Does Big Science Know What Science Is? (the philosophy of science)

[Petr]

Time to put Scientists to their rightful place - Philosophers rule!

:p


http://creationsafaris.com/crev200512.htm#20051211a


Does Big Science Know What Science Is?

12/11/2005

How well do the leaders of the world’s major scientific institutions understand the nature of science? This rather audacious question is occasioned by recent statements by scientific leaders that might raise the eyebrows of some philosophers of science.

No serious philosopher of science denies the benefits wrought by medicine, physics, chemistry and biology; after all, science took us to the moon. But “Science is one of those troublesome nouns that seems to convey too little by standing for too much,” said philosopher Daniel J. Robinson in a lecture on philosophy of science.1 A philosopher with a deep respect for science, Robinson nonetheless went on to illustrate widespread disagreement among the world’s foremost philosophers of science as to just what it is, and how science can be distinguished from non-science. Though few would see trouble classifying physics and chemistry as sciences, what about economics, political science, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and what earlier generations referred to as moral science? Because of its many achievements, the word science has taken on an aura of honor and authority that can be misconstrued, as with the cults of Christian Science, Science of Mind, and Scientology. Yet the need for precise definitions and criteria are often overlooked by practicing scientists. Without clarity, using a broad-brush term like science can obscure rather than enlighten a discussion.

Much of the controversy over the status of Intelligent Design (ID) revolves around the definition of science. This came to the forefront in the Kansas school board decision to change the definition from “natural explanations for phenomena” (05/18/2005) to “explanations for natural phenomena” (11/08/2005) To many evolutionists, this was a sneaky way for creationists to open the door for “supernatural” explanations in science. Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences now at UC San Francisco, underscored that point of contention forcefully in a commentary in Cell about science education that he gave the alarming title, “A Wakeup Call for Science Faculty.”2

We have recently received a wakeup call. A new survey finds that two-thirds of Americans agree with some of our political leaders that “intelligent design theory” should be taught as an alternative scientific explanation of biological evolution. What does this mean? According to intelligent design theory, supernatural forces acting over time have intervened to shape the macromolecules in cells, thereby forming them into the elegant protein machines that drive a cell’s biochemistry (Alberts, 1998). In other words, at least from time to time, living things fail to obey the normal laws of physics and chemistry.

(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The 1998 reference was to his earlier paper in Cell titled, “The cell as a collection of protein machines: preparing the next generation of molecular biologists,” in which Alberts said, “the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines” (01/09/2002). This quote got him into some trouble because it has been widely quoted by intelligent design proponents. Clearly, Alberts and other evolutionary biologists do not dispute the existence of biological machinery that looks designed; the question is whether these natural objects can have natural explanations. The quotation above also begs the question whether intelligence (the explanatory agent in “intelligent design”) necessarily denotes a “supernatural force,” or to what extent intervention can be natural, unnatural, or supernatural.

“Natural,” too, is one of those words with multiple meanings, depending on the context. Intellectual historian Alan Charles Kors demonstrated this point by listing several ways the word “nature” has been used historically in science and philosophy.3 Most scientists assume that nature refers to anything empirically observed: anything not “supernatural” is “natural,” in this view. But nature can also mean a statistical norm: i.e., the usual action or behavior of something: for instance, it is natural for parents to care for their children. Natural in this sense can have moral content and is not necessarily the opposite of supernaturalism. “Finally,” his notes state, “we can understand nature as essence (that which distinguishes the creature from all other things).” For example, when humans use their distinguishing faculty called reason to interact with the world, that behavior can be called natural; failing to use reason would certainly not be considered supernatural, but rather unnatural.

That raises additional questions. Does reason qualify as a “natural” phenomenon? If it is subsumed under the laws of chemistry and physics alone, is it really reason? Or does the observation of unnatural things fall within the realm of science? Scientists can quickly fall into traps when trying to define science and natural too narrowly. They might rule existing scientific studies, like abnormal psychology (11/13/2005), out of court, or even deny the validity of their own conclusions. Yet the black-and-white meanings sufficed for Alberts to rule out intelligent design by definition. Having summarily dispensed with ID, he appealed to emotional arguments to suggest that only evolutionary biology can cure cancer:

Teaching intelligent design theory in science class would demand nothing less than a complete change in the definition of science. This definition would give those of us who are scientists an “easy out” for the difficult problems we are trying to solve in our research. For example, why spend a lifetime, constrained by the laws of physics and chemistry, trying to obtain a deep understanding of how cells accumulate mutations and become cancerous if one can postulate a supernatural step for part of the process? Yet we can be certain that, without the deep understanding that will eventually come from insisting on natural explanations, many powerful cancer therapies will be missed.

This argument, however, also begs the question whether physical and chemical laws fully explain biological behavior, such as how cells accumulate mutations and become cancerous. With computers, by analogy, it is clear that the silicon, plastic, glass and metal are “natural” (empirically observable) objects subject to the laws of chemistry and physics – drop a computer from a height, and it will fall at 32 feet per second per second and obey the second law of thermodynamics – yet an important part of the “nature” of the computer, its essence as a device to run intelligently-designed software, would be overlooked. Knowing the physics and chemistry of the hardware would not help debug the software.

In biology, mathematically-precise laws are hard to come by. The Harvard Law states cynically, “Given precise conditions of heat, pressure and temperature, the organism does what it darn well pleases.” Physics and biology are both classed as sciences, but the latter envies the elegant and deterministic equations of the former. Even Mendel’s equations of inheritance and the Hardy-Weinberg Law are statistical in nature, with many exceptions. The attempt to formalize evolutionary theory with mathematical rigor is fraught with problems and anomalies (see 10/26/2005, 10/01/2005, 08/19/2005). Conversely, modern theoretical physicists delve into questions not amenable to observation, like string theory and multiverses, and even write elegant equations about conceptual frameworks that might be dubbed “super”natural (because they lack empirical verification even in principle). To Alberts, however, more dogmatic assertions and emotional appeals suffice to restate the obvious, provided the words science and natural are left undefined:

The idea that intelligent design theory could be part of science is preposterous. It is of course only by insisting on finding natural causes for everything observed in nature that science has been able to make such striking advances over the past 500 years. There is absolutely no reason to think that we should give up this fundamental principle of science now. Two-thirds of Americans might seem to have no real idea of what science is, nor why it has been so uniquely successful in unraveling the truth about the natural world. As I write, the Kansas State Board of Education has just changed the definition of science in revisions to the Kansas State Science Standards to one that does not include “natural explanations” for natural phenomena. What more proof do we need for the massive failure of our past teaching of biology, physics, chemistry, and earth sciences at high schools, colleges, and universities throughout the United States?

Sparing Dr. Alberts the additional challenge of defining the words truth and reason, it seems premature to expect readers of Cell to charge out on his proposed crusade without knowing where they are going. He called on scientists to “completely redesign our undergraduate introductory science courses, so that all students come into direct contact with science as inquiry and are forced to develop their own understanding of what science is, and what it is not.” Alberts praised the approach of teaching “science as inquiry,” which stresses the finding answers rather than memorizing rote facts. This will be the demise of Intelligent Design, he assures: “It is through the careful analysis of why intelligent design is not science that students can perhaps best come to appreciate the nature of science itself.” This seems to do little more than reinforce definitions: we define science in such a way that intelligent design is not science, and that explains the nature of science – i.e., the only alternative, methodological naturalism. The reason why inquiry should be restricted to natural causes, furthermore, he failed to make clear.

Throughout 2005, other leaders of large scientific institutions, such as Lord May of the Royal Society (11/30/2005), Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (07/11/2005, 02/11/2005), and the editors of Science and Nature (09/28/2005, 08/13/2005, 08/10/2005, 05/19/2005, 04/27/2005) have echoed sentiments similar to those of Bruce Alberts (03/24/2005) Recognizing that early scientists referred to themselves as “natural philosophers,” perhaps this demonstrates the evolutionary principle of allopatric speciation by geographical isolation between the science and philosophy departments. Or was that by design?

-------------------------------

1 Daniel J. Robinson, “Philosophy of science,” The Great Ideas of Philosophy, The Teaching Company, 2002.

2 Bruce Alberts, “Commentary: A Wakeup Call to Science Faculty,” Cell, Vol 123, 739-741, 2 December 2005.

3 Alan Charles Kors, lecture 18, “Bishop Joseph Butler and God’s Providence,” The Birth of the Modern Mind, The Teaching Company, 1998.


It is probably common for scientists to go through their entire educational career without a single philosophy of science class. Elementary and junior high schools often teach a Baconian view: just collect lots of facts, make observations, write a hypothesis, test it, take notes, and produce a science project to attract the attention of the judges and give Mom and Dad something to brag about. High school science is similar; science is what the textbook says and what scientists do. The budding scientist goes right into the university and starts taking calculus, astrophysics, biology or whatever, gets a degree, narrows his or her studies in grad school, gets a PhD, gets a job, and goes into a career – all without knowing what science is.

Your commentator took years of science classes where the definition of science and nature were just assumed, or else were given simplistic Elizabethan definitions with no mention of the subsequent revolutions. The work consisted of math and word problems, homework, tests, experiments, memorization, projects, term papers and the like; rare was the teacher or professor who ever asked what is science?. This pattern was given a jolt in a one-semester elective on Philosophy of Science. The professor began by listing half a dozen well-known scientific facts on the chalkboard and proceeded to tell the class how all of them were untrue. He also brought up disturbing questions about how we know what we know, how much the experimental apparatus perturbs the phenomenon under investigation, whether models accurately reflect reality, and why new theories have such a hard time getting a hearing. This professor was also fond of pointing out how few scientists he knew actually thought about such questions. Scientists, in general, hate philosophers. They don’t like someone telling them what they can or cannot do. Philosophers upset their equilibrium. They hurt their self-esteem. They react in a huff, “It takes a scientist to know what science is.” Yet even feeling that way presupposes a philosophy of science.

To be sure, scientists have an impressive track record like space travel, cures for infectious disease and the Human Genome Project (11/20/2005) to argue that what they are doing explains reality and produces useful results. The problem is that these known successes are fairly limited to present-day, empirically-observable and repeatable phenomena. Science Departments are not content to restrict their inquiries to these. They want control of mind, psychology of morals and religion (Robert Winston, 10/13/2005), art, history, the origin and destiny of the universe and even of alternate universes. They would push the Humanities off campus if they could. Runaway reductionist science needs the checks and balances provided by philosophers, ethicists, historians and yes, even theologians. The question “what is science?” is not itself a scientific question. It is a question of philosophy about science. That raises serious questions about whether science can explain itself, as in the evolutionary literature that routinely expects to derive human rationality ultimately from hydrogen. These scientists fail to recognize the self-refuting nature of that line of inquiry. A self-refuting statement is false by definition. C.S. Lewis (of Narnia fame) once said, “A strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given by Professor Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’ ” Metaphysics, therefore, must precede physics; the logical positivists, who wanted to rid science of metaphysics, were hopelessly stalled. One must have an ontology (philosophy of being) and epistemology (philosophy of knowing) before one can even do science.

The extreme scientism of the 1930s short-circuited itself when enough philosophers recognized that the proposition “only things empirically verifiable are real” was not itself empirically verifiable. This episode represents one of many revolutions in philosophy of science. The early Baconian model of science was found to be incomplete; scientists began emphasizing experimentation and repeatability, but this, too, did not always lead to new fundamental insights. Scientists realized they needed to be able to make predictions. That, however, led to some pseudoscientific practices that seemed to succeed at their predictions, while other legitimate models garnered only probabilistic correlations. Karl Popper argued for the falsification criterion. Yet how much falsification is enough, and by whom? A theory is not often abandoned just because one critic claims to have falsified it, especially if a rival. Evolutionary theory itself seems to outlast numerous falsifications, whether from the fossil record, speciation, Haldane’s Dilemma or irreducible complexity. Thomas Kuhn proposed the controversial view that science had the character of a guild, with members reinforcing one another’s beliefs until a younger generation could overthrow the reigning paradigm. Carl Hempel tried to define science according to the logical form of its explanations and the class of events to be explained, but this leaves out many areas assumed to be legitimate subjects for scientific inquiry, and permits spurious explanations without valid causal content. Others argue that an explanation must be evaluated in the context of who asked the question, or that models only reflect simulations of reality, not reality itself. Philosophers of science still argue these and many more issues.

In short, as J. P. Moreland (Biola) has argued, there are no demarcation criteria for science that succeed in excluding all forms of pseudoscience while simultaneously including all disciplines recognized as valid by scientists. The field permits contests at all levels among advocates of this or that subject, either wanting to gain the respectability of science, or wanting to exclude others from that respectability. Moreland argued that the primary success of the Darwinian revolution was to redefine science to exclude theology out of hand, and thus claim that all prior scientists who had been doing their work based on belief in a Creator were doing religion and not science, by definition. This explains much about the efforts by Big Science to exclude intelligent design. It’s no longer necessary to play a fair game when you have disqualified your opponent. Big Science, for example, gives approval to the methods of design inference in cryptography, forensics, archaeology and SETI (12/03/2005), but wants to exclude them by fiat from biology. “The great obstacle to the progress of our understanding is always complacency,” said Robinson. “A fundamentalist ‘scientism’ risks developing a hostility – at least an indifference – toward criticism, and thus it risks depriving itself of its own traditional sources of inspiration.”

It is also unwise to ignore the role of personality in scientific disputes. Science is, after all, a human invention, performed by fallible humans. Bruce Alberts was not acting as Dr. Cool, Objective Scientist in his “wakeup call.” He displayed the same human emotions and biases to which we are all prone. Due to our finiteness, human science must always remain incomplete and tentative, its explanations judged for their utility rather than their ability to answer ultimate questions. Surely sciences exist and pseudosciences exist. We do, after all, fly space ships and treat disease. Science must be doing something right; at some levels, it must have attained a reliable correspondence with the real world. At the other extreme, nobody wants pyramidology or astrology labs competing in the university science department. Yet the boundaries are not as sharp as Alberts draws them, or else he would have to admit that much of evolutionary theory and cosmology fail the definition. Whether “supernaturalism” or “interventionism” are fair characterizations, or are illegitimate subjects for scientists to consider, become moot on closer inspection. The history of science is filled with religiously devout people who believed that understanding nature was understanding the mind of God. Newton himself was delighted that his theories helped to refute atheism. Both lecturers for The Teaching Company’s series on the history of science have stated without hesitation that the picture of a “warfare of religion vs science” is a myth. They both illustrated with many examples how belief in God and his creative design were instrumental in gaining new insights into the workings of nature. A new book by Rodney Stark makes that case as well (see The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success on Amazon.com and Human Events). Stark shows how the Christian commitment to rational theology were absolutely essential in the rise of science. It can safely be assumed that each of these Christian practitioners of science believed in the essence of “intelligent design.” This makes it hard to take seriously Alberts’ wakeup call that the sky is falling if intelligent design gets [back] into biology (consider Linnaeus for one example).

We shortchange students by shielding them from these questions and giving them a spoon-fed, black-and-white picture of science vs. religion, natural vs. supernatural, and other shallow concepts based on false dichotomies. The history of science is one of vibrant debates and controversies. Philosophy of science has undergone many revolutions, and is still embroiled in debates between realists and anti-realists, rationalists and materialists, and scholars who actively dispute what is scientific and what is not. Alberts, even though he has been a leader in calling biologists to recognize the machine-like nature of living cells, is characterizing the debate over intelligent design emotionally and dogmatically, begging these questions in a way that shields Darwinists from critical scrutiny and competition. Is it not the Darwinians who teach that competition and struggle has produced all the complexity and beauty of life? It is only by teaching the controversy that students will escape a shallow conception of this human enterprise called science that has amassed so much moral authority in our modern world. Anything less is serfdom to the oligarchy Phillip Johnson has called the Mandarins of Science. Anything less is bound to turn Big Science’s dogmatic views on origins into an unaccountable, self-perpetuating paradigm. Daniel Robinson ended his lecture on philosophy of science by taking off on a rocket:

Getting to the moon and back is largely the work of rockets, once the basic laws and the necessary engineering have been worked out. And so the question that survives, even in the wake of such a momentous achievement, is whether those laws, and that engineering, are drawn from a culture, so to speak, that is to have pride of place in assessing all of reality. The word itself “reality” presupposes a percipient. It’s not a sophist trick to ask, “Whose reality?” or, “Reality in relation to what?” The aim throughout is to understand the setting of our own lives, at once physical, social, political, and moral. And it remains to be debated whether ultimate authority in these respects is held by science.


Petr

[Jimbo Gomez]

Somewhat offtopic. You study philosophy, not?

[Petr]

Somewhat offtopic. You study philosophy, not?
I do not think that the the philosophy of science is out of place in the science section at all - like the scientists described in this article, you seem to try draw a categorical distinction between metaphysical and physical, between philosophy and science.

And yes, I have studied philosophy.


Petr

[Jimbo Gomez]

I meant: my question is offtopic. This thread has its place here, no question about that. :)

[Petyr Baelish]

Philosophers rule!

I doubt that you'd be saying that if youi'd taken even a single class in the Philosophy of Religion. Your God is logically invalid (due mostly to his myriad of self-contradictory and self-exclusive attributes), and therefore, philosophically untenable.

[Petr]

Your God is logically invalid (due mostly to his myriad of self-contradictory and self-exclusive attributes), and therefore, philosophically untenable.
Keep dreaming, pothead.


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

Keep dreaming, pothead.


Petr

One of dozens of logical proofs of you Gawd's nonexistence:

Causation anf the Logical Impossibility of a Divine Cause (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/causation.html)

[Petyr Baelish]

More reading material for you, pekka:

The Problem of Evil (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/problemofevil.html)

Problems with Divine Omnipotence (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/omnipotence.html)

Problems with Divine Omniscience (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/omniscience.html)

Problems with Divine Justice (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/justice.html)

Problems with Immortality (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/immortality.html)

[jcs]

More reading material for you, pekka:

The Problem of Evil

Problems with Divine Omnipotence

Problems with Divine Omniscience

Problems with Divine Justice
I'm rusty on the subject, but reasonably familiar with all these arguments. Rebuttle: "problem with assumption of divine personification..."
See Spinoza.

[Petyr Baelish]

I'm rusty on the subject, but reasonably familiar with all these arguments. Rebuttle: "problem with assumption of divine personification..."
See Spinoza.

Rebuttal of what?

[jcs]

The Problem of Evil

Problems with Divine Omnipotence

Problems with Divine Omniscience

Problems with Divine Justice

Problems with Immortality
Ok, the fucktards who wrote those pages need to study hemeneutics. Don't like Biblical hermeneutics? Then study Heidegger (or some PoMo), for Christ's sake.

I'll take the first page as an example:
(1) If God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good.
(2) If God were omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good then the world would not contain evil.
(3) The world contains evil.
Therefore:
(4) It is not the case that God exists.
Let's question some premises!

1) What is meant by 'omniscience,' 'omnipotence,' and 'goodness'? (for the record, I disagree with the Dominican's amoral-God notion) Firstly, this premise, understood as it is in the argument, is self-contradictory (unless we play Thomists). How could God be 'good' while still being all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent (which necessarily belongs with the other two)? How could an infinite being be limited in its infinite-ness by a finite duality? God is One, and as such beyond all dualities; God 'separated water from sky' and created duality, and thus was necessarily above it, being Himself unity (by the way, apply this to the creation problem). So how could God be 'good' without being 'evil'?
--Good and evil are thought-constructs; our act of separation--from God. God Himself is Nietzschean; he is beyond such things.

2/3) The world doesn't contain evil. The argument about this on the linked website equates evil with suffering and looks at the idea amorally, which is basically nonsense. Evil thereby simply means 'bad,' as in an unfortunate occurance (such as the acquiring of a disease). Such a definition demands complete relativism, and therefore is meaningless in this discussion.
Evil exists only relatively, of course, so one is justified in saying that there is no evil.

4) Therefore: the above conclusion doesn't follow.

Yawn. Well, let's deal with this bullshit from the second page while we're at it...
(1) God either can or cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it.
(2) If God can create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent.
(3) If God cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent.
Therefore:
(4) God is not omnipotent.
(5) If God exists then he is omnipotent.
Therefore:
(6) God does not exist.
God, being One, has no Other. See above.
(The logically-limited omnipotence is bullshit, of course.)

Continuing...
The first problem—the paradox of omniscience—is derived from Cantor’s proof that there is no set of all sets. Omniscience, it is said, entails knowledge of the set of all truths. Cantor’s proof, however, demonstrates that there is no such set. As there is no such set, it is argued, there can be no omniscient being.
Someone will have to give a better summary of the argument, not just its conclusion and implications.

The second problem is the problem of experiential knowledge. Here the argument is that there are certain facts knowledge of which can only be acquired through certain experiences—knowledge of what it is like to sin, for instance, can only be acquired by sinning—and that some of these experiences, and so some of these items of knowledge, are such that they cannot be had by God.
The question here raised is: what is sin?
A decent definition: transgression against God resulting in an estrangement of creature from Creator.
What does this mean?--it is obviously something that can be 'understood' only from the vantage-point of the creature, the fragmented individual who is already removed from God. Sin is an act which leads the creature away from Oneness, into a further fractured state. 'Sin,' understood from a divine vantage point, is amoral.
So, the problem here faced is: how could God experience the estrangement of Himself from Himself?
...and that is the mystery of Creation...
(see above; draw conclusions. It's not difficult)

The third problem is that of reconciling freedom and foreknowledge, specifically the existence of divine foreknowledge with the existence of human freedom. If God knows all of our future actions, then the future is fixed, but if the future is fixed, it seems that there is nothing that we can do to change it. The ability to determine our future actions, though, is what constitutes human freedom. Divine foreknowledge, then, seems to preclude the possibility of our being free agents.
The assumption here is that divine foreknowledge implies teleology, which it doesn't. Simple causality. See the 'free will vs. determinism' thread.

The fourth problem is the problem of middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is knowledge of what free agents would have done had the world been other than it is. As the agents are free, their choice of action cannot be determined by the state of the world, and so cannot be calculated on that basis. As middle knowledge concerns counterfactual situations, however, neither can their choice of actions be known by observation of the future. With the two possible sources of knowledge ruled out, it seems that middle knowledge is an impossibility.
'Freedom' understood non-causally is a metaphysical impossibility. Something (willing) cannot come from nothing (absolute freedom). Most of the usage of the word 'free' in the bible and theological arguments could better be replaced with 'volition.'

Well, I've become bored with this, so I'll stop here.

[Petyr Baelish]

Ok, the fucktards who wrote those pages need to study hemeneutics.

Hermeneutics falls in the domain of the theologian, not the philosopher. Philosophers have no need to 'interpret' self-contradictions and absurdities - they debunk them, and consequently dismiss them.
What is meant by 'omniscience,' 'omnipotence,' and 'goodness'? (for the record, I disagree with the Dominican's amoral-God notion) Firstly, this premise, understood as it is in the argument, is self-contradictory (unless we play Thomists).

That's a problem that again one should take up with the theologians, not the philosophers. The fact that the God of Christian theology is absurd, bizzare, and logically vacuous is certainly not an argument in favor of Christianity!

How could God be 'good' while still being all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent (which necessarily belongs with the other two)?

See above.

How could an infinite being be limited in its infinite-ness by a finite duality?

Take a class in set theory, number theory, and transfinite mathematics, it may help you understand.

God is One, and as such beyond all dualities;

LMAO - how could an infinite being be limited in its infiniteness by a finite unity? :D


The world doesn't contain evil. The argument about this on the linked website equates evil with suffering and looks at the idea amorally, which is basically nonsense. Evil thereby simply means 'bad,' as in an unfortunate occurance (such as the acquiring of a disease). Such a definition demands complete relativism, and therefore is meaningless in this discussion.
Evil exists only relatively, of course, so one is justified in saying that there is no evil.

You, like most theologians, seem to be a huge fan of using semantics to build strawmen. Since you don't seem to grasp the fact that in this context 'good' refers to 'benevolent towards human beings', allow me to rephrase the Problem of Evil in a manner less susceptible to strawman 'refutations':

1. The God of Christian theology is omnibenevolent towards human beings (i.e. 'good'). He is also omnipotent and omniscient.

2. If an omnipotent and omniscient entity that is omnibenevolent towards human beings were to create a world, it would create one where conditions for human life were optimal.

3. We do not live in an optimal world.

4. Therefore, the Christian God does not exist.




(The logically-limited omnipotence is bullshit, of course.)

Oh, calling something 'bullshit'! What a brilliant refutation :rofl: I must re-iterate myself - the fact that most of the traits ascribed to the Judeo-Christian God are self-contradictory, mutually contradictory or otherwise vacuous is not an argument in favor of its existence!

The question here raised is: what is sin?
A decent definition: transgression against God resulting in an estrangement of creature from Creator.

Actually, the term 'sin' is, like most theological mumbo-jumbo, completely vacuous. God based 'morality' is tautological. An action is defined as 'moral' because 'God wills it/likes it', and God wills something or likes something because its 'moral'.

So, the problem here faced is: how could God experience the estrangement of Himself from Himself?

A schizophrenic question that only the schizophrenic mind of a delluded theologian could find the 'answer' to.

[Petyr Baelish]

[COLOR="Blue"]Getting to the moon and back is largely the work of rockets, once the basic laws and the necessary engineering have been worked out. And so the question that survives, even in the wake of such a momentous achievement, is whether those laws, and that engineering, are drawn from a culture, so to speak, that is to have pride of place in assessing all of reality.

Ridiculous post-modernist babbling. Anybody who thinks that the laws of physics are somehow arbitrary or 'drawn from a culture' is welcome to jump off the Empire State Building and see for himself whether his own convictions on the matter are strong enough to combat gravity.

It’s not a sophist trick to ask, “Whose reality?” or, “Reality in relation to what?” The aim throughout is to understand the setting of our own lives, at once physical, social, political, and moral. And it remains to be debated whether ultimate authority in these respects is held by science.

Science is not metaphysics. It does not attempt to answer existential questions beginning with 'Why' but practical questions of 'How'. The reason why science excludes supernatural entities like invisible green elves, magical pink unicorns and Jesus from its discourse is because such entities are not susceptible to systematic inquiry via the scientific method. Unless a hypothesis can be disproven and generates predictions it has no place in science. As soon as superfluous supernatural entities like God are introduced into a hypothesis (as with "Intelligent" Design), it ceases to be refutable and it ceases to generate any predictions, thereby losing whatever place it may have in science. That is not to say that science denies the existence of invisible green elves, magical unicorns and Jesus; merely that such things, not being susceptible to refutation and not generating any predictions about the behavior of a system or a phenomenon are outside of the scope of science, and firmly in the realm of religion. You are, of course, wlecome to argue the superiority of ignorance and superstition to science, but please get back to me when religion builds a computer, develops a vaccine for a disease, or launches something into space.

[Petyr Baelish]

Petr, I invite you to test your theory that the scientific method is simply arbitrary, culturally-prescribed dogma by ingesting fifty milligrams of hydrogen cyanide.

[Jimbo Gomez]

Petr, I invite you to test your theory that the scientific method is simply arbitrary, culturally-prescribed dogma by ingesting fifty milligrams of hydrogen cyanide.

Nonsense, the arbitrary nature of certain statements has nothing to do with their veracity.

[Petyr Baelish]

Nonsense, the arbitrary nature of certain statements has nothing to do with their veracity.

There is nothing 'arbitrary' whatsoever about science - it is ruthlessly systematic. The fact that an arbitrary statement like "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so" may be correct is not in and of itself reason enough to include it in science. Everything in science is subject to the rigorous test of the scientific method, and to qualify as a hypothesis worthy of consideration a claim must in the very least be falsifiable (there is absolutely no way to investigate the veracity of an unfalsifiable claim) and must generate some predictions (to see whether they are consistent with a given state of affairs). Replacing scientific investigation with religious claims like "God did it" is not only a form of extreme irrationalism and intellectual cowardice, it is tantamount to saying "We don't know how it works", because as soon as supernatural agents are introduced into a hypothesis, falsifiability and predictions go out the window. The 'debate' between Cretinism/IDiotism and evolutionary theory can simply be restated as a 'debate' between scientists, who say "We have a theory on how this phenomenon works, and so far it has withstood all tests of falsification and prediction-making", and religious fanatics who, uncomfortable with the implications of evolution chose instead to say "God did it" - id est, "We don't want to know how it works." Chosing ignorance over knowledge is not simply unscientific, it's anti-scientifc, and anti-rational. Science is not perfect, but it is the best tool we have for investigating the world around us. Anyone who thinks that schizophrenic post-modernist mumbo-jumbo and/or religious superstition are somehow superior to reason can get back to me when religion produces any verifiable result.

[Jimbo Gomez]

Your example of evolution is the worst one you could have chosen. Evolutionists start shrieking worse than the most rabid religious fanatics the moment you utter even half a word of doubt about their pseudoreligion. I frankly don't feel like bickering about evolution on a messageboard because usually those dabates generate at least 30 pages of posts, half of them flames, and noone changes their view, but I urge you to put those high ideals and strict guidelines about the scientific method to work on the 'scientists' and their claims about evolution unbiased.

[Petyr Baelish]

Your example of evolution is the worst one you could have chosen.

How is that? There is literally more evidential support for evolution than there is for the earth being round (something that the Bible incidentally also denies).
Evolutionists start shrieking worse than the most rabid religious fanatics the moment you utter even half a word of doubt about their pseudoreligion.

Evolution has nothing in common with religion. Evolution does not rely on some higher power lying outside of the domain of science, it is easily falsifiable, and generates predictions. The predictions that evolution generates incidentally happen to be corrrect, and there is more natural and laboratory evidence for evolution than there is for the theory of gravity, for instance. But, if you still doubt evolution, you're welcome to say good-bye to all the medicinal and scientific advances that would never have been possible without the framework of evolutionary biology - such as the development of vaccines for rapidly evolving pathogens, retroviral drugs and gene therapy.

I frankly don't feel like bickering about evolution on a messageboard because usually those dabates generate at least 30 pages of posts, half of them flames, and noone changes their view, but I urge you to put those high ideals and strict guidelines about the scientific method to work on the 'scientists' and their claims about evolution unbiased.

Not starting a debate about evolution is actually a good idea. The biggest problem with such debates is that 99% of the 'critics' of evolution are miserably underqualified holy-warriors most of whom barely (if at all) understand evolution, and simply repeat the same, utterly discredited arguments that Cretinists/IDiotists have been using for decades, as if repeating lies often enough will somehow 'transubstantiate' these lies into truths.

[Jimbo Gomez]

How is that? There is literally more evidential support for evolution that there is for the earth being round


prove this

Evolution has nothing in common with religion. Evolution does not rely on some higher power lying outside of the domain of science, it is easily falsifiable, and generates predictions. The predictions that evolution generates incidentally happen to be corrrect, and there is more natural and laboratory evidence for evolution than there is for the theory of gravity, for instance. But, if you still doubt evolution, you're welcome to say good-bye to all the medicinal and scientific advances that would never have been possible without the framework of evolutionary biology - such as the development of vaccines for rapidly evolving pathogens, retroviral drugs and gene therapy.

You know what certain believers of intelligent design would have to say about this...

[Petyr Baelish]

prove this

Knock yourself out:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

You know what certain believers of intelligent design would have to say about this...

The most common attitude is one of cognitive dissonance. They'll continue denying evolution and using whatever ridiculous means they can to 'disprove' it, but that won't stop them from using medicine and biotechnology that could have never been developed without evolutionary biology.

[Petr]

They'll continue denying evolution and using whatever ridiculous means they can to 'disprove' it, but that won't stop them from using medicine and biotechnology that could have never been developed without evolutionary biology.
Your comments give me a brainwashed impression: you are obediently repeating evo-dogmas with total wooden predictability.

Anyhow, let's hear a (non-creationist) expert:

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19909&highlight=skell


Why Do We Invoke Darwin?

By: Philip S. Skell
The Scientist
August 29, 2005

...

Despite this and other difficulties, the modern form of Darwin's theory has been raised to its present high status because it's said to be the cornerstone of modern experimental biology. But is that correct? "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas," A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, wrote in 2000.1 "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."

I would tend to agree. Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.

I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.

In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word - "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.

When I recently suggested this disconnect publicly, I was vigorously challenged. One person recalled my use of Wilkins and charged me with quote mining. The proof, supposedly, was in Wilkins's subsequent paragraph:

"Yet, the marginality of evolutionary biology may be changing. More and more issues in biology, from diverse questions about human nature to the vulnerability of ecosystems, are increasingly seen as reflecting evolutionary events. A spate of popular books on evolution testifies to the development. If we are to fully understand these matters, however, we need to understand the processes of evolution that, ultimately, underlie them."

In reality, however, this passage illustrates my point. The efforts mentioned there are not experimental biology; they are attempts to explain already authenticated phenomena in Darwinian terms, things like human nature. Further, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self- centered and aggressive - except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed - except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.

Darwinian evolution - whatever its other virtues - does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit.

...


Also:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/1115anthrax.asp


Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?

...

"Natural selection is not evolution. This merely weeds out organisms and the information they contain; it doesn’t generate new information. The creationist Edward Blyth discussed natural selection 25 years before Darwin, but recognized that it was a conservative, not a creative, force.

...

Natural selection: the drugs wipe out all the non-resistant germs, so the most resistant germs survive and multiply. This leads to a whole population that’s resistant to antibiotics. This is not evolution because the resistance already existed in the population. Despite this, the PBS Evolution propaganda series used selection of pre-existing antibiotic resistance in tuberculosis germs as a major ‘proof’. In fact, some bacteria revived from corpses frozen before the development of antibiotics have shown resistance.

...

"Information-losing mutations can confer resistance. Such mutations are often harmful in an ‘ordinary’ environment without antibiotics. It is well documented that many ‘superbugs’ are really ‘superwimps’ for this reason—see Superbugs not super after all. Also, some sorts of information-losing mutations evidently cause HIV resistance to antivirals, because the ‘wild’ types easily out-compete the resistant types when the drugs are removed. Despite this, this was promoted as another ‘proof’ of evolution by the PBS series.



Evolutionist dogmas could be ditched and the real science wouldn't suffer any harm. In fact, hugely expensive, vain projects such as SETI (that is based upon evo-mythology about life in outer space) could be cancelled.


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

Evolutionist dogmas could be ditched and the real science wouldn't suffer any harm.

Evolution is real science, fanatic. Despite what you may think, something is not defined as science based on whether it agrees with your dead-Jew-in-the-sky fairytales. Something is science if it withstands the tests of peer-review, falsification, and evidence in the laboratory and in nature. Besides, you and I both know perfectly well that since the Bible is a profoundly scientifically erroneous and anti-scientific document, the Cretinists/IDiotists won't stop with evolution. The Cretinist/IDIotist definition of "evolutionist dogma" is any solid, peer-reviewed science that is incompatible with the Bible (i.e. virtually all of science). There is no wonder then why Cretinists constantly conflate the huge differences between evolutionary theory, abiogenesis, atomic chemistry, astrophysics and cosmology - because over a hundred years of research in each of these fields adds up to a stunning scientific refutation of the Bible. Since geology firmly contradicts a six-thousand-year-old earth or a global flood, mainstream geology would be (and already is) attacked by creationists. Since the methods used for dating fossils and geological speciemans are rooted in atomic chemistry, Cretinists are launching vehement attacks on chemistry. Since astronomy firmly disproves a flat earth and a geoocentric universe, in the wet-dreams of Cretinists, astronomy would be flushed down the toilet. And since astrophysics makes perfectly possible a universe not created by an evil Hebrew demon, Creationists would wish to revise cosmology so as to make it more in line with Hebrew myths. It is quite obvious that the object of the Cretinists/IDiotist is to destroy virtually all of science, because virtually all of science is in conflict with the Bible.

[Petyr Baelish]

"Natural selection is not evolution.

Natural selection is an indispensible part of evolutionary theory, and meets the criteria of being falsifiable generating predictions. The Cretinist alternative to natural selection is the universal "Godditit." Why is the sky blue. Goddidit. Why does it rain? Goddidit. Why does mixing acids and bases generate salts? Goddidit. Why are there so many animals? Goddidit. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Natural selection: the drugs wipe out all the non-resistant germs, so the most resistant germs survive and multiply. This leads to a whole population that’s resistant to antibiotics. This is not evolution because the resistance already existed in the population.

Actually, it's an integral part of evolution. The fact that the genes for resistance may have already existed in the population is irrelevant. And of course, the Cretinist alternative is, as always 'Goddidit".

Your mentors at (lack of) Answers in Genesis could do well to either take a freshman course in biology if their moronic statements stem from ignorance, or take a freshman course in ethics, if their lies are intentional (considering the Cretinist record in such matters, the latter alternative is more likely).

[Petyr Baelish]

As for the "usefulness" of evolution (as if the fact that it's the only scientific theory that adquately explains the diversity of life and provides a framework for modern biology weren't useful enough):

heodosius Dobzhansky, one of the twentieth century's most eminent evolutionary biologists, had it right when he said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Previous sections of this document should provide some idea as to why this is true. Evolution is the conceptual paradigm that ties together all the life sciences. Without the theory of evolution the biological sciences would be disjointed, and much within biology would not make any sense because evolution provides the explanatory framework.

Evolution explains the similarities in anatomy and biochemistry between different living organisms, including the vestigial components. Evolution explains why embryos of many organisms develop characteristics very different from the adult organism but then lose those characteristics in later development. Evolution explains why large amounts of the DNA of many living organisms have little or no function. Evolution explains ring species. Evolution explains drug resistant bacteria. Evolution explains biogeography. Evolution explains the fossil record. And evolution ties all these pieces of data together into a coherent whole.

The science of evolutionary biology is also of very practical use in addition to its power as an explanatory concept. In a 1995 article in Science, Douglas Futuyma listed several ways that evolutionary biology is being utilized:

* Biodiversity and conservation: Analysis of risk of extinction due to "inbreeding, reduced gene flow, specialization, and constraints on genetic and ecological responses to global change."
* Phenotypic expression in novel environments: Use of tools already in use in studies of natural systems, like "molecular markers of gene flow, gene geneaologies as evidence of gene exchange, analyses of phenotypic plasticity, and the 'costs' of adaptation".
* Novel processes and products: This includes production of antibiotics, flavors, pigments, biopolymers, and enzymes.
* Bioremediation: Production of tolerance to waste products as well as bacterial strains to decompose hazardous materials.
* Wildlife management: Identification of stocks by genetic analysis.
* Agriculture: Identification of disease resistance factors in related wild plants, pesticide resistance, management of pest adaptation to pesticide, pest resistant cultivation.
* Health sciences: Causes of senescence, treatment of fever, tracing origins of pathogens, evolution of virulence in viruses and other pathogens, measurement of genetic diversity in pathogens and hosts, mechanisms of drug resistance, evolutionary epidemiology.

The last item touches on the concept of "Darwinian medicine," an idea that is having a considerable impact on the way that some researchers think about the causes of diseases. If you consider how living organisms evolve over time and the impact that diseases have on the fitness of these organisms, it can lead to interesting thoughts on the causes of diseases. Also, some of the uses listed above can involve genetic engineering, which is intimately related to evolutionary biology.

Thus, in addition to being a powerful explanatory concept, evolution also has a great deal of practical use. If creationists got their wish and evolution were eliminated from the sciences, it would do irreparable damage to the life sciences and to the quality of life.

Creationists might argue that you could have some of these items without "macroevolutionary" concepts or common descent, but this can only be done if you accept their false dichotomy between micro- and macroevolution - remember that in evolutionary science there is no real difference between the two. It is simply a matter of degree, because there is no rational way you could deny the overwhelming evidence of macroevolution/common descent while keeping the idea of microevolution. To remove one is to cripple the other, and eliminating the idea of common descent would destroy the explanatory power as well as the productivity of evolution.
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/evolution/blfaq_evolution_evidence17.htm

[Petyr Baelish]

More:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html

Claim CA215:
The theory of evolution is useless, without practical application.
Source:
Lindsey, George. 1985. Evolution -- Useful or useless? Impact 148 (Oct.). http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=252
Wieland, Carl. 1998. Evolution and practical science. Creation 20(4) (Sept.): 4. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i4/evolution.asp
Response:

1. Evolutionary theory is the framework tying together all of biology. It explains similarities and differences between organisms, fossils, biogeography, drug resistance, extreme features such as the peacock's tail, relative virulence of parasites, and much more besides. Without the theory of evolution, it would still be possible to know much about biology, but not to understand it.

This explanatory framework is useful in a practical sense. First, a unified theory is easier to learn, because the facts connect together rather than being so many isolated bits of trivia. Second, having a theory makes it possible to see gaps in the theory, suggesting productive areas for new research.

2. Evolutionary theory has been put to practical use in several areas (Futuyma 1995; Bull and Wichman 2001). For example:
* Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions.
* Diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture (Bull and Wichman 2001).
* Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields (Conover and Munch 2002).
* Artificial selection has been used since prehistory, but it has become much more efficient with the addition of quantitative trait locus mapping.
* Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003).
* Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female offspring, which retrieved it from the brink of extinction (Sutherland 2002).

Evolutionary theory is being applied to and has potential applications in may other areas, from evaluating the threats of genetically modified crops to human psychology. Additional applications are sure to come.

3. Phylogenetic analysis, which uses the evolutionary principle of common descent, has proven its usefulness:
* Tracing genes of known function and comparing how they are related to unknown genes helps one to predict unknown gene function, which is foundational for drug discovery (Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).
* Phylogenetic analysis is a standard part of epidemiology, since it allows the identification of disease reservoirs and sometimes the tracking of step-by-step transmission of disease. For example, phylogenetic analysis confirmed that a Florida dentist was infecting his patients with HIV, that HIV-1 and HIV-2 were transmitted to humans from chimpanzees and mangabey monkeys in the twentieth century, and, when polio was being eradicated from the Americas, that new cases were not coming from hidden reservoirs (Bull and Wichman 2001). It was used in 2002 to help convict a man of intentionally infecting someone with HIV (Vogel 1998). The same principle can be used to trace the source of bioweapons (Cummings and Relman 2002).
* Phylogenetic analysis to track the diversity of a pathogen can be used to select an appropriate vaccine for a particular region (Gaschen et al. 2002).
* Ribotyping is a technique for identifying an organism or at least finding its closest known relative by mapping its ribosomal RNA onto the tree of life. It can be used even when the organisms cannot be cultured or recognized by other methods. Ribotyping and other genotyping methods have been used to find previously unknown infectious agents of human disease (Bull and Wichman 2001; Relman 1999).
* Phylogenetic analysis helps in determining protein folds, since proteins diverging from a common ancestor tend to conserve their folds (Benner 2001).

4. Directed evolution allows the "breeding" of molecules or molecular pathways to create or enhance products, including:
* enzymes (Arnold 2001)
* pigments (Arnold 2001)
* antibiotics
* flavors
* biopolymers
* bacterial strains to decompose hazardous materials.
Directed evolution can also be used to study the folding and function of natural enzymes (Taylor et al. 2001).

5. The evolutionary principles of natural selection, variation, and recombination are the basis for genetic algorithms, an engineering technique that has many practical applications, including aerospace engineering, architecture, astrophysics, data mining, drug discovery and design, electrical engineering, finance, geophysics, materials engineering, military strategy, pattern recognition, robotics, scheduling, and systems engineering (Marczyk 2004).

6. Tools developed for evolutionary science have been put to other uses. For example:
* Many statistical techniques, including analysis of variance and linear regression, were developed by evolutionary biologists, especially Ronald Fisher and Karl Pearson. These statistical techniques have much wider application today.
* The same techniques of phylogenetic analysis developed for biology can also trace the history of multiple copies of a manuscript (Barbrook et al. 1998; Howe et al. 2001) and the history of languages (Dunn et al. 2005).

7. Good science need not have any application beyond satisfying curiosity. Much of astronomy, geology, paleontology, natural history, and other sciences have no practical application. For many people, knowledge is a worthy end in itself.

8. Science with little or no application now may find application in the future, especially as the field matures and our knowledge of it becomes more complete. Practical applications are often built upon ideas that did not look applicable originally. Furthermore, advances in one area of science can help illuminate other areas. Evolution provides a framework for biology, a framework which can support other useful biological advances.

9. Anti-evolutionary ideas have been around for millennia and have not yet contributed anything with any practical application.

References:

1. Arnold, Frances H. 2001. Combinatorial and computational challenges for biocatalyst design. Nature 409: 253-257.
2. Barbrook, Adrian C., Christopher J. Howe, Norman Blake, and Peter Robinson, 1998. The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales. Nature 394: 839.
3. Benner, Steven A. 2001. Natural progression. Nature 409: 459.
4. Branca, Malorye. 2002. Sorting the microbes from the trees. Bio-IT Bulletin, Apr. 07. http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/040702_report186.html
5. Bull, J. J. and H. A. Wichman. 2001. Applied evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 32: 183-217.
6. Cherry, J. R., and A. L. Fidantsef. 2003. Directed evolution of industrial enzymes: an update. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 14: 438-443.
7. Conover, D. O. and S. B. Munch. 2002. Sustaining fisheries yields over evolutionary time scales. Science 297: 94-96. See also pp. 31-32.
8. Cummings, C. A. and D. A. Relman. 2002. Microbial forensics-- "cross-examining pathogens". Science 296: 1976-1979.
9. Dunn, M., A. Terrill, G. Reesink, R. A. Foley and S. C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309: 2072-2075. See also: Gray, Russell. 2005. Pushing the time barrier in the quest for language roots. Science 309: 2007-2008.
10. Eisen, J. and M. Wu. 2002. Phylogenetic analysis and gene functional predictions: Phylogenomics in action. Theoretical Population Biology 61: 481-487.
11. Futuyma, D. J. 1995. The uses of evolutionary biology. Science 267: 41-42.
12. Galvani, Alison P. 2003. Epidemiology meets evolutionary ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18(3): 132-139.
13. Gaschen, B. et al.. 2002. Diversity considerations in HIV-1 vaccine selection. Science 296: 2354-2360.
14. Howe, Christopher J. et al. 2001. Manuscript evolution. Trends in Genetics 17: 147-152.
15. Marczyk, Adam. 2004. Genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html
16. Nesse, Randolph M. and George C. Williams. 1994. Why We Get Sick. New York: Times Books.
17. Relman, David A. 1999. The search for unrecognized pathogens. Science 284: 1308-1310.
18. Searls, D., 2003. Pharmacophylogenomics: Genes, evolution and drug targets. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2: 613-623. http://www.nature.com/nature/view/030731.html
19. Sutherland, William J., 2002. Science, sex and the kakapo. Nature 419: 265-266.
20. Taylor, Sean V., Peter Kast, and Donald Hilvert. 2001. Investigating and engineering enzymes by genetic selection. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 40: 3310-3335.
21. Vogel, Gretchen. 1998. HIV strain analysis debuts in murder trial. Science 282: 851-852.

[Petr]

Natural selection is an indispensible part of evolutionary theory, and meets the criteria of being falsifiable generating predictions. The Cretinist alternative to natural selection is the universal "Godditit." Why is the sky blue. Goddidit. Why does it rain? Goddidit. Why does mixing acids and bases generate salts? Goddidit. Why are there so many animals? Goddidit. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Like I said, natural selection was originally discovered by a creationist Edward Blyth as the inherently conservative mechanism that it is, and then hijacked by Darwin and his followers who turned in into a progressive mechanism.

The whole hypothesis of spontaneous evolution of all life is a one giant anti-theistic cop-out: "life simply cannot (because it offends our personal sensibilities) have been a result of design: therefore, Evolutiondidit"

Darwinists are notorious for their just-so stories: "how Pakicetus turned into a whale"

Richard Dawkins reminded his disciples how every time they tend to see some organism that seems to have been designed, they must firmly drive away such heretical thoughts!


Here is a good example of evolutionist prejudices misleading science:


http://creationsafaris.com/crev200507.htm#20050715b


The Death of the Concept of “Junk DNA”

07/15/2005


“God don’t make no junk” has been a slogan for the self-esteem movement, and now no less than Science Now is providing support at the genetic level. “Don’t call it junk” the article announces, indicating that stretches of non-coding DNA are apparently not useless regions of material as previously believed, but vital to the regulation of the gene-coding regions.

Studies by geneticists at UC Santa Cruz have shown that “The more complex the organism, the more important junk DNA seems to be.” Some of these non-coding regions are identical in mice and men. This discovery, made last year (see 11/26/2004), hinted that these geneless regions were important, otherwise neutral mutations should have accumulated in them during the course of evolution. Now, comparisons between five vertebrates, four insects, two worms and seven species of yeast have revealed a pattern that complexity correlates with the amount of “junk DNA.” This suggests that “the regions might contain important regulatory switches that control basic biochemistry and development, which might help organisms build sophisticated bodies.”

Although the re-evaluation of non-coding DNA that views it as functionally important is not yet universally shared among geneticists (see 12/10/2004 entry), this latest revelation appears convincing to many. The new paradigm is summed up in the photo caption in the article: “Trash is treasure.”


It bears repeating what we have said for years about this (06/03/2004 and 10/16/2003): the concept of “junk DNA” was a useless dead end that resulted from evolutionary thinking. It is similar to the now-outmoded concept of “vestigial organs” used for decades as proof of evolution: the idea that the wasteful process of evolution left relics of junk in our bodies. This viewpoint actually delayed the progress of science. It prevented research into the function of the appendix, tonsils, pineal gland, coccyx, pituitary gland and other body parts now known to be useful and even vital for life and health. How long has fruitful research into the genetic function of non-coding DNA been delayed by the concept of “junk DNA”? Who would want to waste time looking at junk?

An intelligent-design approach to non-coding DNA would have been entirely different. An ID scientist would say there must be a reason for it. Just because its function is unknown does not mean there is no function. The burden is on the scientist to figure it out, not on nature to explain itself. Like a puzzle fanatic trying to solve the latest crossword, such a scientist would be motivated to search and discover the function of the phenomenon, and might have found the secret of gene regulation much sooner.

The paradigm shift in progress about so-called junk DNA provides a classic rebuttal to the argument that intelligent design theory would shut down scientific progress. Most anticreationist rhetoric includes the charge that ID brings scientific explanation to a halt with the quick explanation, “God did it that way.” Here we have seen that the contrary is true. Evolution labeled genetic treasure as “trash,” and possibly delayed our understanding of non-coding DNA for years. We shouldn’t let the Darwinists get away with claiming credit for the turnaround.* They caused the delay. If Darwinist Esaus want to continue to treat nature like trash, ID Jacobs will be glad to take possession of their hand-offs.

--------------------------------------------------

*Nor should we let them get away with taking back these newly-revalued treasures for trophies in their museums of evolution. Evolutionary theory did not predict highly-conserved regulatory elements that are identical in extremely different organisms: the inexorable force of mutation and selection should have caused wide differences between them. Darwinists are masters of deception, taking every observation, no matter how unexpected, as support. It’s time to force them to face up to what amounts to a falsification of their beliefs.


Btw, you are one frenzied babbling misotheist. Doing too many drugs?

Drug Abuse/Sorceries

http://www.metrocast.net/~moza/drug.htm

"...for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries (pharmakeia) were all nations deceived." -- Revelation 18:23


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

Like I said, natural selection was originally discovered by a creationist Edward Blyth as the inherently conservative mechanism that it is, and then hijacked by Darwin and his followers who turned in into a progressive mechanism.

What you said is irrelevant. Natural selection only makes sense within the framework of evolutionary theory - "Goddidit" is not an adequate explanation for how natural selection works or what its function is, at least not from a scientific standpoint. As for your idiotic claim that evolutionary biology considers natural selection to be capable of generating new genetic material, that is either your typical pitiful ignorance shining through in full glory, or willful deception on your behalf. Natural selection does not create new genetic material, that is the function of mutations.

The whole hypothesis of spontaneous evolution of all life is a one giant anti-theistic cop-out: "life simply cannot (because it offends our personal sensibilities) have been a result of design: therefore, Evolutiondidit"

First, you should quit conflating the differences between abiogenesis and evolutionary theory. Those are two very different fields of biology and obfuscating the difference between them (whether you do this by design or by virtue of stupidity, I don't know) makes you sound like a rambling moron to anyone with even a superficial knowlege of biology. Secondly, as regards your ridiculous statement that evolution is "one giant anti-theistic cop-out", nothing could be further from the truth. Evolutionary theory is susceptible to falsification, makes predictions about the state of affairs (which incidentally are always confirmed by scientific evidence) and has an enormous amount of evidential support. Any theistic 'explanation' for a natural phenomenon is, on the other hand, by its very definition, a 'cop-out'. Theistic "explanations" cannot be falsified or tested and do not generate any predictions. Saying that God causes a natural phenomenon is tantamount to admitting ignorance as regards its mechanism of action. It explains nothing and predicts nothing. Where supernatural entities start, science ends - which is why Cretinism and IDiotism have no place in science.

Darwinists are notorious for their just-so stories: "how Pakicetus turned into a whale"

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence (http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/)

A very relevant excerpt from the above article:

ow do you convince a creationist that a fossil is a transitional fossil? Give up? It is a trick question. You cannot do it. There is no convincing someone who has his mind made up already. But sometimes, it is even worse. Sometimes, when you point out a fossil that falls into the middle of a gap and is a superb morphological and chronological intermediate, you are met with the response: "Well, now you have two gaps where you only had one before! You are losing ground!"...

Richard Dawkins reminded his disciples how every time they tend to see some organism that seems to have been designed, they must firmly drive away such heretical thoughts!

There are two reasons for this. The first one is the term 'design' only has relevance in a relativistic context. As far as we are aware, human beings are the only entities in the universe that design anything, and the only way to develop a working heuristic for determining the marks of design is by comparing artificial technology to nature. Intelligent design (at least design done by beings at least intelligent as humans) is marked by simplicity, redundancy and optimization - traits that very few, if any, lifeforms show. The more important reason is that supernatural entities have no place in science. Saying "God causes lightning" or "God causes disease" or "God created life" is, for all intents and purposes tantamount to saying "I don't know and don't want to know what causes lightning", "I don't know and don't want to know what causes disease" and "I don't know and don't want to know where life comes from." There is no way to test for or to falsify supernatural entities, nor does the invokation thereof generate any predictions as to a system's or phenomenon's behavior. Using theistic 'explanations' for anything is reprehensible intellectual cowardice and disgusting willful ignorance.

Here is a good example of evolutionist prejudices misleading science:

Actually, that ridiculous article is simply another example of Cretinist stupidity and/or mendacity, showing that Cretinists are all-too-willing to resort to outright lies and fabrications when their fanatical religious convictions are being threatened. For a more balanced view of the subject, see:

Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics by Edward E. Max, M.D., PhD (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/)

Excerpt:

Important roles have been found for DNA regions previously thought to be functionless

At a recent debate with me Dr. Gish cited a review in Science entitled "Mining treasures from 'junk' DNA" (263:608, 1994), seeming to imply that this review suggests functions for pseudogenes and retroposons that would be consistent with the creationist view that they were designed to function similarly in similar species. In fact, this review discusses evidence for possible functions of centromeric and telomeric repetitive sequences, minisatellites, introns and 3' untranslated regions. It mentions pseudogenes and retroposons but makes no suggestion that these particular elements have function, so this review offers no argument against the points made in this essay. Nevertheless, since there have been other speculations about possible functions for DNA outside gene coding sequences, it is worth considering why scientists generally accept the notion that most of this DNA is junk.

First, we know several mechanisms by which DNA length can be increased through genetic accidents such as DNA duplications and insertion of retroposons, which have been observed in the lab or occurring in humans without apparent effects; so it is reasonable to suppose that these mechanisms operated in the past to increase genome size without affecting function. There appears to be little or no selective pressure to reduce the size of vertebrate nuclear genomes; and there is no apparent mechanism to selectively eliminate useless DNA. Large deletions that eliminate functional DNA are selected against. These observations would predict the accumulation of useless DNA as the result of random genetic accidents, so when we see DNA that seems non-functional, we shouldn't necessarily assume that it has function that we don't understand.

Second, when DNA sequence is compared between species like human versus mouse, sequences that are known to have function -- coding sequences of genes in particular -- are found to be highly similar, consistent with selective pressure that weeds out individuals that have deleterious mutations in these functional regions. Conversely, DNA regions with no known function -- e.g. non-coding sequences between genes -- generally behave as if they are under no selective pressure, that is they apparently accumulate mutations at a much higher rate so there is little sequence conservation between distantly related species. As an exception that probes the rule, comparisons of non-coding sequence across species occasionally detect "islands" of short conserved sequence in non-coding regions. Some of these have turned out to correspond to regulatory regions like promoter or enhancer elements that control when a nearby gene is expressed. An example of such an "island" conserved between rabbit, mouse and human was discovered in my own lab [Emorine et al., Nature 304:447, 1983]; it turned out to represent an important enhancer. These kinds of regulatory regions generally take up much less DNA than the coding sequences of the genes they regulate, so they cannot represent a likely function for most non-coding DNA. The good correlation between function and sequence conservation lends support to the idea that most poorly conserved sequences do not have function. However, it should be noted that for most of the "islands" of conserved sequence in DNA between genes (Shabalina et al., Trends Genet 17:373, 2001), no function has yet been discovered. Some may include RNA species that function without being translated into protein.

A third but related argument derives from the observation that the insertion of a retroposon into a functional sequence is a potent way to destroy that function. Examples of naturally occurring insertions were discussed in section 5.2 above; and intentional retroposon insertion is being widely used as a laboratory tool to create panels of mouse, drosophila or yeast strains with different gene functions destroyed. However, most examples of retroposon insertions between genes do not have any apparent affect on individuals harboring them; for example the Alu sequences that are polymorphic in human DNA appear to be harmless when present. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that these insertions did not interrupt any functional sequence. (Of course it is impossible to rule out the formal possibility that some hypothetical functional sequences outside genes can still function despite the presence of a retroposon insertion.)

Finally, several examples are known of pairs of species that have similar apparent complexity but widely different genome size (C-value paradox). The pufferfish Fugu has about one fourth the genome size of other fish species but about the same number of genes. The main difference is a smaller amount of DNA between genes in Fugu DNA (e.g. see Elgar et al. Genome Res 9:960, 1999). Although questions remain about the interpretation of this difference, it would seem that much of the DNA between genes in most fish genomes (and probably in ours also) is dispensable. (Conversely, the small regions of non-coding sequence that are conserved between Fugu and Homo frequently correspond to functional regulatory sequences.)

It is impossible to prove absence of function for any region of DNA. Moreover, it is likely that some function may be found for a few additional short regions of non-coding DNA that are not currently recognized to have function. Nevertheless, as indicated above, scientists draw tentative conclusions based on data currently at hand rather than on hypothetical possibilities of future data; and the arguments I just presented based on presently available evidence suggest that most DNA sequences that appear to be functionless are just that.

A more succinct reply to Cretinist agitprop about junk DNA:

Claim CB130:
So-called junk DNA is not really junk. Functions have been found for noncoding DNA which was previously thought to be junk, and we cannot be sure that the rest of the junk DNA is not functional as well.
Source:
Behe, Michael J., 2003. A functional pseudogene?: An open letter to Nature. [url]http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/behepseudogene052003.htm[/url]
Response:

1. It has long been known that some noncoding DNA has important functions. (This was known even before the phrase "junk DNA" was coined.) However, there is good evidence that much DNA has no function:
* Sections of DNA can be cut out or replaced with randomized sequences with no apparent effect on the organism (Nóbrega et al. 2004).
* Some sections of DNA are corrupted copies of functional coding DNA, but mutations in them, such as stop codons early in the sequence, show that they cannot have retained the same function as the coding copy.
* The fugu fish has a genome that is about one third as large as its close relatives.
* Mutations in functional regions of DNA show evidence of selection -- nonsilent changes occur less often that one would expect by chance. In other sections of DNA, there is no evidence that any changes are selected against.

Links:
EvoWiki, 2004. Junk DNA. [url]http://www.evowiki.org/wiki.phtml?title=Junk_DNA[/url]
References:

1. Nóbrega, Marcelo A., Yiwen Zhu, Ingrid Plajzer-Frick, Veena Afzal and Edward M. Rubin, 2004. Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice. Nature 431: 988-993.

Further Reading:
Knight, J., 2002. Evolutionary genetics: All genomes great and small. Nature 417: 374-376, [url]http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v417/n6887/full/417374a_r.html[/url]

CHI, 2003. DNA glossary. [url]http://www.genomicglossaries.com/content/DNA.asp[/url] (registration required)



Source (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB130.html)




Evolutionary theory did not predict highly-conserved regulatory elements that are identical in extremely different organisms: the inexorable force of mutation and selection should have caused wide differences between them.

Again, that's another example of willful deception and/or ignorance of evolutionary theory. Since evolution is based on the concept of common descent, there is absolutely no escaping the implications that the most important building blocks of life would be identical for all organisms - so far, the evidence has firmly supported evolutionary theory in that regard. Genetic phylogenies show that all organism seem to stem from a common ancestor (the reason why mice and men have 90% of their genetic material in common), and all organisms are built out of the same essential organic molecules. The great simmilarity of life is predicted for by evolutionary theory. IDiotism, on the other hand, has absolutely no predictive value: if one-third of the ogranisms on the earth were carbon based, one-third silicon based and one-third sulfur based IDiotists would still claim with a straight face that this is somehow consistent with their 'theory'.


Btw, you are one frenzied babbling misotheist.

I would say that being a 'frenzied babbling misotheist' is a better state of mind than being an inordinately pompous and laughably ignorant religious fanatic and loathsome misologist.

Doing too many drugs?

I can see why you would not approve of drug use. While drugs provide a controlled way of temporarily modifying one's inner-space, you, as a religious fanatic, live perpetually in a veritable madman's fantasy-world, where the earth is flat and six thousand years old, plants do not require photosynthesis to live, snakes and donkeys talk, a lying charlatan that's been dead for two thousand years comes to 'save you', and a vicious, bizzarely evil and absurdly inconsistent demon, dreamt up by some bronze-age Hebrew goat-herder in an epileptic stupor, rules all. You spend your every waking moment in a state of near-psychotic intoxication that a sane person such as myself can only pity. Perhaps you should free your mind, find out a bit about the pathology of your particular mental illlness:

Religion and the brain (http://www.templeton.org/brainmindemergence/press-newsweek20010507.asp)
This is Your Brain on God (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=)

and then look into some Cult Victim Counseling (http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/article2_printable.html).