Enclosed in this blog post is a poem that, for some reason, reminds me of the scientific community that is dominated by Darwinian thinking. Enjoy!
Their Way, by Bob Blues
I came with all my books, lived in dorms, followed directions. I worked, I studied hard, met lots of folks who had connections. I crammed, they gave me grades, and may I say not in a fair way. But more, much more than this, I did it their way.
I learned all sorts of things although I know I'll never use them.
The courses that I took were all required, I didn't choose them.
You'll find that to survive it's best to act the doctrinaire way.
And so I buckled down and did it their way.
Yes, there were times I wondered why
I had to crawl when I could fly.
I had my doubts, but after all,
I clipped my wings, and learned to crawl.
I had to bend, and in the end
I did it their way.
And so, my fine young friends, now that I'm a full professor
Where once I was oppressed, now I've become the cruel oppressor.
With me you'll learn to cope, you'll learn to climb life's golden stairway.
What can I do? What can I do? Open your books. Read chapter two. And if it seems a bit routine, Don't come to me, go see the dean. As long as they give me my pay I'll do it their way.
TheHumanApe’s blog is hardly deserving of attention, but nevertheless the job of shredding his ridiculous literature will be done.
He devotes a number of his blog posts to providing the evidence for evolution. For example, he quotes Jerry Coyne (author of “Why Evolution is True”) on why ERVs, embryology, et al., all demonstrate the validity of common descent. He describes how fossils and protein sequences provide confirmation of common descent. However, he makes the fatal error of equating evidence of common descent for evidence of a non-directed model of common descent. He cannot accept the prospect that evolution was guided. While I am not in anyway a theistic evolutionist, there is evidence in biology that certain parts of life were involved in a guided evolution. For example, a sequence analysis of the protein alpha-importin suggests that alpha-importin in unicellular organisms would guide the evolution of beta-canenin, and with the origin of beta-canenin, multicellular life forms would arise (see Mike Gene’s blog “The Design Matrix”). If TheHumanApe stubbornly clings to the belief that even a guided evolution is“magic,” then I’d love to hear his response to this.
TheHumanApe gives some treatment to chromosome 2, which he calls “undeniable evidence for evolution.” He is apparently ignorant of the possibility that Homo sapiens originally had 48 chromosomes, and then a fusion reduced that number to 46. The only thing chromosome 2 proves is that homo sapiens used to have 48 chromosomes.
He comes up with even more “undeniable evidence” for evolution – namely, the evidence from DNA sequences and molecular phylogenies. He is, of course, unaware of the fact molecular nested hierarchies can be explained by tissue constraints on protein sequences. A neutral substitution in one organism is not necessarily neutral in another, due to differences in the number of cell types. As such, the evidence from DNA sequences can hardly be considered “undeniable evidence.”
I found a particular portion of his blog amusing.
“Of course the idiot calls evolution ‘Darwinism’…. Again Christians, please read this carefully: Biologists are called ‘biologists’. It would help if you practiced saying the word "biologists" a few dozen times so you get it right next time.”
Right. It’s always difficult to get this point across to laymen like TheHumanApe: we use the term “Darwinian” to distinguish “Darwinian” evolution from Lamarckian evolution, saltationism, orthogenesis, et al. There are Darwinian biologists, there are Lamarckian biologists, etc. Biologists use the term ‘Darwinian’ to distinguish between the different evolutionary models. Of course, laymen like TheHumanApe still can’t get that straight.
Note that nowhere, absolutely nowhere, in his blog does he provide evidence against the following statement: certain features of the biological world are more adequately explained by an intelligence. He assumes that by providing a mountain of evidence for common descent, then this must mean that the flagellar motility system was not intelligently designed. One could provide all the proof in the world that humanity descended through a Darwinian process, but this would not prove that the same is true for the flagellar motility system.
One thing he said I found to be the most entertaining:
“I left the following comment for…an uneducated moron, a typical superstitious idiot.”
I.e., I am an uneducated moron and a typical, superstitious idiot. I find that to be, in short, hilarious.
Well, I think I’ll stop it there since I don’t want to waste anymore time on something that he won’t respond to. Cheers!
Last night, I took a look at the comments of my blog post “Bad Design Disproves Intelligent Design? Really?” As I was reading the comments there, the aroma of nuts wafted towards my eyes – roasted nuts. Except that this guy thinks I’m nutty.
A quick glance at his blog shook my confidence in human sanity (warning: this guy’s blog contains dozens and dozens of expletives). Of course, it’s obvious that he lacks even the most rudimentary knowledge and training in any of the biological sciences; and, for that matter, I am finding it difficult to believe that he even understands the basic methodology of science.
In this Monday evening blog post, I will do my best not to come down too hard on this deluded atheist. Normally I wouldn’t spend my time responding to an individual of his intellectual caliber, but for lack of something else to blog about, I will make a response to particular blog posts of this guy.
The first thing we notice when we go to his blog is his statement that,
“Evolution does not need defending because it's a basic scientific fact.”
He then proceeds to write scores upon scores of blog posts defending evolution as a scientific fact. The shear volume of his textual nonsense is a remarkable testimony to the amount of time he has on his hands – time that should perhaps be used to contribute to the advancement of science, instead of rantings and ravings that simply do nothing to add to science’s advancement. The bulk of his rhetoric consists of the argument “Darwin right. Intelligent Design magic. Christians bad. Darwin right.”
Now, before we eviscerate his blog, we will respond to the comment he left on my blog.
Let’s begin.
“Here's a translation of your gibberish that makes it more honest:
MAGIC as a scientific proposition, holds that certain features of the biological world are more adequately explained by a MAGIC MAN rather than a mindless process.”
Firstly, intelligent design does not invoke any magic. Intelligent design is a method of design detection, similar to SETI. Does SETI invoke magic? Or let me ask him the question in terms he might find more understandable:
(1)Does the method of detecting intelligence in SETI science invoke magic?
(2)Does the method of detecting intelligence in ID science invoke magic?
(3)Why or why not?
Also note that ID does not define the designer, so the phrase “magic man” is silly.
“By the way, Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne talks about "bad design" that makes perfect sense if evolution is true (it's true, evolution is a basic scientific fact).”
Please explain how the imperfect design of the flagellar motility system makes the origin of the flagellum more adequately explained in the light of evolution. This should be good.
“One more thing. Magic is NOT a scientific proposition.”
I agree. Magic is not science. Intelligent design is science.
“Scientists don't invoke magic…”
Intelligent design does not invoke magic either.
Now, we will respond to his blog with another post.
Supposedly, bad design is a refutation of intelligent design. How is bad design and intelligent design compatible? This is one of the most common arguments raised against intelligent design, albeit one of the more egregious ones. The argument goes like this: an intelligent designer would not have designed biological system X in this way, therefore Darwinian evolution dunnit.
I think one of the first things Darwinians need to learn when attacking intelligent design is exactly what it posits. Intelligent design, as a scientific proposition, holds that certain features of the biological world are more adequately explained by an intelligence rather than a mindless process.
So, we hold that only certain features in biology are more adequately explained by an intelligence. This alone is sufficient to overturn this argument against intelligent design. But what about flaws in the design of systems that are purported to be intelligently designed, such as the flagellum? First off, bad design is seen in objects that humans design. A broken down, badly-running watch does not indicate that it is not intelligently designed.Maybe the designer(s) of biological system X was having a bad day, and "it" made an error in designing that biological machine.
Now we come to the philosophical argument from bad design: namely, that bad design proves that the designer was not God. Proponents of this argument ask, "If God is perfect, then how could a perfect God made a bad design?"
I answer,
P1: God is perfect, and humans are not perfect. God is omnipotent, and you are not.
P2: An imperfect, non-omnipotent being is incapable of discerning poor designs of a perfect, omnipotent Being.
P3: Therefore, we cannot assert that the design of a perfect Being is imperfect, for we are not omnipotent.
I am expecting a response like "that's just special pleading" or "you are using the God-works-in-mysterious-ways argument." Obviously, these responses are only appeals to emotion, as they do not attack any of the premises in the above argument.
A new peer-reviewed paper has been published by BIO-Complexity, an intelligent design journal. Entitled A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information, this paper demonstrates that most of the success of the EV computer simulation in finding a target, is not due to the evolutionary algorithm, but rather "the success of ev is largely due to active information introduced by the Hamming oracle and from the perceptron structure."
And,
"It is not due to the evolutionary algorithm used to perform the search. Indeed, other algorithms are shown to mine active information more efficiently from the knowledge sources provided by ev."
So, intelligent design has not contributed anything to the biological sciences, has it? I beg to differ. Undoubtedly, this paper has contributed something to science.
"Dr. Jackson Martin, Director and Professor of the Flagellum Project at the Hoboken Nature Institute, today announced completion of software that successfully demonstrates the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. Critics of evolution have claimed that the flagellum is too complex to evolve using the gradual changes required by natural selection.
'The flagellum is very complicated,' said Martin. 'Like a motor, it has a rotor, a stator, and complex control mechanisms.'
Martin and his students have demonstrated, however, that the complex flagellum can be easily created using the forces of natural selection.
'We have not only shown that the flagellum can be evolved, it’s hard not to evolve the flagellum.”
In simulation software called EvolFlag, Martin and his students carefully apply gradual modifications to an initial set of boundary conditions.
Martin’s most impressive demonstration was evolution of the bacterial flagellum from common table salt.
'Salt, of course, contains no biochemicals,' offered Martin. 'The ability to evolve a fully functional flagellum from simple table salt is a tribute to the miracle of evolution' . . ."
I've mentioned it before. That dreaded 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution by Dr. Douglas Theobald. I took the time to examine what has been pontificated as the "smoking-gun evidence for evolution" and the "irrefutable evidence." What many Darwinians believe is the most irrefutable argument for their views is the evidence from endogenous retrovirus insertion sites. I am petrified of this evidence. In fact, I am biting my nails. After gathering a few facts, I sent the following email to Dr. Douglas Theobald, concerning this astounding piece of evidence:
Dear Dr. Douglas Theobald,
In your 2004 article “29+ Evidences for Macroevolution” you write (Part 4: The Molecular Sequence Evidence, Prediction 4.5: Molecular evidence - Endogenous retroviruses):
“Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent.”
You then go on to propose how this molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent could be potentially falsified:
“It would make no sense, macroevolutionarily, if certain other mammals (e.g. dogs, cows, platypi, etc.), had these same retrogenes in the exact same chromosomal locations. For instance, it would be incredibly unlikely for dogs to also carry the three HERV-K insertions that are unique to humans, as shown in the upper right of Figure 4.4.1, since none of the other primates have these retroviral sequences.”
Consider this molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent falsified. Essentially, in order to falsify this evidence, we must find an outgroup species that shares with a species of a certain clade the same retrogene or retrogenes insertions, but these insertion sites are not shared by the other species of that clade. This is what it boils down to.
Interestingly enough, Barbulescu et al. (2001) have identified “a human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) provirus that is present at the orthologous position in the gorilla and chimpanzee genomes, but not in the human genome.”
What we have here is an outgroup species (gorilla) that shares a retrogene insertion site with a species (chimpanzee) of a certain clade (human-chimpanzee clade), but this insertion site is not shared by the other species of that clade. This alone, by your own criteria, falsifies the retrogene evidence for universal common descent you advance in your article.
Similarly, Bonner et al. (1982) report that the endogenous retrovirus colobus type C virus CPC-1 is shared by the chimpanzee and the gorilla but it is absent from the human genome.
Also note that certain classes of type C retroviruses are found in wooly monkeys and the gibbon ape, but it is not found in African great apes [Lieber et al. 1975].
Humans and Asian apes lack PTERV1 retroviruses, but they are present in African great apes and Old World monkeys [Yohn et al. 2005].
To quote Yohn et al. 2005:
“For example, only one interval is shared by gorilla and chimpanzee; however, two intervals are shared by gorilla and baboon; while three intervals are apparently shared by macaque and chimpanzee.…If these sites were truly orthologous and, thus, ancestral in the human/ape ancestor, it would require that at least six of these sites were deleted in the human lineage. Moreover, the same exact six sites would also have had to have been deleted in the orangutan lineage if the generally accepted phylogeny is correct. Such a series of independent deletion events at the same precise locations in the genome is unlikely.”
In summary, the very criteria that you stated would falsify this evidence for universal common descent has been met, and hence this evidence is effectively falsified. I am writing you so that you might add a correction to your article and realize that this evidence has been falsified.
Respectfully,
Livingstone Morford
References:
Barbulescu M, Turner G, Su M, Kim R, Jensen-Seaman MI, Deinard AS, Kidd KK, Lenz J. A HERV-K provirus in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, but not humans. Curr. Biol. 11(10):779-83 (2001).
Bonner TI, Birkenmeier EH, Gonda MA, Mark GE, Searfoss GH, et al. Molecular cloning of a family of retroviral sequences found in chimpanzee but not human DNA. J. Virol. 43: 914–924 (1982).
Lieber MM, Sherr CJ, Todaro GJ, Benveniste RE, Callahan R, et al. Isolation from the Asian mouse Mus caroli of an endogenous type C virus related to infectious primate type C viruses. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 72: 2315–2319 (1975).
Yohn CT, et al. Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans. PLoS Biol, 3:110 (2005).
There. Now I've gotten this load off my chest. That's some absolutely amazing piece of evidence.
