The Bathroom Wall

O, how the creationists do suck!

If "Nobody is good enough to go to heaven," does that mean that the place is entirely deserted and all them sweet sounding harps are just laying around gathering dust with their strings sagging? What a pity.

Where then is the incentive toward moral behaviour?

Have you ever pondered how much of the bible is borrowed from the Torah, and how much of the Torah is borrowed from . . .

I hate to interrupt those that want to turn schools into churches or churches in to indoctrination centers but: Any new thoughts or sites that address the impact theory, Punk equib, or extinction in general?

> aCTa: "Who told you there were harps in heaven? No, it's not entirely deserted, and there
> will eventually be a number that "nobody can count". To give some idea, there are 50
> million people alive in China today who will be there eventually, by all accounts."

As can readily be noticed by simple maths from aCTa's declaration, his "all mercy" God is condeming at least 1250 million living people to hell, "by all accounts". Also, given that Luther's theology ideas *and* Catholic ideas are also "accounts", it is easy to deduct that aCTa is either lying or missinformed. Luther stated that an exact number (not sure which - bear with me, I'm no theologist), less than a million were going to Heaven and none else - thus 50 million chinese cannot possibly be going to Heaven by Luther's account.

On the other hand, Catholics approach the matter obliquely: Jesus Christ is God. He sacrificed himself for all humanity. Sacrifices are like paying God to get a result. If you sacrifice a frog, you get something valued in loose change. A goat gets you a nice car, I'm sure. God, however, has infinite value, so when He sacrifised himself for the salvation of all humanity, it was for *all* humanity, not just those that aCTa likes. Indeed, according to (what I have last heard form) Catholic educators, everyone is going to Heaven, regardless. And that is because a) Jesus sacrifised himself for all our sins and b) God is full of mercy and love, and thus will forgive everyone.

Oh, and aCTa, to predict your next response, don't even try to say that Catholics aren't Christians. It'll make you look silly and stupid.

> Bob (I think): "Where then is the incentive toward moral behaviour?"

The incentive is the fact that moral behaviour leads to better lives, in Catholicism. The self-same conclussion has been reached independently (Loves others like people like yourself), so it's not such an increadible concept. Jesus only added an absolute measure - Love others like He loved us.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

No, it's not entirely deserted, and there will eventually be a number that "nobody can count". To give some idea, there are 50 million people alive in China today who will be there eventually, by all accounts.

— Troll

Some non-Christians try to conform to what they think God requires of them, hoping that they will be good enough to satisfy God.

— Troll

let alone what they perceive as the standards of an ethically perfect God.

— Troll

> aCTa: "Who told you there were harps in heaven? No, it's not entirely deserted, and there
> will eventually be a number that "nobody can count". To give some idea, there are 50
> million people alive in China today who will be there eventually, by all accounts."

As can readily be noticed by simple maths from aCTa's declaration, his "all mercy" God is condeming at least 1250 million living people to hell, "by all accounts". Also, given that Luther's theology ideas *and* Catholic ideas are also "accounts", it is easy to deduct that aCTa is either lying or missinformed. Luther stated that an exact number (not sure which - bear with me, I'm no theologist), less than a million were going to Heaven and none else - thus 50 million chinese cannot possibly be going to Heaven by Luther's account.

On the other hand, Catholics approach the matter obliquely: Jesus Christ is God. He sacrificed himself for all humanity. Sacrifices are like paying God to get a result. If you sacrifice a frog, you get something valued in loose change. A goat gets you a nice car, I'm sure. God, however, has infinite value, so when He sacrifised himself for the salvation of all humanity, it was for *all* humanity, not just those that aCTa likes. Indeed, according to (what I have last heard form) Catholic educators, everyone is going to Heaven, regardless. And that is because a) Jesus sacrifised himself for all our sins and b) God is full of mercy and love, and thus will forgive everyone.

Oh, and aCTa, to predict your next response, don't even try to say that Catholics aren't Christians. It'll make you look silly and stupid.

> Bob (I think): "Where then is the incentive toward moral behaviour?"

The incentive is the fact that moral behaviour leads to better lives, in Catholicism. The self-same conclussion has been reached independently (Loves others like people like yourself), so it's not such an increadible concept. Jesus only added an absolute measure - Love others like He loved us.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

No, it's not entirely deserted, and there will eventually be a number that "nobody can count". To give some idea, there are 50 million people alive in China today who will be there eventually, by all accounts.

— Troll

Some non-Christians try to conform to what they think God requires of them, hoping that they will be good enough to satisfy God.

— Troll

let alone what they perceive as the standards of an ethically perfect God.

— Troll

No, it's not entirely deserted, and there will eventually be a number that "nobody can count". To give some idea, there are 50 million people alive in China today who will be there eventually, by all accounts.

— Troll

Some non-Christians try to conform to what they think God requires of them, hoping that they will be good enough to satisfy God.

— Troll

let alone what they perceive as the standards of an ethically perfect God.

— Troll

Couple of things I want to scribble here.

If God gives me the choice to be good or bad and I decide to be good but just not necessarly in his view. I'm still going to get punished?

GREAT! site I love it. The care with which the information is presented is magnificant. No matter which side your on. Congratulations.

Did Jesus live or did some guy in pre time just have a GREAT! PR man?

let alone what they perceive as the standards of an ethically perfect God.

— Troll

wELL, aCTa, that really sucks! First you say nobody's good enough to get into heaven and then you turn around and tell us that 50 million Chinese have been given free passes. Nothing against Asians of any stripe, some of my favorite foods are Asian and I'm convinced I was Japanese in a previous life, but what makes them folks in China better than the rest of us - well, not me actually cuz I never did believe in that whole gig, including the harps and the wings and all the other trappings so I doubt you'll be seing me there under any redemption scenario.

As Wayne has already referenced, YOU tell ME why the bible is loaded with recycled and cribbed pagan myths claiming to be the word of God.

Grey Wolf: Yes, moral -or altruistic and cooperative - behaviour is the only behaviour which makes sense in this hostile world. It does not, in my opinion, emanate from God or Jesus, nor is it the sole prerogative of the Faithful. The question was specifically to aCTa and the Fear Factor driving at least some varieties of Christianity. Behaviour motivated by fear of the flames of Hell is not a freely chosen behaviour.

wELL, aCTa, that really sucks! First you say nobody's good enough to get into heaven and then you turn around and tell us that 50 million Chinese have been given free passes.

Troll where did you get that 50 million number for those in China going to heaven?

The Chinese church became the world's largest Christian community due to a massive revival dating from the early 1970s, the size of which is unprecedented in Christendom. We believe the total number of Christians to be between 60-80 million, though it could be higher.

Also Wayne: Who gave you the idea that Lot's behaviour was an ethical example for you to follow?

Can you be jealous and ethically perfect? Yes, if by "jealousy" you mean wanting something that is rightfully yours that is being withheld from you. Is it wrong for a husband whose wife has gone off with somebody else to be jealous? Can you be vengeful and ethically perfect? Yes, if what you are seeking to avenge was something wrong or unjust. Is it wrong for a parent whose child has been killed to want revenge? In fact, if God were to ignore sin or rebellion, then he would be less than ethically perfect.

If you want a more substantial idea about heaven and hell than the "harps and clouds"/"lake of fire [and nothing else]" model, try The Great Divorce
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006280560) by C.S.Lewis.

Yes, if what you are seeking to avenge was something wrong or unjust.

— Troll

Okay this is enough. Discuss this further on the bathroom wall please. As it has nothing much to do with the topic of the thread.

— Pim

Maybe Pim's wondering when you'll get around to explaining why the fact that dogs reproduce and airplanes don't isn't a flaw in "your" argument by anaolgy that dogs must be designed because airplanes are.

I'm still waiting, Charlie....

An interesting article about Stephen J. Gould:

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html

Any comments on this?

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=easterbrook121304

Any comments on this?

— coturnix

Easterbrook thinks that the phrase "the origin of living things" means abiogenesis. It does not.

aCTa,

I agree with you absolutely - C.S. Lewis wrote some excellent Fantasy in addition to the Narnia Chronicles.

;^)

Not one of these machines ever assembled itself from it's parts without intervention by a higher intelligence. Since living organisms are highly organized biochemical machines, why should I think differently about them?

Get ready for some deafening silence, Rilke's Granddaughter...Charlie doesn't do "logic".

So what the heck does it mean?

— Rilke's granddaughter

because they do assemble themselves from parts without intervention by a higher intelligence. Period.

— Rilke's granddaughter

These instructions did not create themselves from nothing by random, accidental processes, they were the product of intelligent input, just like a computer program is the product of intelligent input.

All living organisms assemble themselves under the guidance of a highly organized and complex set of instructions found in the genome. These instructions did not create themselves from nothing by random, accidental processes, they were the product of intelligent input, just like a computer program is the product of intelligent input.

Charlie, can you explain to me how this is supposed to refute evolution?

— racingiron

Are you *really* Rilke's granddaughter?

"Origin of living things means "the point at which a living organism comes into existence or from which it derives or is derived". Abiogenesis takes us up to the first cell, it says nothing about what happens thereafter. Evolution starts with the first cell and takes it from there. It says nothing about what happened before. Clearly, the origin of higher taxa from lower taxa has nothing at all to do with abiogenesis and occurred well after the first cell appeared.

because they do assemble themselves from parts without intervention by a higher intelligence. Period.

No they do not.

All living organisms assemble themselves under the guidance of a highly organized and complex set of instructions found in the genome.

Not one of these machines ever assembled itself from it's parts without intervention by a higher intelligence. Since living organisms are highly organized biochemical machines, why should I think differently about them?

These instructions did not create themselves from nothing by random, accidental processes, they were the product of intelligent input, just like a computer program is the product of intelligent input.

The analogy between biological evolution by natural selection and technological advances is a false analogy.

I know that some people have drawn an analogy between biological evolution and the evolution of, say, an airplane or car. The analogy is false because at no point in the development of the automobile or airplane was any element of design achieved by chance.

Only by the most strict application of the rules of engineering and aerodynamics was the final result obtained.

There is no way that a random search could ever have discovered the design of the internal combustion engine. In all cases, the search for function is intelligently guided.

Evolution by the method you propose is analagous to problem solving without any intelligent guidance.

In the case of every kind of complex, functional system, the total magnitude of all combinational possibilities is nearly infinite.

Meaningful islands of function are so rare, that to find even one would be a miracle.

at no point in the development of the automobile or airplane was any element of design achieved by chance

Um, so you are talking about the origin of species, not the origin of life? OK.

— RG

Show me the intelligence standing right there, at every step of the process, as the fertilized egg becomes a human being.

— RG

Otherwise people are gonna think you're clueless.

— RG

You didn't say one darn thing about the guiding code, you just talked about the assembly. If what you're kvetching about is the evolution of the instructions then you ought to actually say what you mean.

— RG

MN+OR = clean-shaven Charlie

— RG

But that's not the analogy. You're not reading what he's saying; the point is that the selection of the particular features of a given design is a process of natural selection. The process of inventing new features that you think the customers would want is analagous to variation (I admit that the anaology is imperfect because the human inventors can anticipate in a fashion that natural variation cannot).

— RG

go to me website

— Charlie

No one who knows me or spends a few minutes talking to me could ever come to that conclusion.

The analogy is false because at no point in the development of the automobile or airplane was any element of design achieved by chance. Only by the most strict application of the rules of engineering and aerodynamics was the final result obtained.

There is no way that a random search could ever have discovered the design of the internal combustion engine.

In the case of every kind of complex, functional system, the total magnitude of all combinational possibilities is nearly infinite. Meaningful islands of function are so rare, that to find even one would be a miracle.

But you're missing the point, Rilke's Granddaughter: according to Charlie, no one has ever demolished his argument that life must be designed. The only logical conclusion one can draw from this statement is that Charlie is either 1) an idiot, 2) a liar, or 3) clinically insane (or some creative combination of these) since a large number of people here on Panda's Thumb (and I suspect elswehere) have demolished his arguments in a varitey of interesting ways.

The fact that he seems to think that "no one who knows me or spends a few minutes talking to me could ever come to [the conclusion that I'm clueless]" tends to argue for option 3, which further implies that no amount of logic or evidence (or much of anything, really) will ever change his mind. It just doesn't register, becasue it CAN'T register, becasue if it did register then Charlie would be wrong.

And he simply can't face that possibility, so logic and evidence be damned.

Well, at least his posts are generally written in proper English. I suppose that's something.

Charlie, where did the information that rubber can be vulcanized come from?

So the Charlie does not monopolize the conversation... Anyone care to comment an article cirulating various news chanels earlier this week concerning a certain species of Australian snake that has evolved a smaller head in response to the presence of imported poisonous cane toads (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4073359.stm). The basic gist of the article was that in 20-25 generations the species has reduced its head size so that the better adapted snakes do not eat the obviously large toads and die. Is this a good example of evolution in action or is the study more controversial than appears on the surface? For the record I am not a biologist or scientist, just and engineer who enjoys debates and reading this site from time to time.

So the Charlie does not monopolize the conversation... Anyone care to comment an article cirulating various news chanels earlier this week concerning a certain species of Australian snake that has evolved a smaller head in response to the presence of imported poisonous cane toads (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4073359.stm). The basic gist of the article was that in 20-25 generations the species has reduced its head size so that the better adapted snakes do not eat the obviously large toads and die. Is this a good example of evolution in action or is the study more controversial than appears on the surface? For the record I am not a biologist or scientist, just and engineer who enjoys debates and reading this site from time to time.

"Anyone care to comment an article cirulating various news chanels earlier this week concerning a certain species of Australian snake that has evolved a smaller head in response to the presence of imported poisonous cane toads"

Very interesting and I don't think there's anything controversial about it. We can be sure that until those snakes grow feathers, legs and feed their young with milk, the creationists won't be impressed.

Of course, it's already been noted that creationist heads are shrinking every year so they they are incapable of comprehending arguments that show their theories are pseudoscientific gobbledygook. Unfortunately, their small heads allow them to reproduce more frequently and with lower rates of mortality during childbirth. Thus, there are increasing numbers of small-brained people that need an intellectual horse-whipping but are physiologically unable to feel the pain.

Only by the most strict application of the rules of engineering and aerodynamics was the final result obtained. There is no way that a random search could ever have discovered the design of the internal combustion engine.

— Charlie

Some more good examples that had no intelligent guidance.
Emerging Technology
Darwin in a Box

and even better

Natural Motion

This mpeg shows a few generations.

The only thing that the did during this test was to intruduce some parameters to limit "HOW" the thing walked. A few generations in they had samples using flips as locomotion and doing it quiet well.

GWW wrote "We can be sure that until those snakes grow feathers, legs and
feed their young with milk ....".

Don't caecilians feed their young with milk then? They are a "kind" of snake
aren't they? No? Well, they look a lot like a "kind" of snake to me.

And presumably snakes did have legs before Genesis 3:14 (and caecilians -
see I told you!) so perhaps they'll get given them back if they're really
sorry and ask nicely.

Feathers - didn't there used to be feathered serpents in Mexico which in the
light of things dug up recently in China only goes to confirm that dinosaurs
were contemporary with humans or else how would the old priests have known
about the feathers?

Anyway, stitch them all up together, milk, feathers and all, and you've got a
chimera the evolutionists could never explain away. All you have to do then
is produce the animal. Surely that's not too much to ask. Like the unique singing whale - who's the daddy, answer me that, eh?

There's got to be more to ID than dodgy application of statistics - it's the lack of imagination that's so disappointing. The answer is in cryptozoology, it's
clear. My advice to the creation scientists would be keep looking anyway,
and don't worry too much about Mark 8:11 perhaps it doesn't apply to you.

Gav,

Just keep your eyes screwed tightly shut and your fingers crossed behind your back and repeat, as fast as you can, "I wish, I wish, I wish . . ."

Take THAT, you creationists! Is this intelligent design or what?

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews7/walkingwithcavemen.htm

Nice review here of "Walking with Cavemen" DVD (I highly recommend DVDBeaver to anyone interested in film on DVD, by the way).

Anybody seen this show? I saw the Walking with Dinosaurs series before I pulled the plug on my cable subscription. Good stuff.

Flint - yes that's the kind of thing. That would really blow the cladists
out of the water, wouldn't it, if they were real. I turn my compost heap
over regularly looking for less exotic examples - no results yet but you
never know.

I have been wishing really hard for cold fusion too. It doesn't seem to be
working yet. Nothing wrong with the theory; obviously I've got some aspect
of the ritual wrong. Perhaps I should stand on my head or kill a chicken or
something.

There have been some controlled studies on prayer - see for example report a
few years back in http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/band46/b46-6.html . I
understand however that the results have not been reproduced in follow-up
studies.

When I asked The Minister of our Church for a theological explanation for
this apparent lack of repeatable results he just asked how I felt about
praying for a new washing machine. Now that's quite remarkable as our
washing machine has been leaking all over the kitchen recently but when I
mentioned this he muttered something I didn't quite hear. He can be quite
daunting sometimes so I left it there.

Salon's cartoonist Ruben Bolling has apparently been following creationist physics idiocy:

http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2004/12/23/boll/index1.html

After visiting the dentist last week, I find the idea that there's anything indicating intelligence in the design of human teeth to be preposterous.

Is there any scientific support for the theory of Stupid Design? Or for the possibility that people were designed, created, and put on this earth in order to make dentists rich?

Mike, if you ever get to an intergalactic bookstore, you might want to check out the works of Oolon Colluphid. Some of his bestsellers are "Where God went Wrong", "Some more of God's greatest Mistakes", "Who is this God Person anyway?" and "Well that about wraps it up for God."

Uber-fundie Gary North has just posted an article to "Business Reform", arguing that Darwinism is undemocratic because most Americans do not want their tax dollars spent on such an offensive idea. An accompanying blog has requested responses. Here's the link:

http://www.businessreform.com/blogs.php?writerid=23190

(North has been around for years, but became famous as a Y2K scaremonger. His appeal to "democracy" is specially odious, as he is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes in Christian "dominion" over society)

Schafly's goal is to save immortal souls by bringing them to Jesus.

Schafly's point wasnt that evolution has suffered any embarrassments, it was that her target audience wishes to hear that it has.

Doing my part to fight the battle in ultimately insignificant ways, stopped by the local Barnes and Noble, and finding that a copy of Darwin's Black Box had been mis-shelved, I saved the staff some time and relocated it from the Science section to Fiction.

--TD

http://ravingatheist.com/archives/2004/12/atheist_grinch_steals_the_week_after_christmas.php

COSTA MESA, California (AP) -- Some parents and parishioners have accused the Roman Catholic diocese in Orange County of violating church doctrine by allowing a gay couple to enroll their children in a church school. The group demanded that St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa accept only families that pledge to abide by Catholic teachings, the Los Angeles Times reported in Sunday's editions. Church doctrine opposes gay relationships and adoption by same-sex couples. "The teachings of the church seem to have been abandoned," John R. Nixon told the Times. "We send our children to a Catholic school because we expect and demand that the teachings of our church will be adhered to." School officials rejected the demand, and issued a new policy stating that a family's background "does not constitute an absolute obstacle to enrollment in the school." The parents' demand would presumably prevent two adopted boys whose parents are both men from attending the school's kindergarten. The Rev. Gerald M. Horan, superintendent of diocese schools, said that if Catholic beliefs were strictly adhered to, then children whose parents divorced, used birth control or married outside the church would also have to be banned. "This is the quagmire that the parents' position represents," he said. "It's a slippery slope to go down." The boys' parents, who enrolled their children at the beginning of the school year, declined to comment to the Times. Some parents have promised to ask the Vatican to intervene and some have threatened to pull their children from the school. Others are worried the boys' attendance will set a precedent, saying their presence is part of a larger effort by the gay community to change the church. "The boys are being used as pawns by these men to further their agenda," said Monica Sii, who has four children at the school.

I am a weak infirmed old lady who has always been a bit skepticol about this evolution business. As my hour of reckining approaches, I really would like to learn from one you true bilogolists whether God in his greatness designed me as a human in His image and all the creatures too, or am I only an ape with opposite thumbs, waiting only for the eternal darkness and worms to lick my old old bones.

I know you are very busy but please hurry with your answer because sadly I don't have much time! I trust your opinione, not matter what science tells you. I am prepared for the worts, even if my doctor says I need to stay in high sprits.

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

— Psalm 139:6-10

Do you honestly think that an all powerful being that is outside of space and time would have any use for legs? God would have no need for legs for God is everywhere.

I realize I have been too negative and bitter towards my IDiot bretheren. Therefore, I have a new idea how their purely scientific undertaking may be enhanced.

For those of you who want to be ground-breaking ID Theorists, but aren't interested in biology, you too can now participate, via the new field of study, Intelligent Design Linguistics.

Intelligent Design Linguistic Theory says that the idea that different human languages could have evolved from the same one is ridiculous--they're Irreducibly Different.

Though the mainstream linguistic community will try to censor you by not publishing your papers, not teaching your ideas in high schools, and just disagreeing with you. Using ID-style logic, you can make immediate contributions to linguistics:

* Scientists have never found a Missing-Link Language which is exactly half-English, half Tagalog

* Simple calculation shows that for words to just spontaneously assemble into a language is roughly a skillion times more unlikely that Hemoglobin assembling

* The 2nd Law of Thermo says languages should get less descriptive over time, but they Don't!

* Languages have way too much Ontological Depth to have evolved. (note: Ontological Depth will be defined 'next week', which itself is defined as 'sometime in the future, or not')

* In fact, IDLT asserts that all humans spoke the same language up until, say, 3000 years ago, at which time an Intelligent Designer got annoyed and Intelligently Designed a bunch of new languages, and set them all to speaking them, so that they could never again work together to do big things.

Any resemblance to anything religious is purely coincidental, and I'm quite shocked, shocked to discover that you would impugn my scientific notions by suggesting otherwise.

Now, on to the School Boards!

I am sorry for having confused Mr. Cordova with Mr. Alonso and I apologize for that unfortunate error. The rest of my post rebutting Mr. Cordova's assertion that Dembski agrees with Perakh's idea (simplicity=low probability) stands however.

Salvador: Apparently Alan Gourant meant not you but Nelson Alonso who authored the post to ARN where he falsely accused me of lying. Perhaps Mr. Gourant will now realize his mistake and correct it. I have noticed that you posted once a few positive words regarding my post about the Bible code and I appreciate it (although it is not a big secret that I largely disagree with you, especially when you praize Dembski's work of which my view is distinctively different from yours). I also appreciate your frank admission of being a creationist while the CSC of DI persistently denies that ID is a version of creationism. Mark Perakh

We should not forget that one of the great complaints from the whining footsoldiers in the Christian fundamentalist army that accompanies the defense of "ID theory" and similar creationist claptrap is that religion is being "forced out of the public domain" by secular humanists and the rising tide of atheism.

Reasonable people know that this dishonest claim borders on the surreal. In fact, just this morning I watched some senators being sworn in on C-Span and they all held up their hands and responded "I do" after the final utterance of their common oath: "So help you God". Not one of them said, "I agree to uphold the Constitution and not to lie but I will do so without God's help, thank you very much."

Of course, that is because none of the Senators in the United States Senate are atheists or, if they were, they wouldn't dare admit it. Such is the hard lonely life of theists in the halls of power in the United States!

But if the coins, emblems, chaplains, invocations, oaths and hymns weren't enough, we can now add this Inauguration Song, written by fundamentalist Christian John Ashcroft, Attorney General for the United States.

This is what qualifies as 21st century evangelical Christian art fit for the Inauguration Ceremony of the so-called leader of the free world:

"Let the eagle soar,
Like she's never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar.
Soar with healing in her wings,
As the land beneath her sings:
'Only God, no other kings.'
This country's far too young to die.
We've still got a lot of climbing to do,
And we can make it if we try.
Built by toils and struggles
God has led us through.

Of course, a large part of the "land beneath" Asscroft's eagle will be vomiting uncontrollably and wondering whether Osama Bin Laden is interested in owning the copyright to Asscroft's li'l ditty. It'd make a nice anthem for the Taliban.

Wayne, I suppose it would be of no interest to you that I lost my legs to cancer last year. Perhaps that is God's way of letting me know that I am getting closer to Him. Thanks for nothing, you heartless brutish agronomist.

— Little old Lady

Mr. Francis,

In the process of cleaning my mother's room after taking her to the hospital last night, I discovered that her laptop was open to this web page (or "blog" or whatever you call it).

Needless to say, I was very saddened to read your disturbing comments about the Lord's "sex organs" and other sick remarks.

In the event you had any doubt about the effect your vile language had on my mother, let me set the record straight: she was very upset.

Last night the Lord decided to call her soul back to heaven. She died of heart failure.

Mike H.

Just for the record, I noticed that a couple comments re Hewitt's kissable bee-stung lips were deleted from that thread by one of the Powers That Be.

Hugh, if you want to engage in some serious learnin' about why is ID is bogus, come to the Bathroom Wall!!! Comments have been shut down on the only post (thus far) to feature your delectable visage.

Mr. Mike H.
Forgive me if I seem doubtful of your authenticity but I am. If your mother really passed away then I'm sorry for your loss but not sorry for my comments. This is a biology based blog. If you mother was offended by talking about sex organs then she was the one with the issue. I was not profane with my comments. Sex is a natural part of the world and me pointing out that a sole all powerful god would logically not have sex organs for which that god did not need for any purpose should not be offensive.

One would have to wonder why on your mother's "hour of reckining" she was coming to a site that is dedicated to a site that "discuss evolutionary theory, critique the claims of the antievolution movement, defend the integrity of both science and science education" and expect anyone to treat her different then any other person coming here making false statements. If she was so "weak infirmed old lady" she's done very well to find this site at all.

Would you blame a Hindu for saying that Jesus was not the son of god to your mother if she asked them? Doesn't Jesus teach you not to lie? For me to say anything but what I said would have me do what you would say Jesus tells us not to do.

In the end I don't believe you. Either you let your mother spend to much of her "hour of reckining" alone on the internet looking for answers to questions she did not want answered truthfully or you are just a troll. In either case you should seriously take a look inward to how far you are straying from the path of Jesus and not blame outsiders for truthfully answering questions posed to them.

Wayne,

I'd suggest checking the email address of both Little Old Lady and Mike H, as well as recalibrating your satire detector.

Wayne,

I'd suggest checking the email address of both Little Old Lady and Mike H. Also, you might think about recalibrating your satire detector.

Doh! Disregard whichever of the prior comments you prefer. Damn error messages.

I know they come from the same email. My guess is someone was trying to bait GWW but failed miserably. If you are saying that someone like GWW is roleplaying then I was sucked in.

All is forgiven Wayne!

Who'd have thought they had laptops up here?

But that's not the only surprise. Christopher Reeve is here with me but he's still paralyzed! We're on the same level with all the other invalids but we're going to petition the Big Guy for some wheelchair accessible ramps.

Ok...so I was sucked in.
Isn't the first time and certianly won't be the last

Let me pose a few questions. Would it be a "false witness" to teach children that natural forces organized nonliving matter into cells and then produced the complex biological systems that we see today?

— Jan

Would it be "false witness" to teach children that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is the law that states systems become disordered over time unless energy is supplied from some source to create order.

— Jan

Would it be "false witness" to teach them that there is controversy over whether or not evolutionary processes could have occurred due to this second law of thermodynamics?

— Jan

Would it be "false witness" to teach children exactly what both sides are saying concerning this 'matter". (no pun intended)

— Jan

Would it be "false witness" to teach children that infinitely improbable events would have had to occur for evolution to explain our complex systems that we see today.

— Jan

Would it be acceptable to teach that such an infinitely improbable "event" would have been necessary and would be needed not once but repeatedly to produce the evolutionary record we see.

— Jan

Would it be 'honest' to teach them about the controversy that is raging at this time?

— Jan

There is certainly enough written that an upper level student will be able to read and consider for himself/herself other ideas. A student will consider other possibilities unless all ideas are squelched in the early elementary grades by teachers who teach children that questioning in the area of evolution is unacceptable. That is what you mean isn't it, Frank, when you say: "They also know that, given students' prior misconceptions, all it takes is to teach a few out-of-context "weaknesses" under the pretense of "critical analysis," and most students will be infer one of the truly "incomplete" alternatives."

— Jan

It sounds like you are saying defend even the weaknesses of evolution in order to prevent students from making a mistake and believing that evolution does not explain all our complex systems today.

— Jan

That is not teaching at all, it is endoctrinating. This brings one back to the starting point of this debate. Should other ideas be squelched in order to convince children to believe evolution?

— Jan

Would it be "false witness" to teach children that infinitely improbable events would have had to occur for evolution to explain our complex systems that we see today.

— Jan

Jan, I also want to expand on what I meant by "infer one of the truly 'incomplete' alternatives." It ties in with the Isaac Asimov link from Steve that I hope you read. By now you should know that ID strategists have all but admitted that the mutually contradictory creationist (YEC, OECs, etc) accounts are much more "incomplete" than evolution. But they also know that, by using a "don't ask, don't tell" approach that avoids critically analyzing those accounts, most students' prior misconceptions will lead them to infer YEC, or, if they know some science, one of the OECs. Granted, some of the brightest students will conclude evolution (the real one, not your caricature) regardless of how it's misrepresented. But no matter how you look at it, it is the anti-evolutionists who seek to make it harder for students to get the whole story and conclude for themselves. That of course does not mean that I think that evolution education is not in desperate need of improvement.

Salvador: Apparently Alan Gourant meant not you but Nelson Alonso who authored the post to ARN where he falsely accused me of lying.

Weirdest. Church. Ever.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/docs/displaypic.aspx?PhotoID=9

Did you ask Doolittle if this is indeed what happened? That the results turned out to be the opposite of what he had originally thought?

Just asking... Do you know what Doolittle mean by 'for all practical purposes'? Did you ask before implying that he must be a stubborn imbecile if he still believes in his statement?

You say that you are 'pretty sure'... How sure is that? You need to support your premise.

Did you read the paper?

Did you ask Doolittle?

Btw Mark Perakh wrote 'On page 281 Dembski discusses the dispute between Behe and Doolittle wherein he essentially reiterates the argument used by Behe himself in a paper published in the collection [8]. In that paper Behe claimed that after he replied to Doolittle's critique [9] of Behe's work, Doolittle conceded being wrong in his interpretation of the experiment by Bugge at al [10]. I have contacted Professor Doolittle and asked him to confirm that he indeed acknowledged his error in the interpretation of the experiment in question. Professor Doolittle denied having provided a reason for such an assertion by Behe"

Seems that Mark did contact Doolittle.

Or The archives of Science and theology

More on the mice
Michael Behe suggests (Research News July/August 2002 Vol. 2, No. 11/12) that the report originally cited by Doolittle on mice doubly deficient in the two clotting-related proteins, plasminogen and fibrinogen (by Bugge et al.), supports his contention that the clotting cascade is irreducibly complex. He states that the mice deficient in both plasminogen and fibrinogen have the same defective phenotype as the mice deficient only in fibrinogen. What Behe does not note is that for several (although not all) of the defects found in mice deficient only in plasminogen (wasting, decreased survival, deficient wound healing, impaired keratinocyte migration), the corresponding phenotypes of the mice deficient in fibrinogen alone or in both plasminogen and fibrinogen are remarkably similar to those of the control (normal) mice. For example, Bugge et al. state, "The survival characteristics of mice lacking both plasminogen and fibrinogen were comparable with those of fibrinogen-deficient and control mice."
In any case, I was not suggesting that the doubly deficient mice were a likely intermediate in the evolution of the clotting cascade. Instead, I was suggesting that in this instance, contrary to the contention that removal of components of a biological system necessarily renders that system progressively less functional, the absence of two components (plasminogen and fibrinogen) yields more function, in some respects (see above), than the absence of one component (plasminogen). In this case, the restored function is not clotting function per se, but it is still physiologically significant for the affected mice
Regardless of the interpretation of the phenotypes of the mice lacking in plasminogen and fibrinogen, there are other examples of gene deletions in complex physiological systems where function is not catastrophically abrogated as predicted by the proponents of intelligent design. For example, in 1982, Lefranc et al. described an apparently healthy Tunisian female (age 75) who had "a large chromosomal deletion which includes three gamma genes, an alpha gene and a pseudo-epsilon gene," on the chromosomes inherited from both of her parents. In other words, complete loss of four out of nine functional genes directing the synthesis of antibody heavy chains does not necessarily cause complete failure of the immune system. Two other unrelated Tunisians had similar chromosomal deletions.
Carrington et al. have provided a second such example. They studied resistance to infection by HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, associated with complete deficiency of a gene, CKR5delta32 (now called CCR5delta32). The wild-type (functional) allele at this locus encodes a receptor for molecules known as chemokines. The CCR5-deficient individuals are strongly (although not completely) resistant to infection by HIV-1 and appear to be generally healthy based on studies to date.
Neil S. Greenspan, M.D., Ph.D.
Cleveland, OH

Michael Behe's response to Neil S. Greenspan
Neil Greenspan tries to find solace in noting that, like normal mice, mice missing two blood clotting components do not have delayed wound healing or other symptoms. Is this somehow supposed to mitigate the fact that female double-mutant mice bleed to death during pregnancy? Some evolutionary intermediate. But wait, Greenspan now says his point is actually not to come up with evolutionary intermediates; rather, it is to show that mice missing two components function "in some respects" better that those missing one component. (In his original article in The Scientist [2002, 16, 12]) he had stated the mutant mice "apparently have normal hemostasis" -- which they manifestly do not have -- with no mention whatsoever of "other respects.") Yet whatever those "some respects" are, they do not include having a working blood clotting system. And (is it really necessary to say this?) the function of the blood clotting system is to clot blood. Changes in wound healing and even death during pregnancy are merely symptoms of the underlying problem -- a nonfunctioning clotting system.
Greenspan also fails to notice that the situation he thinks is better for the mice (where both components are missing) is the one where the blood clotting system is utterly broken. The worse situation, where the component plasminogen is missing, allows blood to clot but in an uncontrolled manner. This shows it can be worse for an organism to have an uncontrolled blood-clotting system than no system at all. However, since the first steps on a putative Darwinian pathway to a blood-clotting system would necessarily be uncontrolled, it is difficult to see how it could even get started.
A more basic point to note is that Greenspan and many other Darwinists do not address the hypothesis of intelligent design in good faith. They simply want it to go away and so throw anything at it that they think sounds good. Greenspan has been a prominent public critic of intelligent design. Yet in his article in The Scientist, where he cited Russell Doolittle's mistaken contention concerning the blood clotting system, Greenspan misidentified the missing components as fibrinogen and thrombin, rather than fibrinogen and plasminogen, apparently not even bothering to read Doolittle's commentary article very closely before deciding design is wrong, let alone reading the original research. A salutary effect of Greenspan and other Darwinists' citing of Doolittle's mistake is that it shows they really don't understand how irreducibly complex biochemical systems could be put together in a Darwinian fashion. Their loud claims otherwise are just bluster.
Michael J. Behe
Bethlehem, PA

A conservative group is threatening to sue the Secret Service for religious discrimination over security guidelines that would ban Christian crosses from President Bush's inaugural parade route. The Secret Service said Monday the guidelines were meant to prohibit large structures that could be used as weapons. Crosses were the only religious symbols on the list of banned items.

"They are not banning large displays of the Star of David or Islamic symbols," Mahoney said.

The Secret Service was working on a clarification Monday to resolve the flap. Spokesman Tom Mazur said the ban on crosses "is strictly in regards to structures -- certainly not the symbol."

I'm not quite sure why you posted those quotes. Whats also interesting is that it is now known that the loss of fibrin changes the inflammatory processes and some modes of tissue repair. So now, if you don't have plasminogen it would be even worse for you not to have fibrinogen.

Have you contacted Doolittle yet to establish the veracity of the quote?
Perakh did for his article.

I'm pretty sure that Doolittle, unless he's a stubborn imbecile, no longer believes that the mice were "for all practical purposes . . . normal" as he originally claimed.

— Nelson Alonzo

Have you contacted Doolittle yet to establish the veracity of the quote? Perakh did for his article.

Not sure if we're talking about the same article, but Doolittle admitted in his 1997 review of "Darwin's Black Box" that the mice would probably be "compromised in the wild." What more do you want?

And what do you think happened when these two lines of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes, the mice lacking both genes were normal!6 Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed.

And unlike most IDers, Behe has suggested a possible testable alternative explanation.

Specifically, he suggested that that the first cell, 3.8 billion years ago, had all the genetic information in place, but mostly "turned off" as many genes still are.

"The theory of intelligent design cannot explain the presence of non-functional pseudogenes unless it is willing to allow that the designer made serious errors."

While "Darwinists" freely admit that there are many unanswered questions, especially due to the unavailability of ancient DNA and proteins, IDers have nothing but unanswered questions.

Since Nature gave unusual prominence to GME's Internet critique in a news article about the publication of Meyer's article 3, we have decided to provide a detailed response to their critique in a series of installments to be posted here over the next few weeks.

Specifically, he suggested that that the first cell, 3.8 billion years ago, had all the genetic information in place, but mostly "turned off" as many genes still are.

Specifically, he suggested that that the first cell, 3.8 billion years ago, had all the genetic information in place, but mostly "turned off" as many genes still are.

Nelson Alonso wrote:

Plenty of IDers make plenty of testable alternative explanations. Design itself is a testable alternative explanation.

What??? Am I the first person to call him on this???

How is "design itself" testable? I'd sure love to see the test, and I'd like to see where Behe et al have done the test.

Maybe the test is to pray to each of the known Superior Intelligences (i.e. gods) and ask them if they intelligently designed life. If exactly one responds in the affirmative, then we've got our uncontrovertable proof. However, if more than one responds affirmatively, then we would have to adjudicate among them.

Plenty of IDers make plenty of testable alternative explanations. Design itself is a testable alternative explanation. What??? Am I the first person to call him on this???

— Air Bear

I envision the first cells as complex and sophisticated entities. And while the introduction of such cells were probably followed by a long history of evolution, I expect to find traces of such initial states because, as I have explained elsewhere, such a state is front-loaded and would be continually exploited by evolution.

— The article's author

ID entails that these cellular processes are quite sophisticated (and not the random mess expected by molecular biologists).

— The article's author also

No I have not contacted Doolittle and wouldn't insult his intelligence by doing so. I sincerely believe that he no longer thinks that the double-knockout mice were "for all practical purposes normal" unless he is simply holding on to that false view disingenuously. People make mistakes with interpeting papers. It's ok, it's human, no one is perfect. I'm not saying he abandoned Darwinism, but neither did Behe.

— Nelson

Plenty of IDers make plenty of testable alternative explanations. Design itself is a testable alternative explanation.

— Nelson

In a 5-2 vote Monday night, the Cobb County school board voted to appeal a federal judge's ruling against textbook stickers alerting students that evolution is a theory.

Creationism has its uses after all. Today in my Earth Chemistry class, during a discussion of radiochemistry, the professor pointed out two of the difficult things about using the technique, and said "The creationists seize on this sort of thing and say therefore radiochemistry doesn't work. These two problems do make for some noise in the data, but you can see that given all the evidence it's obvious there's still plenty of signal."

(quoting Wesley R. Elsberry) "The problem is, what they want taught as a controversy is not a scientific controversy. It's a socio-political controversy. It belongs in a civics class." This is one of the most tired and threadbare reasons for not allowing any questioning of Darwinian evolution to go on in the classroom.

— Robert Crowther

Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. [Ronald]Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to marginalize and discredit design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.

— Robert Crowther

In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to marginalize and discredit design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.

ID has nothing but a pathetic "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding "what happened and when."

Dear Mr. President: We celebrate with you this week because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. But already there is a challenge to the biblical norms that you stand for, and it comes from within your very own family. This Thursday, your two daughters, Jenna and Barbara, will appear before the earthly world in attire that cannot be described in any sense as modest. As you know, dress and appearance are an important reflection of our Christian values. "We are what we wear," as the saying goes, and according to this edict, your own daughters, bejeweled and bedecked in garments that plunge of neckline and cling of fabric, cannot be said to reflect the deeply-held believes of the tens of millions of "values voters" who sent you back to that highest office in the land. As you prepare to lead this country for another four years, remember your role as leader of your own family. "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior." (Ephesians 5:23) When you advise your daughters as to the essential importance of dressing to glorify God, remind them of these words from Timothy: "I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes." You have four years - a brief time only - to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God. Do not risk offending Him in these early days of your second term by presenting forth your own daughters as Oholah and Oholibah, who, like Jezebel, painted their eyes and decked themselves with ornaments to entice men to commit adultery with them (Ezek 23). Sincerely, Lewis Sheldrick Coalition for Traditional Values Beverley Hayden Concerned Women of America Robert Wilder American Family Organization Randy Thomas Campaign for Families Dennis Patton Silver Ring Thing Sandy Slokum Defend Our Marriages Roy deLong Baptist Leadership Council

Many intelligent design theorists have hypothesized that non-coding DNA (popularly called 'junk-DNA') is designed, and has a function in the cell just waiting to be discovered.

So, the answer to this question is "sometimes we can tell the purpose of a designed object," depending on whether or not the specification is linked to a known function, or to some other recognizable intelligently designed pattern.

This presents an active area of research for intelligent design theorists. ...

In biology, purpose is easy to detect because we can usually identify the purpose of an object in the manner in which it aids an organism.

WTF is going on with the comments list on the main page?

It appears that now each comment goes in that box (rather than each post which has attracted one or more comments), with multiple instances of posts that have attracted multiple comments. So one or two posts that attract several comments bump others off tee list, and there's no way to see what's been going on in the past day or so.

I hate it.

Of course, what I'd really like is "go to first unread comment", but I realize that's not likely to happen.

WTF is going on with the comments list on the main page?

It appears that now each comment goes in that box (rather than each post which has attracted one or more comments), with multiple instances of posts that have attracted multiple comments. So one or two posts that attract several comments bump others off tee list, and there's no way to see what's been going on in the past day or so.

I hate it.

Of course, what I'd really like is "go to first unread comment", but I realize that's not likely to happen.

Jon has a good question. Please fix that if it isn't fixed already!

In other news, creationist apologist Rev. James Dobson has a new name: SpongeDob Stickypants.

Read about this freak and his sad fantasies here:

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/01/let_the_word_go.php

Private action. Good stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/20/rollling.stone.ap/index.html

Do not risk offending Him in these early days of your second term by presenting forth your own daughters as Oholah and Oholibah, who, like Jezebel, painted their eyes and decked themselves with ornaments to entice men to commit adultery with them (Ezek 23). Sincerely, Lewis Sheldrick Coalition for Traditional Values Beverley Hayden Concerned Women of America Robert Wilder American Family Organization Randy Thomas Campaign for Families Dennis Patton Silver Ring Thing Sandy Slokum Defend Our Marriages Roy deLong Baptist Leadership Council

Or more precisely, "see no Christian deity, speak no Christian deity."

— Great White Wonder

The wonderful irony here is that the critics of Dobson are hardly extending him even a chance to state his views much less tolerance for his right to hold them or to even speak on the subject.

New School Board possibly going for Intelligent Design Creationism:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6859930/

"All I'm asking is that we allow a different point of view," Tomasacci said. "It's a legitimate theory, so let's talk about it. I don't think anyone should be afraid of a theory.

Does anyone know where to purchase the vehicle 'sticker' that shows the Jesus fish with legs....?

Reddy - How has your education and spirituality connected to your interest in science? Father Coyne - It's not very direct, to be honest with you. In a sense, they are two compartments of my life. I try to do publishable research in my international journals, but then I'm a religious priest. Their is some crossover in my personal life. Knowing more about the universe and believing that God created the universe, nourished my knowledge of the spiritual background. ... I believe God is creator, and I've never come to that belief through any purely rational process. It's not irrational - I don't think it contradicts reason - But it transcends reason.

I can't imagine that God would create a universe in which there would be some contracdiction. Ingorance breeds temporary conflicts, there's no doubt about that, but that's ignorance.

— Father Coyne

I've never come to that belief through any purely rational process. It's not irrational - I don't think it contradicts reason - But it transcends reason.

Does anyone know where to purchase the vehicle 'sticker' that shows the Jesus fish with legs . . . .?

Glad you enjoyed the article, Wayne. :)

Frank Reddy
"Gravitation is a theory, not a fact."

GLSEN is unsure how many schools will participate in this week's event, but says 5,100 educators from 36 states have registered, up from 4,000 last year. Participation in a related writing-music-art contest rose from 100 students last year to 1,600 this year; the winning poem was written by Sue Anna Yeh, a 13-year-old from Sugar Land, Texas. "No Name-calling Week" takes aim at insults of all kinds -- whether based on a child's appearance, background or behavior. But a handful of conservative critics have zeroed in on the references to harassment based on sexual orientation. "I hope schools will realize it's less an exercise in tolerance than a platform for liberal groups to promote their pan-sexual agenda," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute. "Schools should be steering kids away from identifying as gay," Knight said. "You can teach civility to kids and tell them every child is valued without conveying the message that failure to accept homosexuality as normal is a sign of bigotry."

That would tell us if the factors responsible for human cognition (or at least human brain structure) are contained within the neurons themselves, or are influenced by other factors within the organism.

Some more fallout from the Meyer/Biological Society of Washington affair, this time concerning Richard Sternberg, the editor of the PBSW at the time the Meyer paper was approved.

This article appeared on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal website. Sternberg claims that his career is in jeopardy because of the whole Meyer affair.

Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity.

If Sternbergs's religious beliefs get in the way of his judgement as a scientist then what exactly is wrong with discriminating against him in this context?

pretty sweet article

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/25/health/25brai.html

If Sternbergs's religious beliefs get in the way of his judgement as a scientist then what exactly is wrong with discriminating against him in this context?

I'm sick of hearing crocks like Jeff call people who don't dismiss data as "religious" when it comes to evolution. I don't worship it. I don't pray to darwin or any other scientist. I just recognise that currently it is the best explanation to explain the data we observe across many differently sciences. If a better explanation, that fits the data, comes to light, that can be scientifically tested, then I'll jump ship quicker then quick. Would Jeff renounce Jesus if the Hindu God Brahma appeared? No of course not. That is religion....to believe in their god no matter what evidence is infront of their faces. No I'm not saying that evolution discounts the Christian God. I'm just saying the life we see is best explained by evolutionary methods, which a God could easily have used but Jeff seems to like to limit his God's power. Life is not best explained by a litteral reading of the bible.

My favorite Creationist arguement.
Creationist "Life can not come from non life"
Evolutionist "But according to gen 2:7 'the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground', is dust not 'non life'"

That's funny, exactly the same thing could be written about evolutionists. Evolutionists allow their religious beliefs to get in the way of their scientific judgements.

Mummy, mummy, evolution is a religion. It is it is it is it is.

If Sternbergs's religious beliefs get in the way of his judgement as a scientist then what exactly is wrong with discriminating against him in this context?

— Steve F

That's funny, exactly the same thing could be written about evolutionists. Evolutionists allow their religious beliefs to get in the way of their scientific judgements.

— Jeff Low

That is religion . . . .to believe in their god no matter what evidence is infront of their faces.

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms

Wayne -- that's just weird.

"Next, Platt and his colleagues want to see how people will perform in a similar experiment."

They're going to pay people to look at other people's ugly rear ends?

Fyi, Nathan Newman, a pointy-headed so-called liberal with a bad habit of engaging in creationist apologetics, went truly overboard yesterday in his efforts to prove that he is clueless about creationist tactics:

http://www.nathannewman.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1777

PZ Myers graciously attempts the impossible task of setting Newman straight here

http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/1870

this is kind of interesting

http://www.techreview.com/articles/05/03/issue/magaphone.asp

Darwinian evolution requires species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

Darwinian evolution requires species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

The Nephilim Seed, by James Scott Bell...Harvard biology professor Bently Davis is the acclaimed voice of reason against the Intelligent Design movement and a controlling partner in UniGen, a small biotech startup. "Nephilim Seed" is Davis's shorthand name for a project that will use injectable synthetic genes to create superintelligence in humans and free participants of emotions including religious ones...

The Nephilim Seed, by James Scott Bell...Harvard biology professor Bently Davis is the acclaimed voice of reason against the Intelligent Design movement and a controlling partner in UniGen, a small biotech startup. "Nephilim Seed" is Davis's shorthand name for a project that will use injectable synthetic genes to create superintelligence in humans and free participants of emotions including religious ones...

Denyse writes If you want to see the possible demise of science, go to the Panda's Thumb blog, a site dedicated to protecting Darwinism that has abused ID-friendly scholars in such unscholarly terms

What would a day be like without another pro-ID creationism column from Renew America:

Liberty seized! The ACLU sues a Pennsylvania school over intelligent design theory

My favourite part is when he quotes "archeologist" Carl Baugh. No, I'm not kidding. He quotes Baugh, and tries to pass him off as a credible source. So Baugh is an archeologist now? The guy is just a jack of all trades.

I just ran across a surprise on the web. Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown PA, near Harrisburg and no more than 45 minutes from Dover, is hosting an all-day symposium on ID March 1st.

The morning session will feature a debate between Michael J. Behe, and Niall Shanks on the "scientific" aspects of intelligent design.

After lunch John Haught, Professor of Theology at Georgetown University and Rev. Dave Martin, senior pastor at Evangelical Free Church of Hershey, Pa., will debate the theological aspects.

They'll be followed by Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU and Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, debating the civil/legal issues. Each is the attorney or record for the opposing sides in the Federal suit.

The day will close with a lecture at 7:30 by by Paul Gross, emeritus professor of life sciences at the University of Virginia and coauthor of "Creationism's Trojan Horse."

Every session will close with Q & A.

If memory serves me correctly, the pastor of Church of the Brethren parish in Dover spoke out publicly in opposition to the Dover Board's position on ID/evolution, and, if that recollection is correct, his son is a biology teacher at Dover High School and one of those who refused to read the administration's statement on ID and evolution to the students. Also knowing little about the Church of the Brethren, I scanned the college's web site and found it free of the usual cant one would find at a "Christian" college like Biola or Florida Atlantic. The whole event is actually being sponsored by the college's Center for Science and Religion run by the philosophy department.

I live about an hour's drive from Elizabethtown, so I'm considering attending just out of curiosity. Given the apparent posture of the Church of the Brethren and the college toward ID and evolution, I suspect much of the audience will be supportive of evolution, a marked contrast to the usual "debates" so often organized by the fundies, although I'm sure the fundies will try to pack the audience, even to the point of hauling in busloads of believers from outside the college.

I just ran across a surprise on the web. Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown PA, near Harrisburg and no more than 45 minutes from Dover, is hosting an all-day symposium on ID March 1st.

The morning session will feature a debate between Michael J. Behe, and Niall Shanks on the "scientific" aspects of intelligent design.

After lunch John Haught, Professor of Theology at Georgetown University and Rev. Dave Martin, senior pastor at Evangelical Free Church of Hershey, Pa., will debate the theological aspects.

They'll be followed by Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU and Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, debating the civil/legal issues. Each is the attorney or record for the opposing sides in the Federal suit.

The day will close with a lecture at 7:30 by by Paul Gross, emeritus professor of life sciences at the University of Virginia and coauthor of "Creationism's Trojan Horse."

Every session will close with Q & A.

If memory serves me correctly, the pastor of Church of the Brethren parish in Dover spoke out publicly in opposition to the Dover Board's position on ID/evolution, and, if that recollection is correct, his son is a biology teacher at Dover High School and one of those who refused to read the administration's statement on ID and evolution to the students. Also knowing little about the Church of the Brethren, I scanned the college's web site and found it free of the usual cant one would find at a "Christian" college like Biola or Florida Atlantic. The whole event is actually being sponsored by the college's Center for Science and Religion run by the philosophy department.

I live about an hour's drive from Elizabethtown, so I'm considering attending just out of curiosity. Given the apparent posture of the Church of the Brethren and the college toward ID and evolution, I suspect much of the audience will be supportive of evolution, a marked contrast to the usual "debates" so often organized by the fundies, although I'm sure the fundies will try to pack the audience, even to the point of hauling in busloads of believers from outside the college.

Check out AiG's 2005 Creation Megaconference, to be hosted by Jerry Foulwell in July. 25 speakers, but no Steves.

But Rasmussen's team isn't the only one attempting to create new organisms. By some estimates, more than 100 labs are chipping away at the problem, including one headed by superstar biologist Craig Venter, whose innovative DNA-sequencing technology led to the decoding of the human genome four years ahead of schedule. Last April the European Union launched the $10-million Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, and when I visited Rasmussen in October, he had caught wind of a Japanese effort about to get under way. "There's no doubt that this is going to happen," he says. "It's no longer a question of 'if,' but of who is going to do it and when." Many of these scientists are trying to solve the oldest puzzle in science: How did we get here? What combination of inanimate molecules led, four billion years ago, to the first microscopic creature, and from there to the riot of diversity that is life on Earth? "One of the major questions [this work] could answer is, Was life an accident or inevitable?" says Peter Nielsen, a chemist at the University of Copenhagen who is collaborating with Rasmussen. To accomplish this, though, most scientists are sticking close to nature's script. They're trying to create cells much like the ones that exist today---cells, that is, that are surrounded by double-layered membranes and stuffed with genetic material in the form of DNA or RNA. Not Rasmussen. For most of his 49 years, the Danish-born theoretical physicist has been obsessed with understanding what makes life possible. In attempting to make his own version, he tossed aside biology textbooks and asked himself, What's the simplest living system I can imagine? The result is that his protocell looks like no life-form anyone has ever seen. "I'm sort of out in the extreme," he confesses.

One of the world's most highly regarded creation scientists engaged in ground-breaking research

Actually, maybe my lame "Foulwell" gag was a bit out of place on this forum. Apologies.

Falwell's conference features an interesting array of speakers, 28 in all. I did a quick tabulation of their academic specialties. That tabulation gives an interesting distruibution:

Biology: 5---one each from environmental biology, plant physiology, cell biology, medicine, and neuroscience,

Physics/chemistry/engineering: 5---one each in physical chemistry, and mechanical engineering and three in physics,

Theology: 5,

Education: 4,

Earth sciences: 5---one each in geophysics, astronomy, and atmospheric science, and two in geology,

Information science: 1,

Air traffic controller: 1,

Dinosaur sculptor: 1.

(I kid you not about the last two. They're both listed that way. Go figure!)

And then there's Falwell, whom I'll let you classify. Interestingly for him, no degree nor college/university is listed, but his listing is graced with the title of Dr.

Also this is a creationist's conference. No one from the ID establishment, such as there is, is listed (at least whom I recognize).

Actually, maybe my lame "Foulwell" gag was a bit out of place on this forum. Apologies.

Its good to see that on Carl Zimmer's blog that Charlie has posted his response to Avida on the thread concerning the death of Ernst Mayr.

How wonderfully sensitive of you Chuck. I guess the thoughts of the great Charles Wagner are so important that they can stomp over the memory of one of the most significant scientists of the modern era.

As John Donne wrote, "every man's death diminishes me, because I am involved with mankind". Mayr lived a long and full life and should be applauded for his accomplishments. This does not diminish the fact that he was an intellectual tyrant who was wrong in just about everything he said. I was so glad that Barbara McClintock lived to see her views vindicated and her colleagues to admit they were wrong. Likewise, I'm glad for Mayr that he didn't live long enough to see the day that his theories would be shown to be incorrect. While I mourn the passing of any man, I also hope that his views on evolution die with him.

I saw the personal views. I think its significant that they were posted after his comments regarding Avida.

Likewise, I'm glad for Mayr that he didn't live long enough to see the day that his theories would be shown to be incorrect.

The UK Guardian reports on the Kansas school board meeting (where Creationists again made the "evolutionists are Nazis" libel), and other US Creationist matters.

I understand my name has been mentioned and so I would like to introduce myself to avoid being misrepresented. I am the author of a number of anti-Darwinian papers beginning in 1984 with "Semi-meiosis as an Evolutionary Mechanism", Journal of Theoretical Biology 111: 725-735. My most recent effort is "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis," in press at Rivista di Biologia and currently being ignored when not being deprecated at ARN and other forums some of which found it necessary to ban me for life, an achievement of which am inordinately proud.

Lest my posture be misunderstood, let me put it this way. Like the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin also were the coauthors of an enormously popular fairy tale now known far and wide as neoDarwinian evolution.

I suggest that you introduce my most recent publication for your consumption, commentary and response.

I have no idea what Kwickcode Formatting is.

Thank you very much. John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

I understand my name has been mentioned and so I would like to introduce myself to avoid being misrepresented. I am the author of a number of anti-Darwinian papers beginning in 1984 with "Semi-meiosis as an Evolutionary Mechanism", Journal of Theoretical Biology 111: 725-735. My most recent effort is "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis," in press at Rivista di Biologia and currently being ignored when not being deprecated at ARN and other forums some of which found it necessary to ban me for life, an achievement of which am inordinately proud.

Lest my posture be misunderstood, let me put it this way. Like the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin also were the coauthors of an enormously popular fairy tale now known far and wide as neoDarwinian evolution.

I suggest that you introduce my most recent publication for your consumption, commentary and response.

I have no idea what Kwickcode Formatting is.

Thank you very much. John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

I understand my name has been mentioned and so I would like to introduce myself to avoid being misrepresented. I am the author of a number of anti-Darwinian papers beginning in 1984 with "Semi-meiosis as an Evolutionary Mechanism", Journal of Theoretical Biology 111: 725-735. My most recent effort is "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis," in press at Rivista di Biologia and currently being ignored when not being deprecated at ARN and other forums some of which found it necessary to ban me for life, an achievement of which am inordinately proud.

Lest my posture be misunderstood, let me put it this way. Like the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin also were the coauthors of an enormously popular fairy tale now known far and wide as neoDarwinian evolution.

I suggest that you introduce my most recent publication for your consumption, commentary and response.

I have no idea what Kwickcode Formatting is.

Thank you very much. John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

Lest my posture be misunderstood, let me put it this way. Like the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin also were the coauthors of an enormously popular fairy tale now known far and wide as neoDarwinian evolution.

John,

". .currently being ignored when not being deprecated at ARN and other forums some of which found it necessary to ban me for life, an achievement of which am inordinately proud."

Great line. Can you link to any of your stuff, particularly your latest?

You can find my latest heresy at "brainstorms" or ARN but without the single figure which will apear in the published version. That figure, from Schindewolf, is one of the most convincing demonstrations imaginable in support of a prescribed evolutionary scenario.

You can find my latest heresy at "brainstorms" or ARN but without the single figure which will appear in the published version. That figure, from Schindewolf, is one of the most convincing demonstrations imaginable in support of a prescribed evolutionary scenario.

You can find my latest heresy at "brainstorms" or ARN but without the single figure which will appear in the published version. That figure, from Schindewolf, is one of the most convincing demonstrations imaginable in support of a prescribed evolutionary scenario. It also presents an elegant verification of Intelligent Design, complete with a commentary to that effect by Schindewolf himself. I repeated his comments verbatim in the text.

Errr...JAD, thanks for your input, but there is usually a short delay when posting here. Happened to me too, just be patient :-D

Avida may be able to evolve but contemporary organisms can't.

Back when evolution was actually occurring Mendelian mutations and Natural Selection were not invloved anyway. All real and tangible evidence pleads that evolution WAS an internally driven process in which the only coneivable role for the environment was to serve as a trigger for predetermined potentialites which had previously been latent.

Perhaps the most compelling feature for the Darwinists resides in their persistent conviction that all of evolution is the result of blind chance. In so doing, the Darwinists refuse to consider that evolution might be subject to laws and precise mathematical relationships such as those that govern virtually every aspect of the inanimate world.

Perhaps the most compelling feature for the Darwinists resides in their persistent conviction that all of evolution is the result of blind chance. In so doing, the Darwinists refuse to consider that evolution might be subject to laws and precise mathematical relationships such as those that govern virtually every aspect of the inanimate world

Salvador has noted some posting difficulties in comments.

PT has the MT-Blacklist Plugin enabled to cut down on comment spam. You know, endless machine-entered links for drugs, porn, and poker. One thing that the drugs, porn, and poker crowds have in common is their attraction to URLs featuring hyphens. So entering a URL with hyphens will get you a "questionable content" error message. Even if you are peddling pseudoscience rather than drugs, porn, or poker.

PT is not blockading references to threads on ISCID, ARN, or the DI Media Complaints Division. If any of those have hyphens in the URLs, you can use the Tinyurl.com facility to come up with a URL that has no hyphens and goes to the place you want.

People that don't know much about weblogs and the Internet in general should be a little slower to cry censorship.

I hope some of you don't reproduce and just pray that God will specially create your offspring.

"Garbage in and Garbage out" does not feed the bulldog. As a matter of fact it is not even a complete English sentence. Surely those that support Darwinsm can do better than that. I would also like someone to explain to me just what part of the Darwinian paradigm does not depend on chance.

Too Mean makes a very cogent point. There is no question that our world views have strong genetic components. Everything from ones political views to how one feels about the death penalty to ones belief or lack thereof in a creator, all have been demonstrated to be influenced by congenital factors. I recommend William Wright's "Born that Way."

Incidentally, this also supports the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis, my latest heresy. Oddly enough, it was anticipated by Gilbert and Sullivan even before the turn of the twentieth century:

"Every boy and every girl,
That is born into the world alive,
Is either a little liberal,
Or a little conservative."
Iolanthe

and again more recently by Albert Einstein:

"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
In the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929

It is very gratifying to receive support from such unexpected sources.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

Everything from ones political views to how one feels about the death penalty to ones belief or lack thereof in a creator, all have been demonstrated to be influenced by congenital factors.

Paul King, you should have a look at the analysis of CSI by myself and Jeff Shallit. Have a look at Appendix A.1.

There's a thread on the Antievolution discussion board concerning comments on the paper. That is a discussion board where anyone can post (no membership fee required) and the moderation is not in a state of paranoid delusion. Some of the comments critical of our paper are repeated on the ISCID discussion board. If you pay them a membership fee and don't make them feel uncomfortable with what you say, you might be able to post there.

I have read both the paper and the thread, although that was back when they first came out.

1. Salvador's 'forbidden' URL is hardly forbidden. There are at least threads in which the URL can be found. 2. Salvador's posting problems are likely due to a recent update to the SPAM filter which removes links with multiple 'hyphens'. I believe the rule is three or more. 3. Salvador himself promised to take the discussion to antievolution.org 4. A few off topic postings by Salvador, and many others were not censored but moved to the bathroom wall. 5. Since PT has an open submission policy, the failure on Salvador's part to submit his 'forbidden URL' 'arguments' for consideration, further undermine his claims. And finally, while Sal may think that he has rebutted Elsberry and Shallit's paper, the forbidden URL nor any other arguments so far presented by him, seem to support such a conclusion.

I find very little on internet forums that can be clled "honest discourse." Mostly I see license to use anonymity as a device to express ones biases without fear of identification or, in some instances, even legal action. For that reason I do not choose to be anonymous and when I cite my sources I try whenever possible to do so in their own words. This avoids any misunderstanding as to their meaning.

In the meamtime I await a demonstration of which part of the Darwinian model does not rely entirely on chance, or if you prefer randomness or uncertainty or accident. Stephen Jay Gould actually described intelligence as "an evolutionary accident."
He also compared evolution to a drunk reeling back and forth between the gutter and the bar room door as I recall. Does that represent the current state of evolutionary science? Judging from some of the comments I read here and elsewhere it certainly still does.

To deny Intelligent Design is to deny evolution because without the former there could never have been the latter.

"The laws of the organic world are the same whether we are dealing with the development of an individual (ontogeny) or that of a paleontological series (phylogeny). Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
Leo S. Berg, Nomogenesis page 134

If someone must be denigrated with such comments as "Garbage in, Garbage out," let it be the greatest Russian zoologist of his generation and not some hack retired bench physiologist such as myself.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

JAD,

the non-random factor you are looking for would be selection (natural, sexual or planned), which as far as I know is pretty central not only to evolutionary theories of the natural world, but also to AVIDA and evolutionary programs. Of course, nobody can predict the exact reproduction success of every organism based on its genes, but statistically the impact of any selective pressure no matter how it arose on a large population with a given variation of traits can be understood and parameterized.
Understanding causality on this level seems not to be a problem for most people when it comes to nuclaer decays, so why the fuss concerning non-directed statistical causality within evolution?

It is not my fault that selection is central to evolutionary theory. First, there are as yet no evolutionary theories, only failed or untested hypotheses. Darwinism ranks first among the former, right in there with Lamarckism. The Semi-meiotic Hypothesis and its corollary, the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis are among the latter. It may well prove to be, as Otto Schindewolf insisted, that evolution is not an experimental science, that it was an internally driven historical sequence, irreversible and, in my opinion, self-limiting and goal directed.

The invarnished truth is that the most intensive selection has failed to transcend the species barrier. Are we to believe that Nature can achieve, or more accurately did achieve, that which the experimentalist cannot? Some may, but I am not one of them.

I concur, with Pierre Grasse, that Mendelian, allelomorphic mutations, have played no role in creative evolution.

The only demonstrable role for Natural Selection is the one that permits an amateur bird watcher like myself to identify every bird he has ever seen with a simple key or even a picture. It is and always was solely to maintain the status quo. To claim otherwise is without foundation.

I quote verbatim from Leo Berg's Nomogenesis page 406

"The struggle for existence and natural selection are not progressive agencies, but being, on the contrary, conservative, maintain the standard."

A central question which has never even been properly addressed, let alone answered, is this one. When, exactly, in the process of the creation of the universe were the reins handed over to Nature, that which had so far been created, allowing it now to finish the job? Without hesitation I say never.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid.

Also this is a creationist's conference. No one from the ID establishment, such as there is, is listed (at least whom I recognize).

— Keanus

"The invarnished truth is that the most intensive selection has failed to transcend the species barrier."

Not true. See "http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html", especially 5.7 which shows how a new species arised by reproductive isolation in laboratory environment in quite a short time. The new population was unable to breed with the original population from the wild, which is speciation.
Therefore, your truth is far from invarnished, whatever that word might mean.

"Are we to believe that Nature can achieve, or more accurately did achieve, that which the experimentalist cannot?"
Of course! Otherwise, we had to dismiss the existence of neutron stars, too, as they can't be replicated in the laboratory. The key factor in evolution is a timescale that is impossible to replicate here in our lifetimes.

As for natural selection maintaining the standard - under natural selection, the most fit individuals survive. In most cases, the population is already almost perfect, and almost any change is deleterious and natural selection eliminates it. However, this only holds if the rest of the environment stays the same. When the outside conditions change, the population suddenly finds itself in much less fit state. At this point, natural selection will "push" it towards higher fitness state, as the original state is no longer the best.

Note that when I talk about the change of environment, I mean literally any changes, not just in physical characteristics, but also in biological ones.

Usually, though, natural selection works AGAINST the unbridled evolution, slowing it down, as it eliminates most of the mutations that occur. Think of mutations as books spewed by young writers. Natural selection than plays a part of thorough book critic that won't let any bad books reach the public. The public gets less books than it would get otherwise, but on the average, they are the better books. This means that largest explosions of speciation and diversity should be expected when natural selection is temporarily suspended. This happens after mass extinctions, when there is lots of free space, so even less-fit individuals can thrive for a time.

Marek,

you beat me to pointing out this overview of speciation literature (there is more at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html), and these compilations are not even intended to look for highly bred domestic species. But I would like to look at some other points in John's post - I dare not hope for a sensible answer on his part, but it should not go uncommented.

- As far as I can tell, there is no testable hypothesis in the field assuming that at any time existence had not been run by nature; at least nobody John might have responded to had said so. So posing the question, when natural processes took over, is only relevant within your own world view, for most scientist it would clearly be answered 'from the very start'. (And before somebody comes up with the Big Bang - this would supposedly be the asymptotic beginning of time, rendering speculations what went before scientifically moot.)

- Citing or concurring with people, whose context within research or relevance for current discussions in science can not be easily seen, might be a good way to impress people or demonstrate one's erudition, but I can not see the direct utility in making one's position clear or supplying evidence for it. At least in my opinion using your own words for arguments and providing links to or titles of documents providing evidence instead of further opinion would go a lot further.

- To label a theory a 'failed hypothesis' by standard scientific practice, one has either to provide another theory, explaining the evidence significantly better, or has to conduct experiments falsifying the predictions of the theory beyond a reasonable doubt. The latter means not demonstarting a negative - an impossible thing to do - but just diligently perform experiments and observations and look for non-correlations and anti-correlations to the expected result. This has happened to Lamarckism, as experiments on the heridity of aquired traits (cut of tails, learned behavoiour) did fail spectacularly nearly each time. It was a case of 'nothing happens' and not just of the 'things don't happen fast end far enough for my sensibilities' argument advanced against speciation.

Nobody - including luminaries like Behe or Dembski - so far has advanced a better theory, conducted experiments or observations directly falsifying the modern synthesis or at the very least given an explanation how the know speciation events are not caused by mutation (and I am not just talking about point defects), selection and population dynamics. Even in the absence of any other evidence for evolution, without any of this the synthesis would reamain a theory alive and well.

I am happy some are content with the "modern synthesis." That is precisely why I am here. The author of the book, "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis," Julian Huxley was not one of them as he clearly expressed on page 571, seven pages from the end.

"Evolution is thus seen as a series of blind alleys. Some are extremely short - those leading to new genera and species that either remain stable or become extinct. Others are longer - the lines of adaptive radiation within a group such as a class or subclass, which run for tens of millions of years before coming up against their terminal blank wall. Others are still longer - the lines that have in the past led to the development of the major phyla and their highest representatives; their course is to be reckoned not in tens but in hundreds of millions of years. But all in the long run have terminated blindly."

That is just part of a paragraph which will never be reconciled with the Darwinian fairy tale composed by the primary spokesperson for the so called "modern synthesis." The Darwinians conveniently ignore what one of their own had the common sense to recognize and the courage to present. Julian Huxley, like his illustrious grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley, had the integrity which is the hall mark of all great scholars. That is to admit as both did that everything one holds dear must be abandoned in an instant when undeniable truth speaks otherwise.

So much for the "modern synthesis," a perfect example of an organized "groupthink." The symposia that led to it are stained forever by the missing names of those that were not invited to participate, Pierre Grasse, Leo Berg, Richard B. Goldschmidt, Robert Broom and Otto Schindewolf, every one of whom was still at the height of his considerable intellectual powers at the time. It was a scandal, a deceit and a hoax. It still prevails for one reason only. It is the only conceivable posture for the convinced atheist, a condition with a definite genetic component.

"When all think alike, no one thinks very much."
Walter Lippmann

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafaid to expose Darwinism for what it always has been, a fairy tale proposed by a pair of Victorian naturalists with overactive imaginations and a total ignorance of the cell theory, proposed by Schleiden and Schwann in 1838 when Darwin was a mere 28, and Wallace, a lad of 15.

There now, I feel somwhat better.

It is true that I have not provided another theory but I most certainly have proposed an hypothesis, one that recognizes real facts as revealed by laboratory experiment and the fossil record. It is contained in the paper in press with the title to that effect-

"A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis."

If the particpants in this forum cannot recognized an hypothesis when the see one, there is little I can do to remedy their condition.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and most certainly unafraid to confront those who still subscribe to and promote the most failed hypothesis in the history of science.

I want to ask just one simple question - if you have to start with intelligence to get intelligence, what is the ultimate origin of intelligence - ANY intelligence then? I consider evolution attractive because it introduces the notion of intelligence arising without need of it being present before. But if you deny this notion (and I don't know of anybody who would deny evolution but maintained this), where do you get the original intelligence from?

As an aside, what do you mean by "most failed hypothesis in the history of science"? That's not very nice to say without having data to substantiate it. And the data say that:

1. Evolution is observable - and it has been observed multiple times.
2. Evolution is testable - and it has been tested thoroughly.
3. Evolution makes predictions - and those predictions have been met.
4. Evolution is disprovable - but it was never disproved (and it definitely wasn't because of lack of trying!)

From the very beginning, evolution faced strong opposition. DESPITE this, it grew in popularity immensely. How could this happen, if it had no merits? It was challenged many times, but always prevailed. How come that arguments of its deniers were never enough?

I want to ask just one simple question - if you have to start with intelligence to get intelligence, what is the ultimate origin of intelligence - ANY intelligence then? I consider evolution attractive because it introduces the notion of intelligence arising without need of it being present before. But if you deny this notion (and I don't know of anybody who would deny evolution but maintained this), where do you get the original intelligence from?

As an aside, what do you mean by "most failed hypothesis in the history of science"? That's not very nice to say without having data to substantiate it. And the data say that:

1. Evolution is observable - and it has been observed multiple times.
2. Evolution is testable - and it has been tested thoroughly.
3. Evolution makes predictions - and those predictions have been met.
4. Evolution is disprovable - but it was never disproved (and it definitely wasn't because of lack of trying!)

From the very beginning, evolution faced strong opposition. DESPITE this, it grew in popularity immensely. How could this happen, if it had no merits? Why did all the biologists "convert" to evolution, at times when it was just a fringe theory? Why did they abandon their previous beliefs? What do today's evolution deniers know these scientists didn't? And how come they are not able to show it clearly and learn from their past mistakes? Don't they understand the concept of refuting the evidence?

Where did Marek 14 ever get the idea that I was not an evolutionist? Has he read any of my several papers or the unpublished Manifesto? Apparently he is one who regards evolution as synonymous with Darwinism. Posts like the preceding one are inexcusable yet commonplace.

John A. Davison

Has he read any of my several papers or the unpublished Manifesto?

Are you working to ban abortion? Oh no, that would be stopping the unnecessary deaths of millions of children.

I don't regard evolution as synonymous with Darwinism, for the simple reason that I don't know what is your definition of Darwinism. And I apologize if that wasn't clear, but the second part of my message was a general rant not aimed at anyone in particular.

Theories are verified hypotheses. Neodarwinism does not qualify.

John A. Davison

GWW,

I thank you for your work that saves lives. I certainly do not agree that the number of children killed in the womb is "very very small" indeed. And I don't know what point you are trying to make bringing up President Bush.

Michael Behe had an ID piece in the New York Times yesterday, entitled "Design for Living". It's tucked away in the "Editorials and Op-Ed: Op-Ed: Contributors" section.

He uses the Mt. Rushmore argument, so it must be intended for a very general audience. Anyway, it merits a response from someone who can write knowledgeably about why ID isn't the innocent pastime he makes it sound like.

Hi,

I got sucked into the whole "Evolution vs. ID" ( or as I think of it, "Science vs. the Barbarians at the Gate") issue just a couple of weeks ago. I'm a Communicator by trade (video editor) and I am APPALLED at the dishonest language and tactics of the Creationists. It's vile. It's . . . almost REPUBLICAN in sheer dishonesty. And I was afraid for those of us in the "reality-based" world until I found The Panda's Thumb and some other good pro-science sites.

So I just wanted to write and say "Thanks!" to all of who are fighting the good fight!

Man, and I try to be so good about grammar and spelling and stuff...

It should read:

So I just wanted to write and say "Thanks!" to all of YOU who are fighting the good fight!

We should all step back for a moment and be happy that ID is proving itself such a horrible opponent. Yeah, I know, the deluge of school boards is upon us, and perhaps just beginning, and there's a chance they'll succeed in the political world. But just take a moment to enjoy how scientifically feeble it is, and how funny it is that morons like Rick Santorum write essays about what a valid scientific theory it is.

But I'm sure I never heard from respected sources about anything called "Neodarwinism". What are the basic claims of that hypothesis, where was it defined and by who? I can't make any conclusions before knowing that.

Actually, I find the classic Creationists to be more in tune with mainstream philosophy of science than the ID crowd is. At least the Creationists have some real testable hypotheses -- there was an Ice Age after the Flood, animals on the Ark were less differentiated than animals today, Neanderthals were merely regular people with ricketts, etc. They have some real hypotheses, which are falsifiable (all too easily!). I love their inventiveness too -- maybe Noah took baby dinosaurs or dinosaur eggs onto the Ark instead of adults (OK, that one's not falsifiable!).

The proponents of ID, on the other hand, are so vague and slippery that there's nothing to test. Mainstream scientests can only endlessly expose ID thinking as being non-science. All they ever do is express doubts about evolutionary theory without coming up with any good stories of their own, like the Creationists do.

As I used to say over ar EvC before they banned me for life - Who is next?
I come to forums in the same spirit I submit papers for publication. It is to enlighten. I wouldn't even be here if it were not for the cowardice of the professionals to acknowledge my papers and those of the many distinguised scientists on which my own work depends. The Darwinians have traditionally pretended that they never had any critics, when the truth is they have had dozens. We collectively simply do not exist as is made perfectly clear by the bibliographies and indexes of the books written by Gould, Mayr and Dawkins, the primary exponents of the Darwinian fable. Darwinism was described by Soren Lovtrup as a deceit. That is not good enough. It was and remains a hoax, perpetrated and perpetuated by those who are incapable, apparently for genetic reasons, of recognizing that there is purpose and design everywhere one looks in the animate as well as the inanimate world.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafaid of Darwinian mysticism.

GWW,

Are you Dr. Scott L. Page? If so, wouldn't your peers and students be interested to see what a nasty sob they work with?

Are you Dr. Scott L. Page?

If so, wouldn't your peers and students be interested to see what a nasty sob they work with?

I come to forums in the same spirit I submit papers for publication. It is to enlighten. I wouldn't even be here if it were not for the cowardice of the professionals to acknowledge my papers and those of the many distinguised scientists on which my own work depends.

Darwinism was described by Soren Lovtrup as a deceit. That is not good enough. It was and remains a hoax, perpetrated and perpetuated by those who are incapable, apparently for genetic reasons, of recognizing that there is purpose and design everywhere one looks in the animate as well as the inanimate world.

He's clearly trying to construct himself a cross so he can climb on up just like his boy JC.

Pastor Bentonit

It is unfortunate that you find it necessary to descend to such levels but it does prove beyond any reasonable doubt the extent to which the atheist Darwinian fairy tale still dominates a gullible pseudo-scientific mentality.

All I can say is that apparently I have found a very target-rich environment here at Panda's Thumb. As I used to say at EvC, a challenge that ultimately led to my life time banishment, Who's next?

Don't be shy. Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

"I am an old campaigner and I love a good fight."

As for why some still support the Darwinian fantasy, let me quite Montaigne:

"We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled."

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid of the Big Bad Darwinian Wolf.

You also Mr Right. For your information I am not a
Christian although it is a fine ethic.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid of those who, unable to offer rational comment, descend to denigration thereby presenting the best possible proof that they have been reached. Who's next?

As I used to say over ar EvC before they banned me for life - Who is next?

Mr. Right or anyone elso for that matter.

Panda's Thumb is not the venue for the presentation of evidence. The professional journals serve that purpose and that is where you will find my evidence in several papers. The most recent of these, in press, "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis," is available online as I indicated earlier. The evidence which Mr. Right demands is presented in two sections. The first is titled "The Indirect Evidence," the second, "The Direct Evidence."

If Mr. Right has not yet considered that evidence, perhaps he should before demanding something that could not be presented here anyway.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid to defend his views openly as long as it can be done without recourse to insult and denigration. If that is impossible, he will be happy to abandon the field, confident that he has won the battle. He is getting tired of being banned. It is much too revealing.

Yeah John Davison, put up some evidence, like National Geographic's bird-dinosaur mising link.

Oh, wait...

As for Avida, it is a piece of cake to model a nonexistent phenomenon.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafrad to express his conviction concerning the nonexistent roles that Natural Selection and allelic mutation have played in the emergence of evolutionay novelty (evolution).

The evidence is everywhere around us. Some of us are just genetically blind to it. Who is next? -- John A. Davison

We're no longer having nonsense discussions at EvC Forum, not even in Boot Camp. Boot Camp is for improving your debating skills while following the Forum Guidelines and moderator requests. It is not intended as a venue where you can just continue the behavior that got you here in the first place. I'm permanently suspending all your posting privileges. You will never be reinstated.

No JAD, it is perfectly clear from what you´ve written here (see bombastic signatures) and at EvC Forum that you suffer from a wee bit of persecution complex. I feel sorry for you, really.

It is a great little forum you have here.

I note that not a single matter of fact that I have ever presented in any of my several papers has ever been challenged. The vast majority of those facts were discovered and disclosed by others. My crime was to recognize their significance and correlate them in a way that is devastating to the Darwinian myth. I have done little more than what has always been done by the critics of Darwinism from Mivart in Darwin's own day to Osborn, Bateson, Berg, Broom, Goldschmidt, Schindewolf, Grasse and finally last and, I freely admit least, myself. I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

Nevertheless, I stand guilty of something none of my distinguished predecessors were ever able to do. I have proposed a new hypothesis for organic evolution that is the very antithesis of Darwinian mysticism.

That is my unforgiveable sin and I am delighted that certain members of this forum have just proved that beyond my wildest expectations. I am delighted.

Your rancor and insults are music to my ancient ears. Who is next? Don't be shy. Vent your spleens. That's what forums are for or so it would seem. Whatever you do, don't address a single matter of undeniable fact. Since that has yet to happen elsewhere, I don't expect it now at Panda's Thumb just as it never happened at EvC.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid; I am even delighted and gratified to have this opportunity to respond to the vitriol of ideologues wherever they may be found. My compliments to the managers of Panda's Thumb.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid; I am even delighted and gratified to have this opportunity to respond to the vitriol of ideologues wherever they may be found. My compliments to the managers of Panda's Thumb.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafrad to express his conviction concerning the nonexistent roles that Natural Selection and allelic mutation have played in the emergence of evolutionay novelty (evolution).

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid to defend his views openly as long as it can be done without recourse to insult and denigration. If that is impossible, he will be happy to abandon the field, confident that he has won the battle. He is getting tired of being banned. It is much too revealing.

I'll take paranoid delusions for 100 Alex.

Why do creationists always try to set themselves up as some sort of persecuted underdog, who's theories are a lone bastion of truth in a sea of deluded scientists conspiring to keep them down? They display their complete lack of publishing knowledge by implying conspiracy instead of lack of merit as reasons why their work isn't published in any peer reviewed journals.

But I guess you're right John. You are Davey Crockett, out their on the frontier, the bleeding edge of science, paving a bold path into the future. Someday you'll have a high school named after you. Good luck with that.

where do you get the original intelligence from?

— Marek14

How could this happen, if it had no merits?

Hubris. Ignorance. Inertia. Strongly held materialist ideology. Letting go creates a vacuum that, so far, only a design hypothesis is available to fill the empty space.

— DaveScot

I agree with just about everything Dave Scott has posted with some minor differences.

Evolution has never been gradual. Every evolutionary change, like all other genetic changes, has been instantaneous. To think otherwise is bad genetics. I wrote a paper to that effect, "The Case for Instant Evolution." Rivista di Biologia 96: 203-206, 2003. The paper is of some interest because the referees were so upset with my Conclusion section that they refused to publish the paper. We compromised by presenting it without a Conclusion section. You can find the unexpurgated paper in the Documents section of Talk Origins forum where Terry Trainor was kind enough to present it. I stand by it of course as I do with all my papers. There is no reason to recant when one is not even recognized by the professional establishment. This is my 20th year in limbo. Mendel remained there for 32 years. I must be doing something right.

As far as evolution being experimentally tested, it is interesting that the Semi-Meiotic Hypothesis, which I introduced 20 years ago, has still not been tested or even acknowledged. Until it has been subjected to experimental testing it must remain viable. Accordingly, the production of new and discrete species in a single cytogenetic step remains a definite possibility. Even if that should fail it will not in any way modify the conclusion that evolution took place independently of allelic mutation and Natural Selection. Neither can be documented as being involved in creative evolution, a conclusion independently reached long before me by Leo Berg, William Bateson and Pierre Grasse.

I see very little in the fossil record suggesting randomness. Evolution has always been uphill with the Age of Amphibians being replaced by the Age of Reptiles and ultimately by the Age of Birds and Mammals. I foresee no new Vertebrate Classes which is only one of the several reasons I believe, with Julian Huxley, Robert Broom and Pierre Grasse, that evolution is finished.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced, unafraid and delighted to find someone who can see some merit in his heresy.

Mutation/selection is lacking observational support in macroevolutionary ability because macroevolution happened in the past, can't be repeated, and works too slowly and/or unpredictably to observe in action in the present. Its main prediction, the gradual accumulation of mutations leading to the evolution of novel new forms, has been soundly refuted by the fossil record which shows long periods of evolutionary stasis then explosive bursts of evolution to novel new forms.

I wrote a paper to that effect, "The Case for Instant Evolution." Rivista di Biologia 96: 203-206, 2003. The paper is of some interest because the referees were so upset with my Conclusion section that they refused to publish the paper.

— Davison

Sermonti, the senior editor of Rivista di Biologia (Biology Forum), professor of genetics at University of Perugia, and former director of the Genetics Institute of the University of Palermo (Italy), and Fondi, an Italian paleontologist, reject macroevolution because of its scientific weakness. [15] "If we wish to keep to the substance of the matter, the new scientific Weltanschauung not only brings to mind the ideas of many distinguished men such as Goethe, Cuvier, Linnaeus, Vico, Leibniz, Paracelsus, Cusano and Aristotle, but . . . the traditional view of a cosmos or systema naturae perceived as a static whole. . . . The result we believe must be striven for can therefore only be the following: biology will receive no advantage from following the teachings of Lamarck, Darwin and the modern hyper-Darwinists; indeed, it must as quickly as possible leave the narrow straits and blind alleys of the evolutionistic myth and resume its certain journey along the open and illuminated paths of tradition."

At least it doesn't have the observed power to give a dog an exoskeleton.

What you propose, in essence, is a primordial organism that is more complex than anything we see in nature today.

Absolutely not. Amoeba dubia, an extant single celled organism, has a genome that is 670 billion base pairs in length. At approximately 200 times the size of any mammalian genome, including our own, I think that's more than sufficient to hold all the preformed information required to construct all the body plans we've seen evolution produce so far. Not every detail of every species of course. Mutation/selection fills in the details. Mutation/selection appears to be limited to scale changes - it can take a wolf and scale it up & down to chihuahuas and saint bernards but it can't give them a different body plan.

What you propose, in essence, is a primordial organism that is more complex than anything we see in nature today.

— Marek

DaveScot's delightful fantasy about amoebas recalls the old preformationist notion that all human souls were present in Adam's seed, which, apparently, was arranged like a Russian doll. Preformationism was partly motivated by a need to explain how original sin was propagated down through the ages. DaveScot's motives are presumably also theological.

O, and to remind everybody once again, amoebas are eukaryotes. The oldest organisms in the fossil record are prokaryotes. Prokaryotes have drastically smaller genomes than eukaryotes. So unless what we have here is the famous ranch in Rhode Island that's larger than the entire state of Texas, something did get added to genome over the last couple of billion years.

So unless what we have here is the famous ranch in Rhode Island that's larger than the entire state of Texas, something did get added to genome over the last couple of billion years.

— Harrison

Evolution has always been uphill with the Age of Amphibians being replaced by the Age of Reptiles and ultimately by the Age of Birds and Mammals. I foresee no new Vertebrate Classes which is only one of the several reasons I believe, with Julian Huxley, Robert Broom and Pierre Grasse, that evolution is finished.

Is that the same PvM that dismissed me with "GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT? I do not respond to those that resort to such tactics. As for Rivista di Biologia, it has been around since 1919 and I owe a great deal to its editor Giuseppe Sermonti which is why I continue to submit my papers to his journal. He saw through the Darwinian myth long before I did. These comments are rapidly descending to the level characteristic of EvC. Now it is necessry to denigrate Dave Scot as well. Not once has a single documentable fact been presented by anyone that in any way diminishes what either Scot or myself has presented. This is not science. This is blind ideology pure and simple. If this is nothing but a flame forum, I'll be happy to abandon it. So far I see nothing to make me think otherwise. Does Panda's Thumb have moderators? What is their role? I probably should have looked into that before I entered what seems to be just another venue for unbridled and of course anonymous autogratification.

Incidentally, the Panda's Thumb is one of the best examples imaginable of the irreversibility of evolution, a reality in total conflict with the Darwinian perspective. The fact that a forum would be named after a book by the same man who described intelligence as an "evolutionary accident," should have warned me about what to expect.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid of the denizens of Panda's Thumb but growing disillusioned with their tactics.

also, by your lack of ability to "forsee", you fall into the same traps as the creationists.

"it is inconceivable that X, therefore Y" is a terribly common trap for anti-evolutionists, and has been since the very beginning. inconceivable or not, it was conceived, which already contradicts such a rediculously illogical statement.

rather, I prefer to see "this piece of evidence contradicts X; now i have a theory, Y, which fits this evidence AND all of the evidence that supported X also supports my Y. show me some other evidence and lets discuss if it fits or not".

your work (what i've read so far) does nothing to contradict the possibility that evolution continues to happen exactly as its happened for the last 600+ million years, including how one species just a little bit distinctive from the rest could take that distinction and magnify it and build a new family, suborder, order...maybe someday a phylum itself.

of course, biologists and paleontologists look at those as simple classification systems to help discuss common traits, not as the be-all targets of evolutionary change. like gravity and relativity, evolution has no goal, no intent. it simply IS how things change. and if its done this well for the last ..., why would it suddenly stop now just because *you* can't imagine the possibilities?

John A. Davidson complains, "Now it is necessry to denigrate Dave Scot as well." I trust Mr. Davidson isn't referring to anything I've written, fond as am of Dave Scott. I'm a bit of a connoisseur of kranks and though Dave Scott isn't up to the snuff of the guy who maintained that all human languages are versions of Dutch or the fellow who discovered that the French literally decended from frogs, I appreciate the originality of the founding amoeba theory.

Dave Scott reminds me of that janitor who wrote an immense illustrated novel predicated on the notion that little girls have penises---I believe somebody recently made a documentary about him. One can appreciate and even revere the devotion of such creative, if loopy, spirits, though, of course, their ideas have little to do with reality. Indeed, the craziness of it all is the secret of their charm.

Unfortunately, not all the purveyors of nuttiness on this site are as lovable as Dave Scott. Many of them are as abrasive and mean-spirited as the Great White Wonder, and they aren't even right.

Jim Harrison
It is not Davidson. It is Davison as in John Davison Rockefeller, a relative of mine. Little girls do have penises, The female homologue of the male penis is the clitoris. Incidentally, although acceptable, the plural of penis is not penises, it is penes. Furthermore it is fairly obvious that you have little background in the biological sciences or you wouldn't be ridiculing the janitor who, for whatever reason, knew whereof he spoke.

Joe Shelby
It is obvious that you know far more than Julian Huxley, Robert Broom and Pierre Grasse about how evolution is going on all around us in that typically blind confident way. Of course you do. You have every right to believe devoutly in something that simply cannot be demonstrated. You are a perfect example of those that Grasse described as pontificating with what he called "Olympian assurance." What we see around us are the products of evolution, not evolution in action as the Darwinians continue to maintain. That any rational observer can still support Darwinian mythology escapes me entirely. Who is next?

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid to comment on those who continue to support the most failed hypothesis in the history of science.

"Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores in the western World."
William Golding

I think Shelby inadvertently described Darwin's Finches as varieties, which is rather exactly what they are. As far as can be ascertained from field observations they are all one species and their hybrids (if you can call them that) are perfectly fit. Furtherore, their bill sizes are freely reversible, something that no evolutionary step has ever been demonstrated to exhibit. So much for Darwin's celebrated Finches, just another perpetuated myth. Who or what is next?

John A. Davison etc. etc. etc.

Little girls do have penises

Intelligent Design is a given. Without it there could never have been any evolution.

As for Great White Wonder, I have no idea what he is talking about and he still can't spell my name right. He probably thinks I am the singer and actor.

PvM's posts are pure mysticism as near as I am able to understand them, which is practically non existent.

John A. Davison, etc. etc. etc.

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores in the western World

So, do genetic engineers on earth have the ability to preprogram a cell (or your famous amoeba dubia) with all the genetic information needed by every living thing that has ever existed and will exist, and instructions on how and when to express themselves? Shouldn't Copernican Mediocrity state that your hypothesis can be validated by one of those genetic engineers named Steve tomorrow? Maybe you should write some letters, get some work started on that.

What is so boring about exposing every aspect of the Darwinian myth as science fiction? What I find boring is hearing the same old pablum repeated at every forum in cyberspace. That is REALLY boring.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid to expose his convictions and those of his many predecessors that Darwinism has and had absolutely nothing to do with the emergence of life on this planet.

"NO SADDER PROOF CAN BE GIVEN BY A MAN OF HIS OWN LITTLENESS THAN DISBELIEF IN GREAT MEN."
THOMAS CARLYLE

Who is next? setemupintheotheralley.

What I find boring is hearing the same old pablum repeated at every forum in cyberspace. That is REALLY boring.

John, please submit one of your "papers" to Nature. If there's merit, they will jump all over publishing it. It would be the scientific coup of the millenium. You will win awards and prizes and be internationally famous. If, on the other hand, there is no merit to what you have written, they might tell you why. No doubt you will cover your eyes and hum a tune, or just claim persecution. Again, it comes down to putting up or shutting up. You bring absolutely nothing to the table. Every single one of your posts have been useless. You want to prove you are a scientific visionary, two steps ahead of the rest of us? Submit papers for peer review (our peers, not yours). The formula is simple. Who's next John? You are. You always have been. You have the ability to shut all of us up. You can sit smugly in your living room with the knowledge you have once and for all beaten evilution. Fame and fortune await. I know science is hard and time consuming, but I think you have it in you. It's been 20 years, time to step up to stop ducking the fight.

Not a chance.

What is so boring about exposing every aspect of the Darwinian myth as science fiction?

which puts him (JAD) in pretty exalted company, being as he is the most crashing bore I've run across at Panda's Thumb.

— Russell

Mr. Right kills me. It is the Darwinians that have been ducking reality from the very beginning. It is they that avoid their vastly superior intellectual colleagues. I keep hearing the same old crap about putting up evidence. Just to set the record straight on this matter, let me put it this way. I have indeed produced virtually no evidence as it was nearly all produced by others.

Richard B. Goldschmidt produced the evidence that Mendelian (sexually mediated) genetics had nothing to do with evolution as it is the chromosome, not the gene that has always been the instrument of organic change. The complete failure of Mendelism to explain evolution was recognized by Bateson in the 20's, Goldschmidt in the 40's, Grasse in the 70's and myself at present.

The undeniable evidence that macroevoluton (speciation and the formation of the higher categories) is no longer occurring was first recognized by Robert Broom in the 30's, next by Julian Huxley (who got the idea from Broom as I documented in one of my papers) in the 40's, then by Grasse in the 70's and then by little old me at present.

The fossil record's complete failure to present any role for chance was first recognized by Robert Owen in the nineteenth century, Henry Fairfield Osborn at the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Broom in the 30's and finally and most devastatingly by Otto Schindewolf, undoubtedly the greatest paleontologist of all time in the 30's 40's and 50's.

The undeniable fact that contemporary species are immutable is even more ancient and can be traced back to Aristotle, Linnaeus, Cuvier and Agassiz.

So you see. it is perfectly accurate to say that I have produced no evidence in support of my views. It was all done for me. All I have done is to correlate, integrate and present in what I regard as a logical fashion the conclusions of some of the most penetrating biological minds of all time. My sole individual contributions, the Semi-Meiotic Hypothesis and the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis have derived directly from the work of those that I have just presented coupled with my own hands-on experimental experience with amphibian developmental biology.

The fact that this rich literature has been swept under the Darwinian magic carpet is a scandal unprecedented in the history of science. It is a hoax perpetrated and mindlessly perpetuated by a herd of atheist ideologues who have deliberately ignored an enormous literature spanning centuries none of which will ever be reconciled with the biggest joke in the history of science. The Ether in Physics, Selection in biology and Phlogiston in chemistry constitute a beautiful demonstration of extrasensory perception since their initial letters spell out ESP. Phlogiston died in the 18th century, the Ether in the 19th and Selection, artificial or natural never existed at all except in the minds of a couple of Victorian naturalists and their thousands of devoted disciples who, for reasons I will never understand, are still with us in the 21st century. It boggles my ancient mind.

I really don't think I can add much more but if something occurs to me I will do so. In the meantime have a nice cozy "groupthink."

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and still unafraid to keep right on exposing the Darwinian myth as the most failed hypothesis in the history of science.

Is that the same PvM that dismissed me with "GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT? I do not respond to those that resort to such tactics.

— Salty

As for Rivista di Biologia, it has been around since 1919 and I owe a great deal to its editor Giuseppe Sermonti which is why I continue to submit my papers to his journal. He saw through the Darwinian myth long before I did. These comments are rapidly descending to the level characteristic of EvC.

— Salty

Now it is necessry to denigrate Dave Scot as well.

— Salty

Huxley was perhaps the first evolutionary theorist to recognize the reality and causal significance of human society and culture: a reality which materialism - by the very nature of its premises - is forced to ignore. He concluded 'that in the future it would be cultural factors, rather than biological, which would determine the direction for evolution.

I am not interested in "cutting it here." Nothing could be further from my mind. I approach forums the same way I submit my papers for publication. It is to enlighten. If some do not choose to wake up, that is just too bad. Bentonit is certainly bent on it to display his monumental ignorance, vehemence and intellectual bigotry for all to see. Thank you for performing exactly according to my heart felt desires, oh most well named BENTONIT. You are a credit to Darwinian mythology. Congratulations. Who is next?

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unafraid to engage intellectual Neanderthals wherever he may find them.

You're not here to enlighten John, you're here to hide. You're here hiding from peer review. Apparently posting about how intellectually superior you are is what passes for evidence in your mind. I have neither the time nor the patience to read more than 10 lines of your web posted "manifesto", but I definetly would take the time to read a peer reviewed article. That way I know it more than likely has been scrutinised by those who have more knowledge of biological evlution than I do.

To be honest, based on the paranoid and delusional tone of what you've written here, I'm seeing a lot parallels between you and Valery Fabrikant. It's a little worrisome.

All my 30 odd publications have been peer reviewed, including three in SCIENCE, a journal I used to referee for. If you haven't got the energy or the inclination to track them down, don't ask me for help. My last eight have been concerned with evolution. Where may I find your works? As for the Manifesto, I knew better than to transmit that for peer review. First it is too long for journal publication and it was custom made to infuriate Darwinian mystics like yourself. It will be published as part of a collection entitled - "The Evolutionary Papers of John A. Davison." Look for it.

I never hid from anything Mr. Right. It is you that pontificate from behind the silly cowardly armor of anonymity.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced, unafraid and absolutely flabbergasted by the abysmal ignorance demonstrated by this Mr. Right whoever that is.

I see PvM (Pim by any chance?), widely regarded as a "sockpuppet" at such forums as ARN and "brainstorms," where he no longer posts (I wonder why), insists on identifying me as SALTY, just another cheap shot from another anonymous coward. While I used to use that handle (it is short for SALTATIONIST by which I identified myself with both Richard B. Goldschmidt and Otto Schindewolf, two of the greatest biologists of all time), I have since, unlike PvM, abandoned anonymity in order to let the whole idiotic Darwinian world know exactly what this physiologist really thinks of them. Thank you Pim. You are precious. Who is Next?

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced, unafraid and having the time of his life watching his intellectual adversaries perform beyond his wildest dreams.

I perused your manifesto, and your lengthy complaint about how the 'thought police' are cracking down on you at the university. You seem much more preoccupied with your own greatness and the depth of the conspiracy arrayed against you than with engaging the academy in a discussion of your theories. Your rhetoric betrays you; the "Darwinian mystics" you think are sabotaging your efforts are ones conducting experiments, publishing peer reviewed evolutionary science articles, doing research, and making new discoveries. In contrast, you are writing unpublishable manifestos that cite lay literature rather than research and complaining about shadowy "Darwinian" conspiracies.

Has it occurred to you that you might be wrong? That your failure to prove your theories might be because they don't reflect the real world? There's no conspiracy trying to silence you; you just have bizarre ideas that don't adequately explain the available evidence. You're trying to tackle incredibly well-founded and verified science with a literal manifesto, instead of productive research. Your failure to remake all of biology in your own image doesn't reflect poorly on that discipline, sir. It reflects poorly on your methods and your theories.

Some of our commenters, accustomed to the repressive "moderation" performed on many antievolutionary discussion groups, will be discomfited by the comment policy here at PT. We don't "moderate" in the sense of deleting stuff that opposes our views or removing inconvenient threads. We do remove commercial spam messages and thread owners may move some off-topic posts to the Bathroom Wall. But that's about it. It's not quite as open as a soapbox on the public square, but it is as close to that ideal as one is likely to find online. Those who don't like open discussion are encouraged to start their own fora; we're unlikely to adopt the sort of restrictive policies used by the other side (note the lack of comments entirely on the DI blog, the heavy-handed "moderation" in use at ARN, and the complete lockout of any but a select few at ISCID).

Colin
I guess you are next as it were. My Manifesto is unpublished and 6 years old. I have no "theories" about evolution. I have proposed two major hypotheses, the "Semi-Meiotic Hypothesis" presented in 1984 in the Journal of Theoretical Biology and most recently the related "Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis," now in press at Rivista di Biologia. In between those dates I published other evolutionary papers all in Rivista and all available online. All in all I have published 7 evolutionary papers. The 84 and 87 papers in the Journal of Theoretical Biology are not available online.

There are no evolutionary theories, only failed and untested hypotheses. Darwinism and Lamarckism belong to the former category and the two I have proposed belong to the latter.

As Schindewolf insisted, it may very well prove to be true that evolutionary mechanisms may not be subject to experimental verification. We see the products of evolution, not evolution in action as the Darwinians continue to insist. I am convinced with others that macroevolution is finished and I see no compelling reason to expect to resume. I wrote a paper to that effect - "Evolution as a Self-limiting Process."

You ask if if it has ever occurred to me that I was wrong. Of course it has and if that is the case why has there been no demonstration to that effect?

George Bernard Shaw once observed - "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn." There is another potential explanation for silence. It is called fear, fear that ones cherished beliefs may be fantasies, that one has been wrong all ones professional life about the great mystery of evolution. I prefer the latter explanation. In any event I have always welcomed acknowledgement in any form from the "professional evolutionists," if there really is such a genre.

Since there has been none, I have taken my hypotheses to forums such as this one. I was instrumental, along with Phillip Engle and Peter Borgher in closing down the ISCID forum called "brainstorms." It has never recovered. At EvC I was banished for life, as some poster here kindly demonstrated, by a membership composed of self described "professional scientists" all of whom remained anonymous. What kind of "professional scientist" insists on anonymity? Can you even imagine such? I cannot. At ARN I post and they pretend I do not exist which is exactly what the Darwinians have always done with their critics - Grasse, Berg, Broom, Bateson, Schindewolf, Osborn, etc. etc. etc. Goldschmidt, a preeminent geneticist of his day, was acknowledged only to be ridiculed. Oddly enough I am at least tolerated by the Fundamentalist Creationists and to some extent recognized by them although I have made it very clear that I do not agree with them. I guess a common adversary can make for strange bedfellows.

While I freely admit to being a Creationist, I am first and foremost an experimental scientist, the first thiry years of whose life was devoted to laboratory science. That experience prepared me for the next twenty years which have been dedicated to the greatest mysteries in all of science, ontogeny and phylogeny. I have every intention of continuing that pursuit for as long as I am able and nothing anyone says will ever divert me.

John A. Davison, unfair, unbalanced and unfraid to challenge the Darwinian fairy tale, in his opinion the most failed hypothesis in the history of science.

That was the first thiry years of my "professional" life from 1954 to to 1984.

While common descent does get "two thumbs up," we should remember that nobody knows how many times life was created not to mention how it was created. I encounter great difficulty converting fundamental body plans and there are great gulfs between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Leo Berg in Nomogenesis postulated "thousands of primary forms" without explaining why he felt that way. Who is in a position to say he was wrong? Not me. Actually, when push encounters shove, we know virtually nothing about evolution for certain. As far as I am concerned the only things that I know for sure are 1. It did occur and is now a thing of the past and 2. Chance had absolutely nothing to do with it and 3. Darwinism is a cruel hoax.

It is interesting that these dialogues, if you can call them that, are taking place on a thread dedicated to Avida, a computer simulation of evolution?? You have to be kidding. Allelic mutations have never had anything to do with evolution beyond the questionable production of subspecies and varieties. Many life forms cannot even demonstrate that capacity. Natural Selection, like the most intensive of artificial selection, is a dismal failure. The undeniable truth is that the entire Darwinian model is a fabrication, an invention of the human imagination, totally devoid of experimental verification and at complete odds with the fossil record, the ultimate arbiter of evolutionary reality, a reality that cannot be denied and remains unexplained.

At the present time I regard the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis as in complete accord with what we REALLY know about the great mystery of organic evolution. Unreasonable as it may seem, we should be reminded that:

"Hypotheses have to be reasonable, facts don't."
Anonymous

John A. Davison, totally unfair, obviously unbalanced and, in his dotage, unafraid of anything anymore.

Dr. Davison:
"I see very little in the fossil record suggesting randomness."

A haiku:
Snowflakes' random fall,
Fills my yard in even depth.
How could that happen?

How would "randomness" be manifested in the fossil record for organisms linked by common descent?

Elsewhere:
"I come to forums in the same spirit I submit papers for publication. It is to enlighten. I wouldn't even be here if it were not for the cowardice of the professionals to acknowledge my papers and those of the many distinguised scientists on which my own work depends..."

John may be here to enlighten but there is a lot to be said about whether his "spirit" -- i.e. his manner of discourse -- is helpfully effective at encouraging this enlightenment. This is like saying, "I'd like to have a thoughtful discussion but I wouldn't even have to be here if all those other mindless a**holes in every other forum where I've presented my idea had accepted my arguments." Does anyone besides John think this rhetorical style and a tendency to haunt highly-polarized and noisy bullentin boards is really the most effective strategy for promoting investigation of a complex, highly-technical idea that would require the cooperation of researchers in numerous scientific fields to validate?

Grasshopper

I am sorry that you do not care for my style. However I think that has absolutely nothing to do with the undeniable truth that allelic mutations never had anything to do with evolution. If anyone is so out of touch that they choose to continue with that fantasy there is nothing that can be done for them. Just go right on discussing Avida as if it were of some significance.

I think you will find that my "spirit," as you describe it, is a direct result of my experience with forums wherever I have found them. You will find my papers, if you ever bother to read them, are couched in very civilized terms, a tactic I soon learned was useless when dealing with ideologues on internet forums.

There is nothing either technical or complex about the transparent failure of allelic mutations and Natural Selection to have any role whatsoever in creative evolution exactly as Pierre Grasse proclaimed:

"A cluster of facts makes it very plain that Mendelian, allelomorphic mutation plays no part in creative evolution. It is, as it were, a more or less pathological fluctuation in the genetic code. It is an accident on the 'magnetic tape' on which the PRIMARY INFORMATION FOR THE SPECIES IS RECORDED." page 243
The emphasis was added by myself as it is in perfect accord with the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.

They were of no significance except to result in the accumulation of deleterious genes which was an essentiasl prerequisite for extinction which, in turn, was absolutely mandatory in order for evolution to ascend through the phyla and classes to reach its ultimate expression in the Mammalia in the Deuterostomia and the Insecta in the Protostomia, the two major subdivisions of the animal Kingdom.

I find it revealing that you would suggest I might use the term a**holes in my communications. I don't recall that phrase. As for others not accepting my arguments, that suits me fine. I am prepared to take full credit for my scientific contributions as long as it is understood that I am the dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants. I dedicated my Manifesto and my published paper "Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Bioloical Information" to six of them, William Bateson, Leo S. Berg, Robert Broom, Richard B. Goldschmidt, Otto Schindewolf and Pierre Grasse, not a Darwinian mystic in the lot and each one a leader in his field.

Am I to understand that Panda's Thumb is not a "highly-polarized and noisy bulletin board?" You could have fooled me. I have yet to find one that isn't so. They differ only in small matters of degree.

John A. Davison, indescribably unfair, obviously terribly unbalanced if not certifiable, and still, unbelievable though it may seem, unafraid of anything.

Davison

I feel I must relay to you what was told to me here on Panda's Thumb about sub-species, varieties, and body forms. One of the usual suspects told me, I forget which one in particular.

Organisms in different kingdom, phyla, class, order, family, genus, or species are not really different. Any difference is merely an artifact of the rules in taxonomic classification. Thus there's no real difference between a paramecium and a pomeranian.

I found this a very interesting bit of logic. Extending it I found that there's no real difference between a scientist and a rock of equal mass since both are composed of the same measure of energy (recall Einstein showed us that matter and energy are the same thing). So you see, the distinction between rocks and scientists is merely an artifact of our classification system.

So if you encounter a scientist here that displays the critical thinking ability of a rock, now you know why.

In post #15984, DaveScot demonstrates why it is pointless to try to dialog with him.

Try this thought experiment: imagine a future in which you've made a sincere effort to understand and respond to his contributions. Now imagine a future in which you've ignored him. How do those two futures differ?

The construction of a taxonomy inevitably confronts limitations and requires execution of somewhat arbitrary decisions.

The species is the basic unit of classification and the only 'natural' one. All other taxa are arbitrary, and therefore subject to changes due to new data or interpretations.

In a Darwinian world there could be no taxonomy. Everything would be a fuzzy continuum, with intergrades everywhere. Nothing in the real world even suggests such a nightmare. There are absolutely no intergrades which is what makes a taxonomy possible. Every chordate shares the same combination of characters. The same can be said for the class, the order, the family and the genus. Furthermore every evolutionary (genetic) step was instantaneous, discrete and unambiguous like every other genetic transformation. I know of not a single recent newly discovered species of either plant or animal that could not be immediately placed in it proper taxonomic niche. Not only that but the evidence is overwhelming that evolution is not even occurring, an assumption fundamental to the Darwinian myth. Darwinians actually somehow believe that evolution is in progress everywhere in utter oblivion of the reality that they cannot demonstrate it experimentally even at the level of the species let alone the higher categories. Don't take my word for it.

"There is, however, no doubt that evolution, so far as new groups are concerned, is at an end. That a small line of generalized animals should have continued on till in Eocene times the Primates originated and then ceased, and that except for specializations of Eocene types there has been no evolution in the past 40 million years, and that the evolutionary clock has so completely run down that it is very doubtful if a single new genus has appeared on earth in the last two million years."
Robert Broom "The Coming of Man" 1933

Without ever mentioning Broom,

"Facts are facts; no new broad organizational plan has appeared for several hundred million years, and for an equally long time numerous species, animal as well as plant, have ceased evolving... At best, present evolutionary phenomena are simply slight changes of genotypes within populations, or substitutions of an allele with a new one.
Pierre Grasse Page 84.

So much for contemporary evolution and, accordingly, so much for Avida, the subject of this thread.

John A. Davison, still obstinately unfair, obviously unbalanced and of course rashly unafraid to the point of making a target of himself. He has a lot of enemies you know.

John A. Davison, still obstinately unfair, obviously unbalanced and of course rashly unafraid to the point of making a target of himself. He has a lot of enemies you know.

In a Darwinian world there could be no taxonomy. Everything would be a fuzzy continuum, with intergrades everywhere.

— Davison

It's interesting that I had no problem knowing what Davison meant with "no taxonomy in a Darwinian world". Correct me if I'm wrong, JAD. He meant if mutation/selection were working as purported we'd be swimming in a sea of extant transitionals. A smooth continuum with no demarcation whatsoever upon which to base taxonomy distinctions.

— DaveScot

PvM aka Pim van Meurs I presume

Fifty five years ago when I entered Zoology Graduate school at the University of Minnesota I was expected to read the Origin of Species but I was never able to get into it. Fortunately, my major professor, Dr. H. Burr Steinbach, felt that I had had enough zoology as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin so my graduate studies were largely in the real sciences of Physical Chemistry, Biochemistry and General Physiology. In fact, I never took a course in Zoology in Graduate School although my Ph.D. was in Zoology. My minor was in Botany and I had courses in Photosynthesis and Paleobotany in the Botany department. I got a big fat F in a course in Plant Taxonomy. I just couldn't handle it.

Your mention of Darwin reminds me of the comment that Weismann was more Darwinian than Darwin and Darwin was more Lamarckian than Lamarck.

The man was a clueless mystic who never accepted the cell theory which had been firmly established by Schleiden and Schwann in 1838 when Darwin was 29 years old. He couldn't read German anyway and Mendel's paper was found uncut in his library. His father was a wacko as was his grandfather Erasmus. His cousins, the Galtons, were rather loosely constructed as well. All in all he was a loser. The co-inventor of the Natural Selection myth was Alfred Russel Wallace who was a vastly superior naturalist and had the common sense later in life to completely abandon that which he had helped foist on the world as a younger man.

All during Darwin's life nearly all real biological science was being done on the Continent, a rich literature about which he admittedly knew absolutely nothing. Late in life he finally explained why he didn't know where cells came from. It was because "I am not an histologist." Don't take my word for it. Get out your handy dandy Darwin Concordance and plug in the word cell. You will find many many references, 90 odd % of which refer to the hexagonal cell of the honeycomb of the honeybee. Big deal. By the way, Monday the 14th is his birthday; be sure to celebrate.

John A. Davison, utterly unfair, seriously unbalanced, and absolutely terrified of Pim van Meurs or whoever it is that PvM stands for.

What I really find amazing is that you would even dream of bringing up his book. It doesn't even have references. It is, by his own admission, an Abstract.

A lot of words to say that you really did not read Darwin and yet seem to be able to make 'predictions' which seem to have little foundation in Darwinian theory beyond being a somewhat typical (creationist) strawman.

Sigh... Thanks for sharing your "insight" with us though, it helps explain a lot of questions I had.

Davison wrote:
"There is nothing either technical or complex about the transparent failure of allelic mutations and Natural Selection to have any role whatsoever in creative evolution exactly as Pierre Grasse proclaimed:

A cluster of facts makes it very plain that Mendelian, allelomorphic mutation plays no part in creative evolution. It is, as it were, a more or less pathological fluctuation in the genetic code. It is an accident on the 'magnetic tape' on which the PRIMARY INFORMATION FOR THE SPECIES IS RECORDED."

I read some of Grasse's dissent over the mechanisms of evolution over fifteen years ago and was surprised at what I thought was his stretched pleading (I don't recall the book's name anymore). In any case, Grasse wrote his dissents before much of our current understanding about the molecular biology of developmental regulation was discovered. I think it was reasonable to suspect that Grasse was probably wrong at the time of his writings, but today, his arguments seem very dated. I recall reading his comments and thinking that the then recent discoveries in developmental biology provided exactly the sort of mechanistic basis for "large scale" and pleotropic variations which he was looking (In one section he asked how tiny, successive mutational variations that produced small changes would possibly add up over time. I thought perhaps he was framing the wrong question). I would agree that the underlying mechanisms of evolution are still not definitively elucidated, but I don't think for a minute that anyone has succeeded in demonstrating that Darwinian mechanisms are no longer viable or have absolutely no role. I don't think we've had the tools or the data to conduct a proper test.

Elsewhere:
"In a Darwinian world there could be no taxonomy. Everything would be a fuzzy continuum, with intergrades everywhere."

Maybe in response to my question:
"How would randomness be manifested in the fossil record for organisms linked by common descent?"

I disagree. Any mechanism that blocks genetic exchange between lineages will split a continuum. Once split, and as long as the division holds, the continued divergence between separate lineages are extremely unlikely to bring them back together. While a point mutation, being just about the smallest genetic change possible, might be reversible, in the vast majority of cases, combinations of point mutations will not be. Now, in a world where massive horizontal transfer is not uncommon (e.g. the bacterial world), organismal taxonomy can be difficult to determine but even there, gene taxonomy might still be possible. It is interesting to note that even among the bacteria it is not difficult to discern many of the taxonomic relationships. In a different world, at least the one occupied by many of the metazoans where horizontal transfer is limited, linear descent rules, and speciation occurs, I don't think discernable taxonomies are at all surprising.

"I find it revealing that you would suggest I might use the term a**holes in my communications. I don't recall that phrase."

Nope, I did not suggest that you used that specific term. Please check the reply again for the relevant context.

Of course Pim van Meurs disagrees. He is a devout, even a rabid, Darwinian. He continues, as all Darwinians do, to clutch at straws and invent meaningless excuses for what the fossil record so dramatically demonstrates. For someone, with no credentials whatsoever, to dismiss the conclusions of a scientist of the stature of Pierre Grasse is monstrously anti-intellectual and I regard that person with utter contempt.

Pim's own credentials have been severely questioned by others more familiar with his behavior than I so they require no further amplification by me. If Pim were a real scientist he would be publishing his works in refereed journals as I and my predecessors have always have done instead of finding it necessary to discuss the papers of a published investigator with such comments as "Garbage in, Garbage out.

Pim's record and reputation have fortunately preceeded his contributions to Panda's Thumb as any one with a passing familiarity with the internet can discover for himself. I recommend they do and add Panda's Thumb to a long list of forums that no longer regard his contributions as worthy of serious consideration.

John A. Davison, hideously unfair, demonstrably unbalanced, and not only unafraid but delighted to expose Pim as the intellectual bigot that he most obviously really must be. Of course, I am forced through his compulsive anonymity to assume Pim is a male. I knew a great gal by that name years ago. She's dead now I am sure, probably from alcoholism as I remember her.

The Springfield Missouri News-Leader ran two op-eds today asking the question "Should intelligent design be taught in public schools?".

Jay Sekulow, of the ACLJ, takes the pro side.

Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church & State, takes the con side.

The concept of intelligent design is not scientific. ID cannot be investigated using the scientific method. ID is not based on objective evidence. ID cannot be falsified through experimentation or realistic predictions. ID is not a competing theory for evolution. ID has not and is not being taught, as a biology concept, in any university with objective scientific standards. ID is not found in any respectable biology textbooks as accepted science. ID is "modern" creationism. Intelligent design is a veiled strategy to teach religion instead of science.

Of course Pim van Meurs disagrees. He is a devout, even a rabid, Darwinian. He continues, as all Darwinians do, to clutch at straws and invent meaningless excuses for what the fossil record so dramatically demonstrates. For someone, with no credentials whatsoever, to dismiss the conclusions of a scientist of the stature of Pierre Grasse is monstrously anti-intellectual and I regard that person with utter contempt.

— Davison

I don't recall trumpeting my magnificence at all and I challenge Colin or anyone else to provide an example from any of my papers. Quite the contrary, I have only offered hypotheses which, being now Emeritus, I am unable to test. The Darwinians don't even test their own childish hypothesis any more. They finally grew weary of constant failure. I have even grown so bold as to suggest (horrors) that the mechanism for organic evolution, now a thing of the past, may not even be amenable to direct laboratory verification. My source for such a heresy was Otto Schindewolf, a man described by Stephen Jay Gould in glowing terms in his Foreward to the "Basic Questions in Paleontology," only then to to dismiss his evolutionary views as being "spectacularly flawed." Gould,like his alter ego, Dawkins, across the pond, remains one of my favorite examples of the ideological bigotry that still dominates the evolutionary literature. When I sent Will Provine my PEH asking for a response, he responded by trotting out dogs as an example of evolution in action. I couldn't believe my eyes. He has also made my "short list" as it were.

I certainly do regard the "evolutionary establishment," if you can call it that, as cowardly. Yes, I plead guilty to that charge. I guess you regard "Garbage in, Garbage out" as meaningful civil discourse, worthy of praise but not response. Somehow that doesn't surprise me any more. Internet forums are crawling with those that employ such tactics as a necessary and apparently genetic component of their communicative skills.

I have yet to have a single matter of fact presented in any of my papers, including the Manifesto, exposed as erroneous. It is only my inescapable interpretations that seems to set off the rabid responses that I have the unique capacity to elicit. That is just tough as they say. This is still America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

John A. Davison, just as unfair as always, certifiably unbalanced and so rashly unafraid of everything that it is just a matter of time before some chance-worshipping Darwinian puts out a contract on him.

I really don't think I can repond to the Great White Wonder. He sounds eerily exactly like Scott L. Paige or is it Page, of Norwich Military Academy fame, who holds the world's record for serial banishment from the same forum, ARN, with the as yet unsurpassed number - five. Whatever happend to the old three strikes and you're out rule?

John A. Davison, just speculating.

I don't recall trumpeting my magnificence at all and I challenge Colin or anyone else to provide an example from any of my papers.

Don't need to look at your papers John. Your posts here consistently end in you praising yourself as the valiant defender of the truth in the face of the vast ignorant Darwinian conspiracy.

Luckily for you (or unluckily if you want the martyr tag), an "Emiritus" with no published ideas of his own in the area in which he now pontificates, not to mention pushing stuff 40 years old or more and probably rejected at that time based on the merits or lack thereof, is probably not a significant threat and there likely won't be a hit put on you.

Good luck in the next Vermont gubernatorial race.

Quite the contrary, I have only offered hypotheses which, being now Emeritus, I am unable to test.

Untested hypotheses are just that. Until they are tested, they aren't anything but a statement.

I have even grown so bold as to suggest (horrors) that the mechanism for organic evolution, now a thing of the past, may not even be amenable to direct laboratory verification.

Hardly "bold" my self-congratulatory friend. Practically every creationist I have ever encountered has said this exact same thing. How many times have we heard about microevolution being observable but not macro-evolution. I've had California housewives tell me evolution has stopped.

What are you bringing to the table again? A un-tested hypothesis?

He has also made my "short list" as it were.

Looks like you're the one putting out 'hits'.

I have yet to have a single matter of fact presented in any of my papers, including the Manifesto, exposed as erroneous.

Is "manifesto" even the right word? A manifesto is generally seen as a political document with a plan and call to action. I only glanced at your paper and am no expert in this area, but I didn't see that part.

Anyway, a couple points gleaned so far.

1. There is no logical necessity for the existance of a creator. An emotional necessity perhaps.

2. Anyway, you asked for a single matter of fact. Eohippus is not a scientific name, it's a common name. It should be neither capitalized nor italicized. The correct term is Hyracotherium.

Some things have changed since 1950. Horse evolution is a magnificent example of the bushiness of evolution. See Horse Evolution FAQ by Kathleen Hunt for example.

Thank you Dave S.
You have now established that you are very proficient at cutting and pasting and that is about all. I don't recall denying that horse evolution was bushy. It is precisely its bushiness that escapes Darwinian interpretation. Virtually nothing of significance has changed since 1950 or any other arbitrary date that will ever serve to rescue the Darwinian fairy tale from its imminent oblivion. It is only on internet forums like this one that it is even being defended any more. Those professionals, whose names are of course by definition known, are keeping a discrete silence about their precious myth. All I see them doing is signing their names to long lists proclaimimg their "groupthink" confidence in the "one true faith." The articles of that faith are being conveniently ignored. So are the innumerable critics of the Darwinian mythology, a distinguished group with which I am delighted to be identified.

Instead of deprecating me and my predecessors, please show me an evolving horse or any other diploid organism. Better yet, send me a preprint where YOUR convictions may be found concerning a phenomenon which has never been observed. Of course that will disclose your true identity. We couldn't have that could we?

"When all think alike, no one thinks very much."
Walter Lippmann

John A. Davison, still very unfair, indeed even bigoted, tragically unbalanced and, like the knight in Monty Python, with no arms, no legs, still unafraid to fight Darwinian mysticism with every fiber of his obviously senile mind to the very end of his miserable life which I am sure many hope can't be too much longer. In the meantime I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Sorry.

As for California housewives having the acumen to realize that evolution has stopped, why hasn't the Darwinian establishment been able to reach the same conclusion? I suspect it is because of the persuasive writings of such luminaries as Ernst Mayr (RIP), Stephen Jay Gould (RIP) and Richard Dawkins (unfortunately still with us). As for the recent sources of Darwinian dogma, Harvard, Oxford and Cornell:

"I would rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston Telephone Directory than by the Harvard faculty"
Willima F. Buckley

We shouldn't neglect those California housewives either. God bless them. I thought sexism was considered bad form.

One of my favorite intellectuals is Konrad Adenauer. Here are a couple of his observations that I feel are especially appropriate to this thread.

"First make yourself unpopular, then people will take you seriously."

I am doing my level best Konrad.

"In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity."

Amen Konrad.

Since I am running out of ways to express myself I will dispense with my usual signature. Have a nice pointless, aimless and of course Godless Darwinian day.

Russell, I think there are only a few people that take JAD seriously. He takes himself seriously to the extreme. All his "John A. Davison, still unfair, unbalanced ..." lines just shows me how self absorbed he is trying to use some bad local tv station's 6 o'clock reporter catch phrase on himself OVER and OVER.

His "no new body plans" is amusing because he doesn't really define "body plan" here....I dread the thought of trying to read his papers and manifesto. Perhaps he can shed light on whales and their transition from Mesonychid which surely did not have the type of ears that we see in whales today.

Granted Whales have evolved over ~55my but hey that's a fair bit of "body plan" changes in my book.

Perhaps he's just talking about vertebrates, invertebrates etc... but there are tons of biological features like organs that have developed since then.

Personally I like the evolution of the ear....because it has integrated structures from other systems in such a way (hehehe sounds like CW doesn't it) that its a good example of taking something and modifying it for a new use.

This comes to mind:

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-04.htm

I am trying to play a little catch up ball here as I was diverted by an attempt to write a paper to the effect that there are no evolutionary theories, only failed and untested hypoptheses.

As for the definition of a species, there is absolutely nothing vague about a species at all.Theeodosius Dobzhansky, a convinced Darwinian and a professed Christian, if you can imagine that combination, came up many years ago with a perfectly unambiguous definition of what a species is. It goes this way. If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species. If the "hybrid" is not fertile like the mule, the parents are different species. Speaking as a physiologist I like that definition as it is crystalline clear and testable.

I mentioned earlier that Will Provine trotted out dogs as an example of "evolution in action." In the Manifesto I referred to Winge's book, "Inheritance in Dogs," in which he described a spontanaeous cross between a Dachshund bitch and male St Bernard. The bitch produced a litter including another bitch who also proved to be very fertile. The only problem was this bitch had inherited her large size from the St. Bernard but her short legs from her bitch mother. The result was that during her pregnancy her belly dragged on the ground so that this "daughter of a bitch" (isn't that precious?) had to have her belly protected by towels during her otherwise very normal pregnancy. God but it feels good to be able to use a five letter word with such impunity.

I am willing to put up some serious money that the offspring of a Great Dane and a Yorkshire Terrier will prove to be fertile. Furthermore that will be successful no matter which one is the bitch and which the dog. You have to remember that a dog is a son of a bitch.
Now this might require, and I say might, the services of a veterinarian, but I wouldn't necessarily bank on that requirement if the parties are agreeable and can pull it off by themselves. I will further predict that if the Yorkshire Terrier is the bitch and the Great Dane is the son of a bitch, she will have fewer and somewhat smaller puppies than if that Yorkshire Terrier is the son of a bitch and that Great Dane is the bitch, in which case I predict with some assurance that there would be more and larger puppies produced. I further predict with some certainty that when the puppies reach maturity, those produced by that Yorkshire Terrier bitch and that Great Dane son of a bitch will be slightly but not greatly smaller than those produced by that Great Dane bitch and that Yorshire Terrier son of a bitch. Do you follow me? All would of course be fertile. I would love to have one, wouldn't anyone?

If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species. If the "hybrid" is not fertile like the mule, the parents are different species. Speaking as a physiologist I like that definition as it is crystalline clear and testable.

— JAD

If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species. If the "hybrid" is not fertile like the mule, the parents are different species. Speaking as a physiologist I like that definition as it is crystalline clear and testable.

— JAD

BentOnIt

Yeah, Darwin certainly reminds me of the black knight too.

Can you imagine needing lawyers and judges to defend a theory against the mere suggestion that it might not be a fact?

I guess when you have no arms and no legs those are the kinds of things you have to resort to.

That's just too funny!

ROFLMAO

P.S. Have you no shame?

Dave S.

Aren't you the least embarrassed that California housewives are smarter than you are?

You predicate your [Davison's] entire philosophy on an unpublished and unpublishable manifesto

— Colin

Any mechanism that blocks genetic exchange between lineages will split a continuum.

— Grasshopper

It has been disputed at what period of time the causes of variability, whatever they may be, generally act; whether during the early or late period of development of the embryo, or at the instant of conception. Geoffroy St Hilaire's experiments show that unnatural treatment of the embryo causes monstrosities; and monstrosities cannot be separated by any clear line of distinction from mere variations. But I am strongly inclined to suspect that the most frequent cause of variability may be attributed to the male and female reproductive elements having been affected prior to the act of conception. Several reasons make me believe in this; but the chief one is the remarkable effect which confinement or cultivation has on the functions of the reproductive system; this system appearing to be far more susceptible than any other part of the organization, to the action of any change in the conditions of life.

— Darwin in chapter 1

Effects of Use and Disuse From the facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think there can be little doubt that use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited. Under free nature, we can have no standard of comparison, by which to judge of the effects of long-continued use or disuse, for we know not the parent-forms; but many animals have structures which can be explained by the effects of disuse.

— Darwin in chapter 4

However, the definition of species you are using has a little problem - it assumes transitivity, which does not neccessarily hold:

Imagine three populations, A, B, and C. Population B can interbreed with both A and C, but populations A and C cannot interbreed.

How many species are there?

It's because of configurations like this (and they were discovered) that the definition of "species" is problematic at least.

Great White Wonder [a.k.a. Dr. Scott L. Page]

If you'd like to know something of the lines of inquiry mostly sponsered by NASA into the time available for abiogenesis you can start here:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22galactic+habitable+zone%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search

I'm not here to do your homework for you, Dr. Page.

P.S. Did anyone ever tell you that it's an unnatural act to strap on a parachute and jump out of a perfectly good airplane? You can quote me on that but make it "Sergeant Springer, USMC, 1974-1980" you airborne wussy.

I feel compelled to clear up a couple of points.

First.

DaveScot asks "Have you ever seen a bigger pile of horseshit!, Professor Davison?"

I honestly have to answer: I'm not sure.

Second.

I never said the Manifesto was not publishable. I never tried to have it published so I really don't know. It is too damn long for a journal article. It took 50 some pages to thoroughly expose the Darwinian fairy tale and that was just a beginning. Also you have to remember it was specifically designed to infuriate the University of Vermont Administration, especially my Chairperson, as any fool can see if they simply read the Preface. It was very successful which is why they immediately froze my home page. They still refuse to acknowledge that I ever taught there (for 33 years) and I am not listed among the Professors Emeriti. The Dean decided that was an honorary title and I didn't qualify. My library priveleges were also suspended until I informed the librarian whom I had known for 20 years. She immediately reinstated my library priveleges. I could tell you some more stuff but In am certain you would not believe me so why bother. I will of course if you request it nicely which at present seems unlikely. In fact I may anyway in the next installment. It is all very simple, I, like all those other critics of the Darwinian hoax, do not exist. It is simpler for them that way don't you know? If you don't believe me just try to find me in the annals of good old UVM. You won't.

Besides I plan to have all my papers published along with the Manifesto in a volume entitled. "The Unexpurgated Evolutionary Papers of John A. Davison." Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? It is just a matter of time and I will be happy to sign copies if anyone is weak minded enough to buy one.

John A. Davison, still incredibly unfair, clinically unbalanced and still unafraid of everything, everyone, everywhere.

Imagine three populations, A, B, and C. Population B can interbreed with both A and C, but populations A and C cannot interbreed. How many species are there?

— Marek

Darwinian are anathema about any experiment designed to test their beliefs. They never work out for them so they just don't do them any more. The last serious attempt to speciate through artificial selection was done by Dobzhansky with Drosophila. He was honest enough to admit that it was unsuccessful. Actually, to his credit, he was that rare exception, an honest Darwinian.

I don't know if "pure" A, B, and C as I wrote about them exist. But there are known chains with much more links. Well, let's look at http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html :

Ring species show the process of speciation in action. In ring species, the species is distributed more or less in a line, such as around the base of a mountain range. Each population is able to breed with its neighboring population, but the populations at the two ends are not able to interbreed. (In a true ring species, those two end populations are adjacent to each other, completing the ring.) Examples of ring species are

* the salamander Ensatina, with seven different subspecies on the west coast of the United States. They form a ring around California's central valley. At the south end, adjacent subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi do not interbreed (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997).
* greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. Their behavioral and genetic characteristics change gradually, starting from central Siberia, extending around the Himalayas, and back again, so two forms of the songbird coexist but do not interbreed in that part of their range (Irwin et al. 2001; Whitehouse 2001).
* the deer mouse (Peromyces maniculatus), with over fifty subspecies in North America.
* many species of birds, including Parus major and P. minor, Halcyon chloris, Zosterops, Lalage, Pernis, the Larus argentatus group, and Phylloscopus trochiloides (Mayr 1942, 182-183).
* the American bee Hoplitis (Alcidamea) producta (Mayr 1963, 510).
* the subterranean mole rat, Spalax ehrenbergi (Nevo 1999).

As you can see, there is several species including their latin names, so it should be easy to search on them and verify this information.

However, I am (and I freely admit this) a mere interested amateur in this field, so my account might be somewhat mistaken.

Marek, I think that you are wasting your time, but thank you for reminding us of ring species. Perhaps Dr. Davison will recall the example; I’m not sure whether this is one of those developments from the past fifty years that he has chosen to remain ignorant of. DaveScot, however, is here to provoke rather than discuss. I am certain that he has been exposed both to the concept of a ring species and to the fact that modern evolutionary theory does not live or die by what Darwin wrote so many years ago. Because his goal is to engender vitriol, rather than to discuss or to learn, he will not abandon false or misleading arguments; he constantly repeats the same half-truths and canards that experience has shown him will cause people (like me) to respond. Every once in a while, someone reminds us that the proper response is to not feed the trolls, but obviously that's easier said than done. Personally, I rather enjoy the exchange. It confirms my stereotype of creationists as unpleasant people devoted to the nourishment of ignorance. People like DaveScot and Great White Wonder remind me not to be too contentious or crass, lest I be as roundly dismissed. I hope I succeed more than I fail.

(I maintain a secret theory that GWW and DaveScot are the same person, playing for both teams to feed a flaming hunger.)

Professor Davison, the response you suggest doesn't sound like the 'establishment' is afraid of you or your ideas. It sounds like you had some hypotheses that you managed to publish twenty years ago that never went anywhere (other than a single creationist-friendly journal down south?), and rather than developing your ideas or allowing them to evolve in conformity with the evidence, you decided that your ideas were perfect and the facts that aren't in concert with them are evil "Darwinist" lies, perpetrated by scientists who are afraid of you. I think it is far more likely that the vast majority of productive scientists have never heard of you, or your pet theories, and I seriously doubt that they would feel at all threatened if they were presented with your arguments. Perhaps that is why you have made such a paltry effort to engage in a discussion of your ideas with the academy—it is trivially easy to pose as a magnificent genius who has cowed all of science into terrified silence when you stay home and don’t compete with productive researchers.

Finally, if you are upset that the University of Vermont has apparently decided that you are an embarrassment, then you are not without recourse. You have apparently decided that the role of internet provocateur suits you better than the role of professor or scientist. If the university has frozen your web page, you can always set up a new site, on your own server, to propound your theories. It won't get much play in the scientific world, but as Dembski and Hovind have shown us, you don't have to do science to be considered a scientist by credulous creationists. You may have realized by now that science doesn't get done on bulletin boards. (Note, however, that education happens here. I often learn about new discoveries and hypotheses from PT and Pharyngula.) I can’t believe that science is your goal anymore, though; self-aggrandizement, false humility, and conspicuous martyrdom seem to be your game, and the internet is a wonderful outlet for these vices. Best of luck, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to vent my spleen.

Darwinian are anathema about any experiment designed to test their beliefs. They never work out for them so they just don’t do them any more.

— Davison

JAD

Please excuse my mistake re An Evolutionary Manifesto

Is The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis available anywhere online yet?

I see you have some published papers that I haven't read.

The Blind Alley: Its Significance for Evolutionary Theory (1993)

Evolution as a Self-limiting Process (1998)

Did Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information (2000) get printed in Rivista?

As I recall the three themes above were all incorporated into the manifesto, right? Is there further detail in the earlier papers?

Professor Davison,

In comment #16065 you quoted Dobzhansky's definition of a species - "If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species. If the "hybrid" is not fertile like the mule, the parents are different species.

My understanding is that fertile female mules are ocasionally produced by horse/donkey matings. This would, by Dobzhansky's criteria, indicate that horses and donkeys are still the same species - if only just barely - would it not? I've also generally heard that particular definition with "in the wild" added.

Marek

The titles of the papers suggest that the varieties in question were not observed to interbreed in nature which is a different thing than saying their gametes are physically incompatible. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that none used artificial means to see if fertile offspring could be produced. If the had used artificial means someone would have added it to the talkorigin faq. Someone will correct me and give me a link if that's not right and I suggest it get added to that portion of the faq.

Bob Maurus

1: Cytogenet Cell Genet. 1988;47(3):134-9. Related Articles, Links

A fertile mule and hinny in China.

Rong R, Chandley AC, Song J, McBeath S, Tan PP, Bai Q, Speed RM.

Institute of Genetics, Academia Sinica, Beijing.

Anecdotal reports of fertility in female mules (jack donkey x mare) and hinnies (stallion x jenny donkey) have appeared in the literature over the years, but scientists have generally regarded them with scepticism. The fact that some of these hybrids can come into estrous and ovulate makes fertility conceivable, given that opportunity for mating arises. In China, where mules are bred extensively for work on the farms, a fertile female mule and a fertile female hinny have now been verified by chromosomal investigation. Each had mated with a donkey and produced a filly foal. The foals show unique hybrid karyotypes different from the mule's or hinny's and different from each other's. The studies make it clear that mule and hinny fertility, at least for the female hybrid, is a real possibility.

The mules were fertile but not with each other, just with one of their parent species.

Thanks, Dave, on the fertile mules

You also said,

"If they had used artificial means someone would have added it to the talkorigin faq. Someone will correct me and give me a link if that's not right and I suggest it get added to that portion of the faq."

I've got a link to a great site with hybrids, two-heads, multiple legs, etc. I'll search it out and post it soon's I find it.

Google ring species.

So nice to see you again novisad, put down your cross and rest a spell.

DaveScot,

Interesting site, http://www.greenapple.com/~jorp/amzanim/menua.htm

Hopefully it'll post as a hyperlink.

Check
Hybrid Animals
Fairly Freaky Animals

Enjoy

Couldn't pass up on linking to this one. The same thing happened in my hometown when I was a kid. I don't remember how long the rooster lived - at least days.

http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.htm

I have no idea where all this cross crap is coming from. I am just one hostile nasty old physiologist who is sick and tired of putting up with a herd of mystics. If they haven't got the ordinary horse sense to abandon the Darwinian hoax, don't expect any quarter from me. I wouldn't give you a nickel for the whole bunch. They are nothing but a bunch of homozygous atheist morons, completely victimized by their crappy genes. If that happens to include you that is just to bad isn't it. I say grow up or drop out of the discussion.

If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species. If the "hybrid" is not fertile like the mule, the parents are different species. Speaking as a physiologist I like that definition as it is crystalline clear and testable.

— JAD

If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species.

Avida has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Allelic mutations had nothing to do with evolution.
Natural Selection had nothing to do with evolution.
Natural Selection actually prevents evolution.
Mendelian genetics had nothing to do with evolution
Population genetics had nothing to do with evolution.
Chance has had nothing to do with evolution either.
And furthermore, evolution is not even going on any more anyway.
How do you Darwimps like them apples?

John A. Davison, hideously unfair, transparently unbalanced, and unafraid to let it all hang out in a frontal no-holds-barred assault on the biggest and most disgusting hoax ever perpetrated on humankind in the history of civilization. He is fed up with being Mr. Nice Guy trying to reason with genetic defectives. From now on in it is catch-as-catch-can and the devil take the hindmost. Is that clear? If you question him or any of his brilliant sources you will be unleashing the fires of hell upon yourselves. He has no respect whatsoever for Darwinian mysticism or for those who are so weak minded that they still support it. If he ever finds out what your names are he will notify your employers recommending that you be summarily dismissed and deported to Cuba or maybe Communist China. Is that clear? He is sick and tired of all this nonsense about his having a persecution complex. From this day forth he will be the persecutor not the persecutee and he doesn't give a hoot whether that is really a word or not. Gird your loins you Darwinian cowards. He's coming after you hammer and tongs.
Geronimo!

There, now I feel somewhat better. Thank you for your patience.

I wouldn't give you a nickel for the whole bunch. They are nothing but a bunch of homozygous atheist morons, completely victimized by their crappy genes. If that happens to include you that is just to bad isn't it. I say grow up or drop out of the discussion.

— JAD

Prof. Davison,

You indicated that you were certifiably unbalanced. Posts like #16107 tend to confirm it.

You are indeed hostile and nasty, but I'm not sure where the pejorative "herd of mystics" came from - they're the only ones who are at all in agreement with you here. And then you go and compound matters by confusing, or conflating, them with "homozygous atheist morons," by whom I can only assume you mean "Darwinists." You're on rare terrain indeed if creationists and "Darwinists" both reject your wisdom.

Rather interesting, and illuminating, what you chose to respond to.

Hot Damn, Prof. Davison,

You sneaked in #16114 while I was busy composing and posting #16116 and popping downstairs to refill my wine glass.

You are truly a certifiable hoot. My only regret is that you pulled most of your (rhetorical) punches and didn't let us know, in no uncertain terms, exactly how you felt about things and us, and what we'd best gird our own loins against before it descended upon us with all the wrath of the Gods.

In the interim - if I've actually got such a weakminded genetic defective as myself working for me, I'm going to go right now to a mirror, as soon as I post this, look myself sharply in the eye, and Thunder Zeuslike, with proper majesterial wrath and disdain , "YOU'RE FIRED!!" before I bring the Fires of Hell down upon my own misinformed head.

Haven't had the time yet to read through your papers. Would you mind telling me in advance if your viewpoint and Manifesto have any contributors beyond yourself, or are you the only brilliant source?
Osceola!

"I have no idea where all this cross crap is coming from. I am just one hostile nasty old physiologist who is sick and tired of putting up with a herd of mystics. If they haven't got the ordinary horse sense to abandon the Darwinian hoax, don't expect any quarter from me. I wouldn't give you a nickel for the whole bunch. They are nothing but a bunch of homozygous atheist morons, completely victimized by their crappy genes. If that happens to include you that is just to bad isn't it. I say grow up or drop out of the discussion."

Great White Wonder [a.k.a. Dr. Scott L. Page]

Of course genetics is part of evolution. I made that point, I didn't deny it. I never claimed that adaptation though genetics does not occur. So, by your argument, science, being incapable of proof, has not proved that the earth revolves around the sun? No doubt my terminology is lacking. But I more or less equate genetics with micro-evolution. And by the generic term evolution I mean speciation

— David Heddle

I stand firmly by every dictum I presented in post 16114 and have yet to encounter a single instance that could conceivably negate any one of them. All I hear is the same old Darwinian pablum, recycled drive recited by infantile parrots. DaveScot, without any formal credentials in biology has more common sense than the whole lousy herd of you Darwinian groupthginkers will ever have. So does the average California housewife. You collective bunch of unpaid clowns belong in a great big rubber room where you can't further injure yourselves. Of course its too late now anyhow. You already have omelets instead of faces. Keep up the mindless mysticism. It is music to my senile ears. In the immortal words of General George S. Patton, who incidentally believed in predestination just as I do:

"War, God help me I love it so."

I warned you morons not to mess with me or my distinguished predecessors.

"Lay on Macduff and damned be he who first cries hold,enough."

I bet Davison weighs 120 pounds soaking wet.

Right,

That much? He's providing several times his weight in hilarity.

I already found us. Two against the herd. If anything belongs in the bathroom it is Avida. What a monumental joke. Just go the bathroom and examine my post # 16114 for verification. Can I take it that Pim van Meurs is a moderater here? So it would seem and probably appropriate to a groupthink.

John A. Davison, unfair to an extreme, unbalanced but not yet institutionalized and unafraid to demonstrate to the entire world that every aspect of the Darwinian fairy tale is exactly that, a quaint Victorian myth first presented by the brothers Charles and Alfred Magillicuddy nearly a century and a half ago.

We better be careful or he might warn us again. On the internet. Definetly a classic little man.

Imagine all the research he could have been doing to prove his 20 year old semi miotic hypothesis.

More important happennings from the UoV: can Tyler Coppenrath lead the mighty Catamounts to another NCAA tournament victory (assuming they hold of Maine for the America East crown)? To be honest, as long as they cover the spread I'll be happy.

For a while now I've been wondering what the creationists are going to do when Intelligent Degign wends its way up the courts and is declared Creationism 2.0 (Now with less Jesus!), and is prohibited from being taught as science. It will be a serious setback. What will they do? My money is that, as good as they are at generating undefined pseudoscience terms (Complex Specified Information, Irreducible Complexity, Ontogenetic Depth...) in 20 years they haven't produced any science, so they will have to drop their charade of creating an actual science, and concentrate on getting critical pseudoanalysis of evolution into schools. They fail at science, so the next step is to try to undermine the real science.

Dave S. Aren't you the least embarrassed that California housewives are smarter than you are?

— DaveScot

I used to be 5'8" and 140 pounds. Due to the ravages of age and good food I am now 5'4" (My discs have disappeared due to years of dissipation and jumping up in down with frustration over Darwinian idiocy) and 154 pounds, a weight I cannot seem to change. I even now have love handles but at least they are not ears like some of my adversaries who spend most of their time in orgiastic mutual gratification. Who is next?

John A. Davison, unfair beyond belief, unbalanced, but he has beat that rap twice (the last time he took his attorney along and they have since given up trying to incarcerate him and he is not kidding) and still valiantly unafraid of anyone so out of touch with reality that they can't see that which is obvious to the average California housewife.

The John A. Davison story just keeps getting better. "They" tried to throw him in some sort of institution. AWESOME. I wonder how many California housewives would let their kids within 100 miles of big John?

More to the point, I wonder how many California housewives believe in the healing power of crystals? Clearly, having passed such exacting muster, high schools must immediately begin teaching Bioactive Crystalline Resonance Theory in science classes! It's just as much science as the religion of Darwinism - the academy of Californian housewives says so!

Avida is a monumental joke.

Listen here oh most aptly named Colon, if you aren't going to accept my pronounements as itemized in post # 16114, I think you better be prepared to demonstrate where they are in error. That goes for anyone else who refuses to come to grips with the real world as demonstrated in Revelations 16:1-14. That includes DaveScot and all them California housewives too: in short every living soul within cybershot. Is that clear? I am through with you naysaying morons. Do you understand me?

Now get some kind of a secret huddle together and come up with some tangible evidence supporting the great Darwinian fairy tale. Until you do I patiently wait for some semblance of intelligence from the clonal denizens of a forum named in honor of a book by one of the biggest phonies that ever inhabited this earth, a professed Marxist atheist by the name of Stephen Jay Gould R.I.P. Now get cracking. I am not getting any younger and I am not mellowing with age either. I, like Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot tin Roof," am sick and tired of all this "hypocricy and mendacity."

John A. Davison, unfair like a typical street fighter, unbalanced but still an out patient, and unafraid to go after Darwinian half-witted atheist ideologues singly or in large isogenic groups as they are the same wherever one finds them. One size fits all don't you know.

The scientists are out to get you John, ooooooooooooo. You'd better watch out! Hold your bible over your head and cry yourself to sleep.

Don't say scientist into a mirror 5 times or one will appear behind you and do unspeakable things.

unbalanced but still an out patient

Great White Wonder

Now you listen here Scott you feckless Darwimp. I'll have the world know that you hold the world's undisputed world's record for the number of times anyone been has bannished from a forum. That is five and that is just from one forum, ARN. The total number remains undisclosed. It is understandable why you also hold the record for the number of aliases which I conservatively estimate at seven. The only reason you are here is because Pim needs someone like you for comparison purposes. You make Pim look good. In fact you make everyone else look good. You make me look like a saint. I am very grateful.

Now do as you are told and come up with a complete english sentence that conflicts in any way with the eternal truths I have presented in Revelations 16:1-14. Otherwise shut your obcene trap and go back to poisoning young minds with Darwinian mysticism at Norwich. You are still at Norwich aren't you? I presume you remain untenured? Send me a preprint or some tangible evidence of your scholarship.

John A. Davison, etc. ect. etc.

Natural selection and genetics have nothing to do with evolution? Evolution has stopped? Wow, you learn something new every day. But don't we see evolution in action all the time, as with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their nylon-consuming brothers? I would go to Revelations to read up on the latest scientific discoveries and find out, but your post reminded me that (for utterly inexcusable reasons) I have never purchased a copy of The Structure of Evolutionary Theory or even What Evolution Is. I am most sorry that these two brilliant men passed away before they could receive the royalties.

To make up for my tardiness, I may buy extra copies and donate them to the local youth center. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Bob Maurus:
"I'm not sure where the pejorative "herd of mystics" came from..."

Myself, I prefer "a tree full of howler monkeys".

Davison:
"They are nothing but a bunch of homozygous atheist morons, completely victimized by their crappy genes. If that happens to include you that is just to bad isn't it. I say grow up or drop out of the discussion."

Dropping out of the discussion *is* the grown-up thing to do.
Bye!

As usual Right is dead Wrong. Right does not realize that I, like every one of my sources, do not exist. That has always been the Darwinian way from St George Jackson Mivart in Darwin's own day right up to Valentines day 2005. I wish those cowardly swine were out to get me. I am ready for them with a load of scientific buckshot that will instantly reduce them to the intellectual compost that they really are. The swine keep dying on me, the rotten cowards, instead of acknowledging that I and others have destroyed them many times over. It is the biggest scandal in the history of science.

Sorry to see you go Grasshopper. Who is next?

Colon

My reference is not to the Book of Revelations but to the book of Panda's Thumb. Post # 16114. I am not a Fundamentalist Creationist you know. Hell, I'm not even a Christian. I tried but I couldn't cut it. I am more of a Spinozan Creationist. Now there was an intellect worthy of my respect. Einstein felt the same way.

Actually Einstein anticipated my Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis:

"Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control."
In the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929

How do you like them apples? Who is next?

Natural selection and genetics have nothing to do with evolution? Evolution has stopped? Wow, you learn something new every day. But don't we see evolution in action all the time, as with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their nylon-consuming brothers?

I see BentOnIt is still bent on it, namely disclosing his total ignorance. It is interesting he would mention the word crow. As you probably know one of the greatest(?) exponents of Darwinian population genetics is an investigator by the name of Jim Crow at the University of Wisconsin where he has been for at least 57 years. The reason I know that is because I took Introductory Genetics with Professor Crow in 1948 while an undergraduate student at the University. He was ranting about population genetics then as he is still now. He is even older than I am. Sewell Wright was also there having retired from the University of Chicago. Man it was THE CENTER of population genetics with two high-powered scientists there together. Unfortunately that is just another Darwinian fabrication. When they found out that they couldn't demonstrate that the individual was the source of evolutionary change, which of course is the reality for all genetic change, they decided, with the able assistance of Ernst Mayr, that fascist tyrant, that it must be the population that does the evolving. Now don't misunderstand me. Sewell Wright had done some real genetics when younger, notably the role of modifier genes in producing coat color phenotypes in Guinea Pigs. But later in life, exactly like Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould, he decided to retire from the real world and spent the rest of his very long life dreaming up silly little algebraic formulas that had absolutely nothing to do with evolution. Why they even named a myth after him called "The Sewell Wright Effect." That is sort of like "genetic drift," another mindless Darwinian invention with no significance beyond the questionable production of subspecies and varieties.Another is the celebrated "founder effect," more mindless mysticism yet.It goes on and on.

Incidentally, Bent On It, prokaryotes are not models for diploid evolution and none of their mutants has ever been able to produce even a semblance of morphological progress or a nuclear membrane. They are a perfect evolutionary cul de sac just like all higher organisms.

I wrote a paper to that effect. "The blind alley: Its significance for evolutionary theory." You ought to read it as you might learn something about how "evolution is going on all around us." What a crock that one is, just another Darwinian fantasy.

Now folks it has been over 24 hours since I presented the challenges in post 16114 and nary a response has appeared to which I might be able to respond. What IS the matter with you people. Have no faith in your mythology? It is a mythology you know.

Are you really a Pastor?

John A. Davison, just as unfair as ever, still frightfully out of balance and incurably unafraid of a "groupthink" that can't defend its idiotic dogma in the form of a single complete English declarative sentence. All he sees is frantic cutting and pasting in a desperate but futile attempt to avoid the reality that they are chasing a phantom.

Um, Hi,

I only recently just learned about Meyer's paper in the proceedings. Can anyone tell me how it succeeded in being published if it was peer reviewed, seeing as how badly written and baseless it is?
Or maybe a better question is who peer reviewed it and let it pass by? Lastly, does peer review mean anthing anymore in this day and age when literaly tens of thousands of articles are submitted to journals every year and the time needed to review them all probably prohibitive. Can we expect more creationist crap to slip by because of sloppy review procedures?
Sincerely
Paul Flocken

JAD I'm still waiting for you to comment on the species hybrids that are fertile that you say can't exists. Maybe instead of popping an aneurysm maybe you can tell me how a Jaguar can mate with a Leopard (2 separate species) produce a offspring that then mates with a lion and has a viable litter.

Actually don't ... I don't care what you think. You, like most creationists, just scream incoherently about everyone else and try to sound like you are the only rational person in the world. Something I have little time for.

If you can take some meds, calm down, and ask specific questions perhaps we can talk but since you seem unable to do anything but try to associate yourself with some historical figures trying to make yourself sound more important I'll just skim over your post from now on. I have more important people like David Heddle to discuss issues with. At least he's not ready for a rubber room.

Paul Flocken,

This has been hashed rather endlessly. As a brief summary:

1) Sternberg (the editor) is a creationist
2) He lined up a few fellow creationists to do the "peer reviewing"
3) The board of the publication has disowned Meyer's piece

As is usually the case when it comes to creationists, it was not sloppy, it was careful, deliberate, and dishonest. I'm sure many here can direct you to interminable threads discussing all the details.

Mr Davison complains that noones addressing his points in posting 16114

Ok lets start with a simple question "what is evolution?"

I think the simplest description of what evolution is is the change in frequency of alleles within a population.

Now lets look at your stated claims.
"Mendelian genetics has nothing to do with evolution."
Mendelian genetics describes the frequencies that we can expect to see genotypes/phenotypes in the next generation. Same goes for population genetics as well.
"Allelic mutations have nothing to do with evolution"
Allelic mutations have a lot to do with evolution. This is the source of that variation, and since mutation is pretty much a random process, this is where chance comes into it. Chance also comes into with genetic drift, and the founder effect.

"Natural Selection had nothing to do with evolution."
Quite a bold claim really on the part of Mr Davison. Simply put, some individuals survive better than others and will leave a greater proportion of descendents. No mysticism there.
Admitedly I believe there is some disscussion about the strength of natural selection, but it isn't the only part to the story. Theres the neat effects such as the founder effect and genetic drift as well.

It's pretty much irrefutable that evolutions is occurring, even today. The really interesting part is how we explain that, such as the theory of evolution.

I think it's pretty obvious that you don't really understand the processes of speciation, speciation isn't the be all or end all of evolution itself. Its simply the result of populations becoming isolated, or adpting to take advantage of new/recently vacated ecological niches.

It makes sense to me to define species in terms of populations that share specific mate recognition systems (SMRS). In which cases speciation occurs where changes occur to the SMRS, so that populations do not interbreed, allowing them to follow their own seperate evolutionary trajectory. How does this happen? Mutation, random chance, natural selection, geographic isolation (allopatric speciation). I haven't really been convinced of sympatirc speciation, not yet anyway.

Oh and I'm not implying anything directed by the use of the word "trajectory." Well nothing more than mught be expected thorugh natural selection, gnentic drift and that random throuw of the die....

You have now established that you are very proficient at cutting and pasting and that is about all.

— JAD

I don't recall denying that horse evolution was bushy. It is precisely its bushiness that escapes Darwinian interpretation.

Virtually nothing of significance has changed since 1950 or any other arbitrary date that will ever serve to rescue the Darwinian fairy tale from its imminent oblivion.

It is only on internet forums like this one that it is even being defended any more. Those professionals, whose names are of course by definition known, are keeping a discrete silence about their precious myth.

All I see them doing is signing their names to long lists proclaimimg their "groupthink" confidence in the "one true faith." The articles of that faith are being conveniently ignored. So are the innumerable critics of the Darwinian mythology, a distinguished group with which I am delighted to be identified.

Instead of deprecating me and my predecessors, please show me an evolving horse or any other diploid organism.

Better yet, send me a preprint where YOUR convictions may be found concerning a phenomenon which has never been observed. Of course that will disclose your true identity. We couldn't have that could we?

In the meantime I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Sorry.

You make me look like a saint.

Trivia question: in what movie do you find the immortal Burl Ives remarking to a water moccassin that is chewing on his arm: "Bite deep, brother, BITE DEEP!!!" Triva question 2: in what movie does the immortal Burl Ives attempt to "retrain" the malevolent pet of a 70s child star?

What I object to about Avida is the simple fact that allelic mutations have never played a role in organic evolution beyond their involvement in extinction. Accordingly Avida is boooooring. I refer you to post 16114 for more information.

John A. Davison, etc. etc. etc.

I would say that if a lion, a tiger, a leopard and a jaguar can all freely interbreed and produce genetically and phyiologically fit and highly fertile hybrids, that they will have fulfilled Dobzhansky's criterion that they were all one species. Of course none of those criteria are really met as everyone knows so I guess we will let the taxonomists have their way, shall we not? The really important point is that those species do exist and as far as Natural Selection is concerned they are, just as Linnaeus and Cuvier claimed, IMMUTABLE. How do you like them apples? Who is next. I'm bored.

John A. Davison, exraordinarily unfair, tragically unbalanced, and still unafraid of the big bad know-it-all Darwimps with which this forum is so inordinately blessed. Furthermore, he finds their childish comments booooring.

I am not being allowed to respond to Great White Wonder. He must be part of the management.

Comment 16065: If two forms can interbreed and produce a fertile hybrid, they are by that physiologically undeniable criterion the same species.

Comment 16260: I would say that if a lion, a tiger, a leopard and a jaguar can all freely interbreed and produce genetically and phyiologically fit and highly fertile hybrids, that they will have fulfilled Dobzhansky's criterion that they were all one species. Of course none of those criteria are really met as everyone knows

Hey Professor Davison WE OWN THIS SPACE.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How did we miss this?
Darwin Day Celebration
Feb 12th was Darwin's Birthday.

You know if we are going to be blamed for being religious maybe we should give each other presents on Darwin Day like the Christians celebrate Christmas. Only thing is Dec 25th is no where near Jesus' birthday and Christmas is really a Pagan holiday incorporated by the Catholic Church.

Interestingly, JAD would have it that evolution has stopped, concomintant with his own appearance as a "tragically unbalanced" life form...

I may very well be a Pastor, or a PhD, or both. Who knows?

Meanwhile, scientists have asked, and are well on their way to answering, questions like:

What are the origins of the eukaryotic organelles, mitochondria and
chloroplasts?

In what way could organelles and their genomes not whatsoever be models of, or part of, the evolution of (diploid) eukaryotes? Is there no way in which the parts of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton that governs chromatid separation prior to cell division could have been derived from prokaryotic predecessors?

Hey Professor Davison WE OWN THIS SPACE.

Hey there Bent On It. We all understand that you might be a Pastor or Ph.D. or a fruitcake or a Communist or a child molestor or you might actually be normal whatever that means. We will of course never know because of your cowardly anonymity. One thing is obvious. You are not your average California housewife.

Hey Bent On It. What is this EngRish business. Are you Japanese by any chance?

You know what's really cowardly? Attempting to fight "the biggest hoax in the history of the world" on a blog (without actually posting anything of substance), as opposed to actually researching and attempting to publish your pet theories in comtemporary scientific journals. You are a coward John. An arrogant little man who contributes nothing.

You are going to die alone.

prokaryotes are not models for diploid evolution and none of their mutants has ever been able to produce even a semblance of morphological progress or a nuclear membrane. They are a perfect evolutionary cul de sac just like all higher organisms.

1) Do you believe that whales evolved from land animals? 2) Do you believe that "God" front loaded all the genetic information? 3) Do you believe that "God" tinkers with life as time goes by?

1) Do you believe that whales evolved from land animals? 2) Do you believe that "God" front loaded all the genetic information? 3) Do you believe that "God" tinkers with life as time goes by?

When the bible and science disagree, science is wrong

— Heddle

Russell,

I have no specific examples. No science about which I am certain (Such as physics, including radiometric dating) is in conflict with the bible.

First of all, I stand firm that Behe's popular-level expositions on IC are much better crafted than the popular-level rebuttals that I have read.

— David Heddle

Still, even though I tend to, and would like to buy Behe's arguments, he of course doesn't disprove evolution. He could never prove evolution could not happen, he can only make a case that it isn't likely.

However, if his original arguments are so well crafted, I find it odd that his fellow traveller in the ID movement, W. Dembski, has saw fit to not once but twice re-define Behe's central concept.

It might be well crafted in your view as pop science (granted some good scientists make bad pop writers), but as a technical argument (isn't that the point?) it seems that a lot is left to be desired.

In response to both Jonas and David Heddle :

Evolution in particular, or science in general, is certainly compatible with god and christianity, depending on what god and what christianity you're talking about.

It's a commonly applied feel-good balm that all adherents to "Abrahamic faiths" worship the same god. I would contend, though, that the god worshipped by hard-core fundamentalist creationists bears little resemblance to the god that Albert Einstein acknowledged. In this view I may be not so far from [shudder] Phillip Johnson.

Then there are all those biblical particulars. E.g. the sun "standing still" for Joshua, Jesus having no human father, heaven, hell... literal truth and history for god #1, metaphor and allegory for god #2.

My god's better than your god, My god's better than yours. My god's better 'cause He gets Christian prayers; My god's better than yours!

Russell, I have no specific examples. No science about which I am certain (Such as physics, including radiometric dating) is in conflict with the bible.

Russell, I have no specific examples. No science about which I am certain (Such as physics, including radiometric dating) is in conflict with the bible.

RGD:

I do not believe the days in the Genesis account are literal 24-hour days.

As for the genealogies, there are difficulties, but for the most part they are resolved when one understands that the biblical genealogies are not chronologies. I blogged about that a couple years ago, here.

Hey Bent On It. What is this EngRish business. Are you Japanese by any chance?

Why would such a thing, in and of itself, be odd?

— David Heddle

Mr. Right is wrong as usual.

First of all it is my understanding that just as we enter this world we all leave it very much alone. Correct me if I am wrong.

Second and much more to the point. I do not post my evidence. I publish it in refereed joutnals. That is what they are for. Didn't you know that? Apparently not. I also present online versions of that published and soon to be published literature for the consumption of those who are both able and willing to read it.

These forums are primarily for my personal enjoyment at being able to elicit the kind of response that you just produced for me. Thank you very much. I don't know about the rest of you but I am having a wonderful time here in the good old "Bathroom Wall." It reminds me a great deal of "Boot Camp" over at EvC. They actually constructed "Boot Camp" just for me. I was the charter inductee as it were. I was not allowed to post anywhere except in "Boot Camp." They also wouldn't let Scott Page post there while I was interred as it infuriated me something awful. I was driving all the other morons crazy with my irrational outbursts. I finally was able to escape that intellectual "Alcatraz" by the very simple expedient of employing two simple English words - "Who's next." Of course I had to repeat it a few times, 4 as I recall. I understand Scott Page has had his posting priveleges restored there now that I am no longer a problem for him or the EvC management, if you can call it that. On the other hand absolutely nothing is happening there now due to my absence as nearly as I can tell. Of course the hideous price I had to pay was lifetime banishment. That really pissed me off because I had an interesting comment on the 5 conic sections which I wanted to present to the math freaks. Yes I said 5. Is anyone here willing to pick up on that one? I hope so because I would love to give you all a math lesson as well as an evolution lesson. I was a teacher for over 50 years you know and I really do miss it.

Well folks that is my history lesson for today and it didn't cost you a dime.

John A. Davison, the most unfair person on planet Earth, just as unbalanced as ever, perhaps even more so and, for reasons even he cannot fathom, still utterly unafraid of groupthinking genetic defectives wherever they may be found.

Have a nice aimless, random or, if you insist, semi-random, compulsively atheistically inspired and of course, by definition, Darwinian day.

This is reprehensible racism. I call for the moderator to step in.

I resent being labeled a racist. I really don't know what more to say.

John: so by your own admission, you're just here to troll. Once again: you bring nothing to the table. You have added nothing to any discussion. You are comically stupid. All you are doing is adding a large number of comments that say nothing. I bet that's why EvC banned you. Not because you were "winning" as you so incorrectly belive, but because you weren't saying anything, over and over and over.

No one loves you John. Not even Jesus.

By the first point, I am affirming my belief in the inerrancy of scripture (which is not the same as saying it must be taken literally.)

I do not believe the days in the Genesis account are literal 24-hour days.

As for the genealogies, there are difficulties,

but for the most part they are resolved when one understands that the biblical genealogies are not chronologies.

I resent being labeled a racist. I really don't know what more to say.

I don't need Jesus, at least not yet.

Just where did I ever admit I was a troll? That is a vicious lie and I demand a retraction or I will throw a petit mal siezure, maybe a gran mal. You won't find what I bring to the table here at "The Bathroom Wall." You will find it on library shelves world wide. I am not winning. I won a long time ago just like Julius Caesar did. You know. "veni, vidi, vici." That is Latin in case you didn't know that. Not so freely translated it means, Mr. Wrong again, "I came, I saw, I conquered." You bet I did and don't you ever forget it. You are pathetic, lying openly about someone you should be worshipping. Who's next?

John A. Davison, unfair about everything, unbalanced by general concensus (what does that mean anyway?)and still heroically unafraid to confront the organized agents of Beelzebub wherever they gather together in synchronous head-nodding concert.

These forums are primarily for my personal enjoyment at being able to elicit the kind of response that you just produced for me.

C'mon, Right; you know that's not the definition of "troll" that JAD's using...you just "moved the goalposts" on him.

Poor, poor, misundertood JAD.

Do you guys remember how a while ago I warned you all that you better start treating me and my impeccably brilliant sources with some respect or you would unleash the forces of Hell upon yourselves? And then I referred you all to post 16114 where I presented the unvarnished truth for your consumption. Later, with tongue in cheek, I referred to this post in the guise of Revelations 16: 1-14, something that I found necesary to explain to some. Well, just for the hell of it, I looked up Revelations Chapter 16 verses 1 to 14. This is what I found to my utter amazement. This the King James version which I greatly prefer as it is beautiful prose.

"And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.

Verse 14 ends with a perfect description of what the Darwinians can expect.

"For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."

I recommend you Darwinian heathen all read this passage in its entirety and recant your hideous faith before it is too late.
Its pretty obvious that I must be a special messenger from God don't you think? I'm convinced.

That's my Bible lesson for today.

We get it, JAD, we get it. You're a spoof. Just keep on keepin' on, o my brother; you've suckered DaveScot but good....

JAD,

The book is "Revelation" not "Revelations", FYI.

I can agree that ID is not science and evolution is.

But what does that mean? ID could still be right and evolution could still be wrong.

It merely says that the methods of ID are more akin to philosophy.

Actually, I think ID is much more applicable to the principles of Wood Shop and Home Economics than it is to science.

Thank you David Heddle. I told you I wasn't a Christian. I'm a Spinozan don't you know? What I can't understand is why isn't everybody? He and Big Al Einstein saw through all this fundamentalist crap a long time ago. As for my PEH (that's Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis for you heathen) and the obvious inability of the Darwinian mobsters to accept it, let me quote Big Al, probably the greatest intellect that ever trod this earth:

"Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion."
Statement to the Spinozan Society of America, September 22, 1932.

So you see once again Einstein anticipated the PEH, this time by 73 years. He also offers the only conceivable explanation for why some will never be able to accept that which is obvious to the average California housewife. They are just "Born That Way," poor things. There is absolutely nothing that can be done for them until we locate the chromosomal site of their faulty genes. I predict, without disclosng my reasons, that it will be found on chromosome 12 quite near the centromere and closely linked to the genes for political liberalism, atheism and diminished intelligence. Collectively, they form a veritable syndrome.

John A. Davison, pathologically unfair, similarly unbalanced and of course still courageously unafraid, marching forward with the banner of Spinoza proudly fluttering in the breeze.

Thank you David Heddle. I told you I wasn't a Christian. I'm a Spinozan don't you know? What I can't understand is why isn't everybody? He and Big Al Einstein saw through all this fundamentalistt crap a long time ago. As for my PEH (that's Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis for you heathen) and the obvious inability of the Darwinian mobsters to accept it, let me quote Big Al, probably the greatest intellect that ever trod this earth:

"Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion."
Statement to the Spinozan Society of America, September 22, 1932.

So you see once again Einstein anticipated the PEH, this time by 73 years. He also offers the only conceivable explanation for why some will never be able to accept that which is obvious to the average California housewife. They are just "Born That Way," poor things. There is absolutely nothing that can be done for them until we locate the chromosomal site of their faulty genes. I predict, without disclosng my reasons, that it will be found on chromosome 12 quite near the centromere and closely linked to the genes for political liberalism, atheism and diminished intelligence. Collectively, they form a veritable syndrome.

John A. Davison, pathologically unfair, similarly unbalanced and of course still courageously unafraid, marching forward with the banner of Spinoza proudly fluttering in the breeze.

Sorry for that duplication. I am computer illiterate as any fool can see.

In the meantime I want you to memorize this little ditty. Now please do as your told for a change.

"Onward Spinozan soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the Cross of David,
Going on before,
Einstein the royal master,
Leads against the foe,
Foreward into battle
see his banners go."

In the immortal words of
Lawrence Welk:

aone anda two anda alltogether now in 4, letsa hear it loud and clear-----

Mr. Davison, is there actually a point to your posts? I see that you are enjoying the role of martyr, but is your intent to actually convey information or persuade anyone that your point of view is correct?

Just curious.

These forums are primarily for my personal enjoyment at being able to elicit the kind of response that you just produced for me. Thank you very much.

1) When the bible and science disagree, science is wrong

— David Heddle

In cosmology, there is no evolutionary force that, even in principle, could have made the expansion rate of the universe "just right", or the relative strengths of the fundamental forces

— David Heddle

how can you ever say anything in science would have a disagreement with the bible?

You make it sound like the parameters of the universe couldn't be what they are by chance. There is nothing that leads us to believe that our universe would be any less likely to be in existence then any other universe.

On our "expansion rate" you suggest it is "just right". This is also misleading.

Like hell I'm a martyr you mindless twerps. I am a warrior, spoiling for a fight, and finding nothing here hardly worthy of my talents which are considerable whether anyone here thinks so or not. You clowns are so out of touch that you actually think I would stoop to present my published words for your perusal when they are but a touch of your pathetic little mice away. Where may I find your drivel? Hell's bells, if you had anything to offer you would be afraid to disclose it because it would be kissing your precious anonymity good bye forever. I have no respect for any of you except for DaveScot and all them California housewives. I don't know who the hell you think you are kidding but it not me. I have your numbers and contrary to what you may have heard about me, I have a memory like an elephant and an ego to match. Tough for you isn't it? Have I made myself clear?

"War, God help me I love it so."
General George S. Patton

Come out from behind your slimy shells you swine. I am ready willing and able to deal with the whole rotten lot of you one at a time or all at once.

"Hell's bells?"

Haven't heard that one in a while. That's what I mean, John. You're reaching. Seriously, your old pal Fran Tarkenton found a nice living for a while shilling get rich quick schemes on cable. You might want to consider that. Judging from the recent photos I've seen, you've got better hair, so you're bound to have at least as much success as Fran did (on cable TV, anyway -- you'll never compete with the Scrambler on the grid-iron!!!!!)

Listen here Scott L. Page you mindless twerp. You have no idea and neither do I about how much hair I have on the top my head because I shave my skull every day leaving only my magnificent scholarly beard as a grim reminder to all that I am a scientist of the first water and not someone to be trifled with. Since you obviously offer nothing tangible to discuss why don't you, in the immortal words of Archie Bunker "Stifle yourself dingbat." You make me barf.

I am a scientist of the first water and not someone to be trifled with.

Prof,

Isn't that "of the first order"? Unless of course, you're obliquely referencing your tendenct toward pissing in the wind or being all wet.

Of course I never advanced to full professor. I was surviving in a sea of dung known as the University of Vermont. As for my papers, it is true they are not numerous but they are published in the best journals. I can state with some certainty that no other member of the entire University faculty, including the College of Medicine, the only half way decent college in the whole dump, published three solo authored papers in Science, probably the most widely distributed scientific journal in the world with the possible exception of Nature. These transparently personal attacks are living proof that you morons have nothing tangible to offer anyone. I am still waiting for a single rational response to my post # 16114. All you jerks are capable of is hurling snot balls from behind your slimy shields. You make me physically sick.

Besides, you have to remember that I am by choice and nature a genetic sonofabitch, not some muck-sucking sycophant. Suffering salamnders, if number of papers ever meant anything you clowns would never have heard of Gregor Mendel. You should read his papers some day and ask yourself how in God's name he ever did it especially when he had to deal with that homozygous asshole Carl Nageli, the czar of European botany. What a schmuck he was. He was the 19th century equivelent of Ernst Mayr, an arrogant militant moron. I discussed that whole sordid affair in my paper "Is Evolution Finished?" I know exactly how Mendel must have felt as I have had to deal with those same sorts of amoral slimebags all my professional life. Its a damn good thing that I enjoy that sort of thing. No wonder everybody hates my guts. They empty their bowels and stain themselves every time my time my name come up. I'm pleased as punch. To paraphrase Martin Luther, that racist bigot, you may remember he said:

"When I pass wind in Wittenberg they can smell it in Rome."

"When I pass wind in Burlington Vermont, they can smell it in Oxford and Harvard."

The trouble is the swine keep dying on me, first Gould then finally Mayr. Now only those imbeciles Dawkins and Provine remain. Dawkins is without doubt the biggest con artist in the history of science and Provine doesn't have a clue. They are both already draped in omelets and, judging from their recent silence, are finally realizing it. You have no idea how gratifying it is for me to be in on the kill like this. Before I am through with these degenerates they will wish they never heard of Leo Berg, Pierre Grasse, Otto Schindewolf and all the other of my predecessors that they still can't recognize without committing professional suicide in the process. What a highly organized collection of arrogant mindless anti-intellectual garbage they really are. There are literally thousands of them including virtually all of you except for DaveScot and all them California housewives, bless their souls, all smugly pretending their critics never existed. It is the greatest hoax in the history of western civilization.

I am just getting warmed up. One of the greatest virtues of getting really old is that you just don't give a damn any more. It is wonderful to be able to be completely straightforward in a world teeming with intellectual, moral and ethical damn fools. I just wish I had started earlier. This forum, like EvC, is a great training ground for what is in the immediate future for the "professional" crud balls. I am very grateful for this opportunity to hone my skills as it were. Thank you all so very much. It means a great deal to me and I have every intention of mentioning you all, by alias of course, in a forthcoming work.

You jerks don't phase me with these infantile attacks on my competence and character. You are just a huge collection of unfulfilled sociopathic nobodies with nothing else in your empty lives but the autogratification you get from denigrating your intellectual superiors. You better keep your traps shut about my sources or I'll turn you all in to the FBI as security risks. Of course you have made that quite impossible haven't you with your cowardly anonymity. What a collection of losers.

Who is next to denigrate rather than respond to my post 16114?

John A. Davison, gleefully unfair, unbalanced by senile dementia and not only unafraid but enjoying his waning years immensely in the greatest thrill any scientist can ever experience, the destruction of a defective hypothesis and replacing it with one infinitely more sound.

In the words of Gregor Mendel:

Meine Zeit wird schon kommen!

The problem with materialism is that it rules out Christianity so completely that it is not even a live option. Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration.

Hence, within my scheme, "specified complexity" or "specified improbability" becomes the key to identifying intelligence. This concept, however, is rigorously developed, as evidenced by the fact that my book on design detection was published as a research monograph with a mainstream academic publisher (The Design Inference, Cambridge University Press, in their series Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory--note that I cite the Wilson and Weldon book here). Morris's concept or organized complexity, by contrast, was never rigorously developed and is the reason that, to this day, it has no traction within the scientific community.

Avida has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. Allelic mutations had nothing to do with evolution. Natural Selection had nothing to do with evolution. Natural Selection actually prevents evolution. Mendelian genetics had nothing to do with evolution Population genetics had nothing to do with evolution. Chance has had nothing to do with evolution either. And furthermore, evolution is not even going on any more anyway. How do you Darwimps like them apples? John A. Davison, hideously unfair, transparently unbalanced, and unafraid to let it all hang out in a frontal no-holds-barred assault on the biggest and most disgusting hoax ever perpetrated on humankind in the history of civilization. He is fed up with being Mr. Nice Guy trying to reason with genetic defectives. From now on in it is catch-as-catch-can and the devil take the hindmost. Is that clear? If you question him or any of his brilliant sources you will be unleashing the fires of hell upon yourselves. He has no respect whatsoever for Darwinian mysticism or for those who are so weak minded that they still support it. If he ever finds out what your names are he will notify your employers recommending that you be summarily dismissed and deported to Cuba or maybe Communist China. Is that clear? He is sick and tired of all this nonsense about his having a persecution complex. From this day forth he will be the persecutor not the persecutee and he doesn't give a hoot whether that is really a word or not. Gird your loins you Darwinian cowards. He's coming after you hammer and tongs. Geronimo! There, now I feel somewhat better. Thank you for your patience.