Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

The test of falsifiability is one that has, of late, been kept quite on the side of the IDjits and the CReationists. The concept of Irreducible complexity is, in its own definition, false, let alone falsifiable. Its easy to keep stepping the irreducibles back to a startpoint and objectifying the headwater. In each case so far, the Irreduciblly complex ewnd point has been broken by science and , with that ewnd point, the IDers merely state that the Irreducible complexity gate is still farther back. Thats a game that I complexity cannot continue for long. I see that the latest book by Behe is less a strong dogmatic treatise as it is a search for some kind of "common ground". Hes giving up a bit folks.

Creationism, as practiced by Gunga or the old members like real life, is easy to debunk, and prove false. Its attempts at falsification have always led to the conclusion that the hypothesis is mere bullshit science not worth carrying into a classroom.

Im sure that Creationists and IDjits dont want to have their worldviews falsified in debate cause theyd be shown to be wearing only a smile.

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@farmerman,

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Im sure that Creationists and IDjits dont want to have their worldviews falsified in debate cause theyd be shown to be wearing only a smile.

That would be the case with your world view. You went Ignore. You weren't even wearing a smile.

And you just falsified it for the millionth time. So why do you continue debating with them?

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@wandeljw,

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The question that Michael Reiss, from the UK's Royal Society, posed about teaching creationism as an alternative scientific theory should be examined carefully to avoid an evolutionist"creationist front-to-front war.

I can understand him wishing to avoid a front-to-front war. He has enough nonce to know that his position will get pissed on in one of them.

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Quote:

From Publishers Weekly
With his first book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of "irreducible complexity." Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the sickle cell response in humans, Behe argues that genetic mutation results in only clumsy solutions to selective pressures. He goes on to conclude that the statistical possibility of certain evolutionary changes taking place is virtually nil. Although Behe writes with passion and clarity, his calculations of probability ignore biologists' rejection of the premise that evolution has been working toward producing any particular end product. Furthermore, he repeatedly refers to the shortcomings of "Darwin's theory-the power of natural selection coupled to random mutation," but current biological theory encompasses far more than this simplistic view. Most important, Behe reaches the controversial conclusion that the workings of an intelligent designer is the only reasonable alternative to evolution, even without affirmative evidence in its favor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. .

The above review clip is re: Behes latest book, published the past year , titled "The Edge of Evolution". I stated that it was more of a search for common ground. After Behe had been exposed in his DOver performance , hes been trying to set the record straight and get back some cred from his homies at Lehigh and in PA's science establishment. Hes trying, IMHO to fuss up te distinction between evolution and Theistic evolution. Hell never squeeze a CAtholic deity out of his hypotheses, and hes gradually exposing his own stuff to more rigorous critcism so hes dusting off his Irreducible complexity argument as more of a metaphor for theistic evolution

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@farmerman,

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hes dusting off his Irreducible complexity argument as more of a metaphor for theistic evolution

Unfortunately for him, when he gets done dusting it off, he's gonna find that there's nothing under the dust.

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Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the sickle cell response in humans, Behe argues that genetic mutation results in only clumsy solutions to selective pressures. He goes on to conclude that the statistical possibility of certain evolutionary changes taking place is virtually nil.

. Needs repeating as a embed. Im asserting that the ONLY argument that Behe now has is his need for A designer and the argument hinges upon his own assertion that evolution is random, and its not. ITs Natural selection .

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I'm asserting that the ONLY argument that Behe now has is his need for A designer and the argument hinges upon his own assertion that evolution is random, and its not. IT's Natural selection .

Maybe Behe should listen to the explanation given by Professor Elliot Sober of the University of Wisconsin:

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The process of evolution by natural selection is not a uniform chance process. The process has two parts. Novel traits arise in individual organisms "by chance;" however, whether they then disappear from the population or increase in frequency and eventually reach 100% representation is anything but a "matter of chance." The central idea of natural selection is that traits that help organisms survive and reproduce have a better chance at becoming common than traits that hurt. The essence of natural selection is that evolutionary outcomes have unequal probabilities.

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@wandeljw,

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The central idea of natural selection is that traits that help organisms survive and reproduce have a better chance at becoming common than traits that hurt.

As is easily seen it is a very simple idea.

"Help" and "hurt" under what conditions? Evolution is a very long process and in no way comparable with gimpy swots talking up the advantages of gimpy swotting from behind a desk or out of a rocking chair and boring everybody into a waking coma.

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@farmerman,

Does anybody care about Behe? He's prodded nine kids into his Mrs so that's enough of him. No doubt, as with Darwin, the anti-evoltionary nepotism will swing into action and there'll be millions of biologists running loose.

He took $20 grand for his dive at Dover. He wouldn't want to bring the matter of sex up for obvious reasons.

Still- he is somebody easy to focus upon I must admit. The anti-IDer's favourite sitting duck. They can't deal with fast moving targets.

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@spendius,

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They can't deal with fast moving targets.

.

Bring up such a "target". I dont believe that theres been a single concept still unexamined ad nauseum.

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@farmerman,

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Im asserting that the ONLY argument that Behe now has is his need for A designer and the argument hinges upon his own assertion that evolution is random, and its not. ITs Natural selection .

It's nice you admit to the assertion. I have no idea what Behe's needs are. Earning a good salary is possibly top of the list or being an important cat.

The need for a "designer" is psychological. It has nothing to do with anything outside of human behaviour. The record shows that all cultures have some form of It. Doing without is thus a mutation and untried.

There's also the practical need of It as the only other alternative is Big Brother and his booted enforcers.

Ignore those and you can witter away amongst yourselves about chiclids until the cows arrive.

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@farmerman,

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Bring up such a "target". I dont believe that theres been a single concept still unexamined ad nauseum.

Another post for new readers which pretends the rest of the thread doesn't exist.

There's the psychosomatic realm.

And lingerie shops.

And your self interest.

The kids.

The atheist wedge in schools which needs must affect the whole institution and recruitment from a mere 15% of the population.

You can declare those not targets if you wish but nobody with any intelligence is going to pay you any mind.

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@spendius,

I think Ive never just dismissed you at hand. Ive ignored you but whenever Ive turned you back on, Ive always answered your posts(no matter how unintelligible they were). This previous post is a world beater. I dont even think that YOU know what the hell youre talking about.
This mustr be some pre-existing condition with you. In your self gratification exercises, you often come up with stuff that is nearly(not quite but nearly) interesting. Then you go all squirrely and issue back to form like some wino that lives under a bridge and hollers at passersby with incoherent meaningless drivvle. ANd you do the quick change so damneffortlessly, that I always wonder, which is the real spendius.

I think Ill put you back on ignore after Christmas, until then,maybe, just like the infinite number of monkeys on typewriters, youll randomly hit on "King Lear".

Course Im not holding my breath or betting on it.

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@farmerman,

And quite right too effemm. I could never write King Lear. I would have had him put his daughters in a nunnery and it would be a short play and thus not commercially beneficial.

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I just picked up a copy of Scientific American today. The issue is devoted to evolution.

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@edgarblythe,

Fancy SA devoting a whole issue to something you lot have done and dusted, dotted all the "i"s and crossed all the "t"s. They could have done jam jars if they had known.

It's a part of a money-making business like all the stuff wande quotes. Entertainment. You can tell it's crap entertainment because the reader sits there all po-faced basking in the glory of imagining himself up to speed on scientific matters and looking forward to shitting all over his companions with the words he's gleaned.

Then getting all sulky if any of his companions don't fall into a swoon of admiration at his intellectual prowess and ostracising them to show them what's what.

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@spendius,

I wonder what spendi reads to acquire any scientific knowledge? ANDSWER: Read?

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@edgarblythe,

The issue of SCi AM is quite appropriate. It doesnt spend an inordinate amount of time rehashing wevolution from a bottoms up POV. It begins with several areas of inquiry that are based upon new areas of evidence and fact.

I loved the final article by Glenn Branch and Eugenie SCott. It spends its alloted space reviewing the anti-science bills that have been proposed and killed (or adopted , like Jindals law in Louisiana). It presents these data in graphs and time lines (just like the way the American mind has eveolved in order to take in information).

There was an article on"proof of concept" for the facts of evolution, and also an article to explain why evolution matters to disciplines usually not considered in evolutions mainstream. It was accurate and entertaining. Commited IDers and YECs will hate it and, like Ben Steins stupid movie its, its admittedly loaded with propoganda. The only difference is that the evolutionary propoganda is fact and evidence based.

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@farmerman,

I think of books effemm as the only saving grace in life. You wouldn't dare read the stuff I read nor read it how I do. I don't consume books. A few fall apart on me, Spengler for example, or Frank Harris. Tom Jones too.

In the last few weeks I've read Ms Pullar's Consuming Passions, about food, and her biog of FH, Spengler's bits on Jesus, Darwin, Money and Number, Iain Crawford's The Profumo Affair, Ronald Hingley's biog of Checkov, Selected writings of Wilhelm Reich, The History of Women's Underwear, and parts of Art of the Western World, Neumann's The Great mother and consultations with enough to make this list too long to continue. I'm half way through Jonathan Cott's collection of Dylan interviews Dylan on Dylan.

I have a lot of books. I've been book mad since I was about 8. I see VIZ, our adult comic, which I don't recommend, and TV from infra to ultra.

My current big idea is that women are becoming chastened as a result of finding out that ceiling busting is not the wonderful idea that a number of ceiling busters, mainly corruptly recruited ones, had made it out to be.

Try Henry Miller's Opus Pistorum sometime when you're feeling like you need loosening up.

The pub is also a mine of scientific info if you have the background to understand it. So is A2K.

We spent a couple of nights in the pub studying the brand names of the wide range of alcoholic offerings and sex is the subtext. There's a beer called Abbey Well would you believe. We condescended that Budweiser had no sexual undertones.

I work as well. Not a lot but enough.

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@spendius,

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You wouldn't dare read the stuff I read nor read it how I do

. What a pompous assed douche bag you are. What you read is immeterial to me . Unless you like to parrot clips from your library, what you read should help you in the process of enlightenment, not, as in your case, merely reinforcing your biases.
You quote works that are vague and off topic, in an effort to try to inject something that others may think is "deep". Its not, hardly so.

Ill let you go and wont respond further because you really offer nothing substantive. Im sure youll grace us with some more spendi soliloquies about how SPengler Veblin or Flaubert had their **** together WRT genomics.

Youre an old fool spendi, a total waste of ejaculate.

1 Reply

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