fundamentalist Creationism. (Check it out: Dawkins simply indexes "'Intelligent Design theorist' see 'Creationist'.) Secondly, they pretend that any disagreement with the Neo-Darwinian position is a denial of evolution itself. Thirdly, they pretend that any challenge from a credible scientific source - take "Life Itself" again - is actually whimsical, tongue-in-cheek mental doodling. In summary: there is a valid Design/Information challenge to Neo-Darwinism. That is an entirely different issue from Creationism vs Evolution. (Of course, you may point out that the likes of Behe and Dembski are strongly motivated by religious commitment - true but irrelevant here. Answer the argument, not the person.)

Any creationist coming onto this board who then uses the strophe: "By the way, I am a lifelong atheist/evolutionist"

Should be insta-banned for being the lying, trolling scum that they are.

 

[SomeGuy]

Imagine you're a world class scientist in topic E.

There is a stumper question Q, that your academic 'enemies' always trot out at you about E, as if it is the most difficult question out there and failure to answer it results in a complete utter debunking of E.

Wouldn't you always have an answer on hand to counter Q with? Seems the intelligent thing to be prepared for.

Okay, I'm imaging I'm a world class scientist in Zoology.

There is a stumper question "what is the square root of two sheep and a horse" that my academic 'enemies' always trot out at me about zooology, as if it's the most difficult question out there and failure to answer it results in a complete and utter debunking of Zoology.

I wouldn't prepare an answer to counter "what is the square root of two sheep and a horse". Something so inane would not really seem all that intelligent to prepare for.

Of course I would be dumbfounded for a few seconds hearing that question when I was under the impression (prior to the question) that I was speaking to people genuinely knowledgable of Zoology.

 

[articulett]

Any creationist coming onto this board who then uses the strophe: "By the way, I am a lifelong atheist/evolutionist"

Should be insta-banned for being the lying, trolling scum that they are.

The clue is in the screen name... "dick"...

Lying in the name of Jesus...what else is new?

I wonder if atheists go to theist boards pretending to be believers?

The problem with the question is that it shows a huge amount of ignorance and a bias in it's asking. It's truly like asking "how far to the end of the earth"? Such a question presupposes a flat earth... or at least ignorance that needs a lot of explanation to remedy. I guess he could just have said, "non-disjunction"-- that adds info. to the genome-- in the form of an extra chromosome... or "methylation"-- that adds triple codon repeats. But the question is on par with "how does information get added to cookbooks". It's a bizarre question that infers ignorance on the part of those who can't answer, while also asking a question that nobody really wants an answer to. This is what creationists do. They ask ridiculous questions and ignore all answers because they have the answer they want and that answer is "scientists can't answer this, therefore my god is true".

No matter how facile they are with language and semantics-- it all boils down to the exact same nothingness. Inferences are used in place of facts. They offer no facts for their own "hypothesis"- just oblique inferences about the other side that are dishonest and ignorant. And they have no actual interest in correcting their mis perceptions. They are impervious to admitting that they HAVE a lack of understanding on the topic-- they imagine themselves experts, but have no curiosity on new knowledge in this field they are supposedly so expert in.

To answer the question would be like trying explain calculus to a first grader. And it's not like they actually have any interest or ability to appreciate the answer anyhow. They are like T'ai. They are sure they have the answers... so why waste time on the impervious and dishonest. They are just drawing you in to prop up whatever delusion they are nursing. There's this sense that they are playing an imaginary game in their heads where they are always winning while all the rational people are having a conversation about something completely different.

 

[Dick Atkinson]

Cyborg: Who cares about "the roots of the ID movement"? Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that Francis Crick misunderstood molecular genetics, and that Fred Hoyle misunderstood the concept of information (and entropy)? They are/were FOOLS, DELUSIONAL or NAIVE? Forget where the name ID came from - it postdates Crick and Hoyle in any case.

Cyborg: You wish me to define information in a mathematical sense - but you insist on a particular sense of the word. Since I am not a Nobel Prize winning scientist, I just count my information in bits, bytes, and their multiples. I am alo a card player, and I know that the amount of information necessary to define any bridge deal is exactly the same as any other - but that if a player is dealt all 13 spades (especially on his birthday) purposeful intervention is all but certain. The information question for evolution is not answered by pointing out that a random jumble of DNA - a dead gloop of chemicals - requires as much information to define it as a human being does. The question is HOW the viable organisms are sorted from the dead junk. This could be called a "design specification", and the issue is whether that is more than a metaphor.

d) To specify a crucial protein - Hoyle takes one of the histones as an example - around a hundred aminoacids must be coded for, from a choice of twenty, in the correct order. The amount of information involved is, in these terms, of the order of 20 raised to the power 100, which I roughly calculate is 2 to the power 400 (the actual number is irrelevant - it's BIG). Suppose (as is the case) that this universal protein - vital for cell division - must be specific, barring a handful of acceptable aminoacid variations. (Almost) any change is lethal. BUT THIS HISTONE MUST HAVE EVOLVED ONE MUTATION AT A TIME. That means that there must have been a complete sequence of dozens of ancestral proteins, successfully involved in (well adapted) cell division... But this molecule is so specific that it is virtually identical in ALL living organisms (all eukaryotes, anyway). So we have empirical evidence that significant difference would destroy the essential information (design information if you like), and a theoretical requirement that a whole spate of differences would be fine. When the facts contradict the theory, there is a problem with the theory. The "awkward question" the Australian Creationists put to Dawkins was ill-defined, but the theoretical problem was clear enough - when almost any random change is deleterious, empirical evidence for adaptive change is needed. (There is a prima facie Evo-Devo answer, but that has its own problems. Dawkins did not take that line.)

Lonewulf: You asked me to define Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. To be honest, I don't know how anyone can be involved in this discussion unless they already know this. However, it is very relevant to Dawkins and the "awkward question", so I guess I will have to write "War and Peace" after all.

e) Darwinism as now defined is the theory that evolution can be accounted for by Natural Selection (ultimately, differential fertility) acting on random variation. Darwin had no notion of the genetic mechanism, but when Darwin is coupled with Mendel we have Neo-Darwinism - and during the 20th century the molecular basis for Mendel's heritable factors was elucidated, completing the basic Neo-Darwinian theory. A Neo-Darwinian account of evolution must describe it in terms of DNA mutations effecting protein changes. Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene" was outstanding because it brought something of that kind of thinking into the non-academic forum; but he seems to have abandoned genes before he got round to the molecular reality (see (d) for the protein end of the business). Dawkins writes about eyes, for example, as if an eye-spot evolved into a light-sensitive pit, and so on; but the spot and the pit were parts of different organisms. A spot can't turn into a pit. A gene - or a number of genes - undergo point mutations, the overwhelmingly vast majority of which are deleterious. Many may be relatively neutral, and a vanishingly small number will be "adaptive". (Again, Evo-Devo offers a different account, but that's another argument.) There is no way to gauge the likelihood or plausibility of the chance from spot to pit except in molecular terms. When Dawkins tried to explicate the molecular/information account with his "Methinks" argument he fell flat on his face. Since then he doesn't go there in his popular publications. The "awkward question" put him back in that hot seat. It appears that he squirmed, but that is not really relevant. Whether Dawkins had a good answer is unimportant in the scheme of things. The real issue is whether ANYONE has a good answer. This problem worried Crick and Orgel enough to spend a year or two working on it. Fred Hoyle was sure there was no Darwinian, or Neo-Darwinian, answer. All three came to the conclusion that there was a design input - not the Judeo-Christian God, of course.

 

[cyborg]

Cyborg: Who cares about "the roots of the ID movement"? Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that Francis Crick misunderstood molecular genetics, and that Fred Hoyle misunderstood the concept of information (and entropy)? They are/were FOOLS, DELUSIONAL or NAIVE? Forget where the name ID came from - it postdates Crick and Hoyle in any case.

I don't think "Directed panspermia" is really the same thing as ID do you?

The Wikipedia entry on Francis Crick says:

During the 1960s, Crick became concerned with the origins of the genetic code. In 1966, Crick took the place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where Orgel was to talk about the origin of life. Crick speculated about possible stages by which an initially simple code with a few amino acid types might have evolved into the more complex code used by existing organisms.[48] At that time, everyone thought of proteins as the only kind of enzymes and ribozymes had not yet been found. Many molecular biologists were puzzled by the problem of the origin of a protein replicating system that is as complex as that which exists in organisms currently inhabiting Earth. In the early 1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel technology, a process they called “Directed Panspermia”.[49] In a retrospective article,[50] Crick and Orgel noted that they had been overly pessimistic about the chances of abiogenesis on Earth when they had assumed that some kind of self-replicating protein system was the molecular origin of life. Now it is easier to imagine an RNA world and the origin of life in the form of some self-replicating polymer besides protein.

Nothing on that page suggests that the man would have anything to do with the views of the people pushing ID. What is designed is the propagation of the necessary ingredients for life. What is not designed is the life itself - that still had to arise naturally.

But, as ever, we see old scientific ideas pounced upon and utilised for propaganda with no regard to the updates in knowledge about the theories referenced.

So what is your point here?

Cyborg: You wish me to define information in a mathematical sense - but you insist on a particular sense of the word. Since I am not a Nobel Prize winning scientist, I just count my information in bits, bytes, and their multiples.

Uh... that would be mathematical.

I am alo a card player, and I know that the amount of information necessary to define any bridge deal is exactly the same as any other - but that if a player is dealt all 13 spades (especially on his birthday) purposeful intervention is all but certain.

Your point here is...?

The information question for evolution is not answered by pointing out that a random jumble of DNA - a dead gloop of chemicals - requires as much information to define it as a human being does.

I don't know what question it is your asking since you haven't really said what you mean by "information".

It sure doesn't bode well for sensible discussion that you're using emotive terms like "dead gloop of chemicals," with the tacit implication that there should be something different about "non-dead gloops of chemicals."

The question is HOW the viable organisms are sorted from the dead junk.

Er... natural selection?

(And I still don't understand what this "dead" business is supposed to mean for chemicals.)

BUT THIS HISTONE MUST HAVE EVOLVED ONE MUTATION AT A TIME.

Nope. Simplistic probabilistic reasoning.

Typical.

when almost any random change is deleterious

Ah, that old canard.

Could we have some proof for that please?

Dawkins writes about eyes, for example, as if an eye-spot evolved into a light-sensitive pit, and so on; but the spot and the pit were parts of different organisms. A spot can't turn into a pit.

Why not?

A gene - or a number of genes - undergo point mutations, the overwhelmingly vast majority of which are deleterious.

Where are you getting this from? This is all very familiar standard rhetoric.

(Why do I get the feeling the justification for deleterious mutations will come from an argument from cancer?)

All three came to the conclusion that there was a design input - not the Judeo-Christian God, of course.[/COLOR]

And that input comes from?

And that designer was constructed by?

 

[articulett]

The question has been answered multiple times... it's just that those asking the question don't have the intelligence or education to understand the answer. Moreover, the question truly is as lame as asking "how far to the end of the earth"-- it reveals ignorance of profound proportions that is not subject to ready amelioration. It also shows the arrogance of the faithful-- this notion that they already know all there is to know on a topic-- and so they cannot hear any new information (see Behe at the Dover trial).

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dawkins.html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_indexx.html#ridley
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine07/serpentine07_index.html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/biocomp05/biocomp05_index.html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine07/serpentine07_index.html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/tooby.html

It gets old--the answer to how genomes evolve is becoming increasingly clear every day, but creationists and pedants can't absorb the new information because they are so sure that science can't answer their loaded questions and that that means something or other in favor of some other hypothesis.

Evolution can and does explain increasing complexity and seeming design in all systems. It's just that those who think they know everything already can't understand the science enough to comprehend the information no matter how it is presented.

 

[cyborg]

BTW Dick you should meet kleinman. I think you two would get on famously.

 

[articulett]

How much copying do you think is going on at a time, Dick? So what if most are deleterious. Most people don't win the lottery either. That doesn't change the fact that some do.

Lying creationists can always be counted on to argue using the same tangents and nothingness and inferences. They just never ever say anything. It's all inferences and stuff that you can't pin down. They have no evidence... they say things in a meal mouthed way that makes it hard to refute because nothing is said-- but digs at evolution are inferred. There is endless digging at a process that they don't seem to understand as well as they pretend with the inference that this must mean that there is something wrong about evolution-- or a gap that some other theory somewhere might fill. Oddly enough, scientists don't see this gap-- and there is no evidence that anything other than evolution will explain the areas we don't have a full understanding of yet.

 

[Thabiguy]

Since I am not a Nobel Prize winning scientist, I just count my information in bits, bytes, and their multiples. I am alo a card player, and I know that the amount of information necessary to define any bridge deal is exactly the same as any other ...

Good.

... around a hundred aminoacids must be coded for, from a choice of twenty, in the correct order. The amount of information involved is, in these terms, of the order of 20 raised to the power 100, which I roughly calculate is 2 to the power 400 (the actual number is irrelevant - it's BIG).

Didn't you just say that the amount of information is measured in bits? The amount of information in your example is not on the order of 20 raised to the 100th power, or anything like that. It is about 432 bits. That is on the order of 20 raised to the 2nd power, or 2 raised to the 9th power.

As for the rest of the... hmm... text in your post, I'll let someone else address that.
ETA: ... I see some already did.

 

[articulett]

BTW Dick you should meet kleinman. I think you two would get on famously.

You'd think so... but all the woo think they are smarter than the other woo. They all are sure they are the ones designated to teach... with nothing to learn. They sound so confident and sure of themselves that I suspect they do make others think that they are saying something valuable that the listener just doesn't have the knowledge to comprehend. But they really aren't saying anything at all. Good communicators make the difficult simple to understand-- blowhards make the simple difficult to understand-- the more they speak... the less you know. And yet such confidence! It's as if sounding like you know what you are talking about has more value than actually knowing what you are talking about.

But I agree. That dick and kleinman are cut from the same smarmy cloth... and now the point mutation canard... how long before he'll be asking about the time it takes to "evolve a gene de novo"?

 

[jimbob]

Well, should a world-famous geologist publically debate the Flat Earth society?

Which is a reason for "educated laypeople" and famous critical thinkers but not evolutionary biologists to debate them.

I am thinking of people like the late Linda Smith, standup and chair of the humanist association.

Dawkins engaging in such a debate can not win, as by his presence he is giving it creditibility. A stand-up isn't.

 

[Dunstan]

Whether Dawkins had a good answer is unimportant in the scheme of things. The real issue is whether ANYONE has a good answer. This problem worried Crick and Orgel enough to spend a year or two working on it. Fred Hoyle was sure there was no Darwinian, or Neo-Darwinian, answer. All three came to the conclusion that there was a design input - not the Judeo-Christian God, of course.

Since you are a "lifelong atheist/evolutionist," I presume you have found a satisfactory answer to this question.