@Aedes,
Aedes;90792 wrote:I spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard doing evolutionary parasitology research in one of the premier labs of its kind in the world -- when I was an undergrad I did my thesis research on regulation of homeobox genes in organogenesis during early embryonic development. So I've got a little bit of experience doing research in this field and I'm not susceptible to deceptions by the likes of Dawkins (of whom I might add I've never read a single word).
For all the "extensive" writing you do on biology, I'm shocked that you think that combinatorial gene regulation, including the enormous science of epigenetics, is just some rhetorical game.
[SIZE="3"]I carefully read your responses, and if I assume you are an honest man, then I can only conclude you just don't get it. Why do you offer up combinatorial gene regulation or epigenetics research (or hox genes) as possible solutions to the objections I raise??? They answer nothing, shed no light on the issue, do not in any way, shape or form save the fallacious logic used to claim "evolution theory is a fact" (remember, that is my ONLY objection). If you have great hopes for E-theory, no problem; if you personally believe it with all your heart and mind, no problem; if you think people who believe God has a role in creation are idiots, no problem. HOWEVER, if, as a scientist (which Dawkins is) one states to the public (as a scientist) that "evolution is a fact the way the Earth revolving around the Sun is a fact," then I do have a problem.
My problem isn't with E-theory, it is a fine theory (I just don't buy it yet). My problem is with statements about what known, and the logic used to argue that E-theory is a fact . . . and nothing more. So you can stop listing all the great research going on, or your expertise, because they don't fix the distortions and logic fallacies committed by E-theory believers making their case to the public.
Do you know what a composition fallacy is? If not:
Fallacy: Composition
When you list all the great mechanisms of a cell or organ, as though because you find only mechanical stuff it means life is nothing but mechanics, then you commit a composition fallacy. Consider your example above when you said, "Think of working car versus not working car. It's all the same material -- but you put enough of it together the right way and it begins to work."
Do you believe you accounted for the creation of a car? Why not take out the car's inventor, designer, and assembly experts and see just how far towards a car's creation you get. Because car parts and operations are entirely mechanical doesn't mean that's all there is to the creation of a car. And because all the parts and functions of biology are mechanical/physical (overlooking the question of consciousness for the moment), it doesn't mean that's all there was to the creation of life.
You can explain, like all E-theorists, that life's development followed a certain path. You can explain much of how the body is put together. Awesome! Being able to follow and explain that allows us to manipulate body chemistry and physics in beneficial ways.
What you cannot demonstrate, in short, is the hypothesized self-directing mechanical processes that supposedly create and evolve life. And all your hopes for finding the right conditions, chemistry, bio-mechanisms, etc. that will produce a demonstration of some purely physical life-creating and evolving process are little more than the emotions of
your a priori belief system, and the group of science believers you belong to. It doesn't matter how much you can manipulate genetics now, or mess with the brain, or any of it because none of that is creating and evolving a life from chemicals. Make all the claims you want about what you "will" do someday, but the fact is, you haven't done it. So why not wait until science can demonstrate clearly in front of us all, that it has discovered the creation process before telling the world in various ways that physics is God.
The vast majority of the world think something more is involved than mechanics. So when Dawkins et al proclaim to the world they've got it all figured out, and imply (or outright state it as Dawkins does) that only idiots and morons doubt atheistic/mechanistic creation theory, that to doubt only means you just don't know enough about biology or E-theory, that to doubt the scientism minority is merely a sign of the ignorance of the masses . . . it is irritating to put it mildly.
Mechanical understanding is a great thing, but learning how to feel is a human potential as well. Not all of reality, at least in my experience, can be known via my intellect; some aspects of reality can only be felt (no, not emotionally, but through heightened sensitivity), and God is one of those things. Making sense of God is very difficult, but feeling God is incredibly simple: join that vast field of consciousness and enjoy.
I'll leave you with a last couple of thoughts. Have you ever considered the possibility that some science-types are a bit handicapped? If someone is so skilled in an area of human potential that all they ever do is use that one skill, other areas of possible development may remain dormant (or underutilized). That's how I see mechanists, they are really smart about taking things apart to see how it all works, but they can be obsessive too in that everything is to be understood by dissection. I think it's funny to imagine the panic reductionists might experience when they reach a point where there is nothing else to break down, you know the smallest possible "part" has been separated out, and still there is nothing to see that serves as the foundation of it all.
But, what if something exists that is, and can only be, ONE. How will the genius mechanics understand that?? They won't because, as logic clearly reveals, the only way to know it is to become one with it.[/SIZE]
