IDist "Just Not-So Stories"

I wd have punctuated it differently: "All ID [creationism] has is just 'not-so stories.'" They are not-so stories, by analogy with just-so stories. I may plagiarize that mercilessly.

We need to get some T-shirts going.

Nice emendation. Plagiarize at will -- I'm sure John won't mind.

RBH

ID: Just say No(t-so)

Actually it would have to be "just-not-so stories."

I am struck by IDists argument that the designer is a human, not some supreme being. All of their objects are machines that humans have made. Vico (Scineza Nuova, 1744), whom Toulman (p.128) called the "Mendel of (scientific) history," saw this 250 years ago,

"When men are ignorant of natural causes producing things, and cannot even explain them by analogy with similar things, they attribute their own nature to them. So the vulgar, for instance, say that the magnet loves iron,"

"I wd have punctuated it differently: "All ID [creationism] has is just 'not-so stories.'" They are not-so stories, by analogy with just-so stories. I may plagiarize that mercilessly."

Hey, a fellow punctuation fan! I haven't entirely decided how to punctuate that. My challenger talked about "evolution's 'just-so' stories'". "just-(not so) stories" might work, though it's a bit ugly. Plagiarize away!

I just finished "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," and I now spaz whenever I think I have to use a comma. Is there such a thing as comma paralysis?

RBH

Is there such a thing as comma paralysis?

Some writers, put commas, in a lot of places, where they don't belong. I call these writers, comma-kazes, reading their writing, and their run-on sentences, leaves me, comma-tose.

I think we need to use a Kiplingesque illustration: "How the elephant didn't get his trunk", and so forth, over the title "ID: Not-So Stories":

The greatest arguments my wife and I have are over punctuation. She goes by the Chicago Manual of Style; I punctuate by feel.

Does that mean you don't argue much, or that she smashes dishes when you misplace a comma?

Evolution: Just say No(t-so)

There is no support for an evolving from amino acid to cell.

As such you cannot claim any backing from science for your religious belief that life grew from nothing.

ID which claims that life did not come from nothing is on an EQUAL footing with evolution.

Both theories have an inability to predict future developments. Evolution predicts multiple different future developments and then is proven mostly wrong and changes to meet the data. ID is proven wrong and changes to meet the data.

All the ridicule you aim at ID comes back at you.

You have a religious belief that there is no God.

You use this belief to argue that since your theory of how cells came to be is the only one that involves no God that it must be science.

Its pure cult kool-aid and nothing at all to do with science.

Evolution: Just say No(t-so)

Perhaps you, DonkeyKong, can tell us of a time when ID has been proven wrong and changed to meet the data?

Guthrie

Your side is claiming that it speaks for science.

Scientific theories care NOTHING for what the "other side" is doing.

You are engaging in philosophy/religion when you do.

Stick to your theory and your observations. When they are insufficient to show what you want them to show then be honest and say you don't know.

Scientists DON'T KNOW how genetic sequences evolve into longer and more complicated and more vital genetic sequences IF AT ALL.

Scientists DON'T KNOW how the first cellular organism came to be. They can date the first known observation of the smallest organism and then can tell us what enviornment they occupied.

But at the end of the day they DON'T KNOW.

Pretending to know in order to say that it wasn't a GOD that did it is a form of religious belief.

As such your side is less the evolutionists as the ANTI-CREATIONISTS.

Pardon?

YOu said:
"ID is proven wrong and changes to meet the data."

I asked you for an example. I'm waiting.

Evolutionary arguments are based on "observable" processes? Great! Maybe you can help me out.

Please name one process of speciation that has been observed. If there is more than one, just name one.

Please respond quickly. I need help completing my scrapbook on evolution. My pages are full of great examples of evolution within a species (those poor black moths, unfortunate finches, and, of course, people). But I don't have anything on my page labeled "Observed Speciation".

Please help! Send your example stating what species you observed, where you observed it, and who can corroborate your story. (Corroboration is necessary because I have run down many false leads of purported observations.)

Thanks millions. Send to the address below.

ID-Claire@hotmail.com

Evolutionary arguments are based on "observable" processes? Great! Maybe you can help me out. Please name one process of speciation that has been observed. If there is more than one, just name one.

RBH

If Rhagoletis is now two species why is only one species name offered? Isn't this just one more example of "incipient" speciation, in other words, a process not yet completed? Even if such a process could be demonstrated as a speciation mechanism, is anyone weak minded enough to imagine that such processes will somehow produce genera, orders, classes and phyla? For all practical purposes evolution is finished and has been for quite some time. I have summarized that evidence elsewhere.

"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."
Pierre Grasse page 243

Avida is a monumental joke. Allelic substitution never had anything to do with evolution except to ultimately cause extinction when too many defective genes accumulated. Of course that was important because without extinction there never could have been evolution. Today we see only extinction at rates conservatively estimated at 20,000 per annum. Where are the new forms folks? The answer is that there aren't any and won't be, not now, not ever. Evolution (phylogeny), like the development of the individual (ontogeny) has been a self limiting, self terminating phenomenon. Every tangible scrap of evidence supports that conclusion. To think otherwise is pure fantasy. Now every one can carry right on living in a non-existent Darwinian world.

John A. Davison

Davison, you're a little older than I am. We were both born before WWII, we both remember it (I remember my dad and uncle being in it) and we're both multiple decades older than most of the participants on this blog, so I can tell you this straight in the interest of the reputation of the relatively few official senior citizens around here: Learn something new! I've found that it does wonders for aging cognitive faculties. I'm into my mid-60s and I spent seven hours today learning to operate the new (well, it's actually refurbished, but it's new to us) ladder truck my volunteer fire department recently acquired. Get off your ass, get out of the house, and learn to drive a truck. The view is great from 75 feet up the ladder.

RBH

RBH wrote (sorry, I haven't mastered those nice quote boxes):

"I'll leave aside Claire's conflation of "process" (as in the processes that produce speciation) and "event" (the occurrence of speciation)."

Point taken. Fair enough. However I would settle for any observations of either. I believe that in your very excellent answer is a tacit admission that there are, in fact, no observations of either a process or an event. All of your links point to works in progress. And all the works in process are intelligently designed simulations of what might have been. Super work, but a poor substitute for a real observation. No?

If there were actual observed instances, why do computer simulations? (And, if I might humbly say so, a computer simulation is actually a spot-on example of intelligent design (assuming you or someone like you did the programming.))

On that note, I agree that Avida is a joke. I wouldn't push that one too far if I were an evolutionist. An intelligently designed computer program that proves that ... computers work??? The "rewards" various "organisms" receive in Avida look suspiciously like Dawkins' "target phrase" or Davies' "pleasing sounds". Such parlor tricks leave us heretics amused.

Alas, my scrapbook page on "Observed Speciation" must remain a big blank.

You all are great.

Claire

Please name one process of speciation that has been observed.

— Claire Bonet

With respect to organic evolution, the first stop, of course, is TalkOrigins here and here.

— RBH

All of your links point to works in progress. And all the works in process are intelligently designed simulations of what might have been...Alas, my scrapbook page on "Observed Speciation" must remain a big blank. (emphasis added)

— Claire Bonet

I believe that in your very excellent answer is a tacit admission that there are, in fact, no observations of either a process or an event. All of your links point to works in progress. And all the works in process are intelligently designed simulations of what might have been. Super work, but a poor substitute for a real observation. No?

On that note, I agree that Avida is a joke. I wouldn't push that one too far if I were an evolutionist. An intelligently designed computer program that proves that . . . computers work??? The "rewards" various "organisms" receive in Avida look suspiciously like Dawkins' "target phrase" or Davies' "pleasing sounds". Such parlor tricks leave us heretics amused.

Isn't this just one more example of "incipient" speciation, in other words, a process not yet completed?

— John A. Davison

the process by which one or more populations of a species become genetically different enough to form a new species. The process often requires populations to be isolated for a long period of time.

The creation of a species through the splitting of one species into two or more, through descent

—

Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).

— Talk.Origins