1) Sonic I actually understand where you are coming from, but I think your desire to chastise Dr. Novella is distorting your thinking. He poisoned the well with the language he used to describe Egnor, “our favourite creationist” and his “cronies”, but I think that’s irrelevant to his main arguments. As Vigier also points out Novella’s critique of Egnor’s usage of the word Darwinist doesn’t hold; both populisers of evolution and intelligent design use the word (however it is interesting to note that Egnor uses the word evolutionary biologists to reffer to the scientists whereas he uses the word Darwinists to reffer to those he believes have an ideological position). The non-sequiters that you mention only exist in your narrow interpretation of Egnors article. I suggest you read it again.

Egnor’s article is an attack on evolution; that he describes it as an atheists creation myth is an attempt to poison a well by associating with infamous celebrities like Dawkins. Nowhere does he state his article only deals with the celebrities espousing their view on evolution (although the view of evolution they hold [i]is[/i] that of the scientific consensus); in his personal testimony he mentions both evolutionary biologists and Darwinists as if the term were interchangable.

Egnor presents the state of the fossil record as if it constitues evidence against evolution. Whether or not the theory of punctuated equillibrium is correct is still a genuine secondary scientific constroversy. If you interpret the article as specific attack against Dawkins, who does not accept punctuated equillibrium, then Novella’s point would indeed appear to be a non-sequitor. But Novella’s mistake is that of mislabelling what Dawkins reffers to as the concept of variable speedism. There are few evolutionary biologists do not accept this concept, the controversy lies in whether or not they accept discrete variable speedism (punctuated equilibrium) as opposed to continuously variable speedism (Dawkins position). Egnor and other ID proponents do fail to address the fact that evolutionary biologists do not think that species evolution at a consistent rate, and are attacking a strawman.

I’ll it at that.

2) Vigier,

I must say your post made me smile. I’m not going to critique your arguments, nor is this meant as an ad-hominen attack or an appeal to emotion. It’s simply a comment.

Do not present bullshit as if its science backed by evidence and is accepted by the scientific consensus. Don’t, seriously it’s not a good stratedgy. Curious people will be intrigued. Curious people will be excited. Curious people will enthusiastically do some more research. Curious people will realise your bullshit for what it is, but now interested will become well informed of how evolution really works, and what evidence it really has. Seriously don’t screw yourself over like that.

“As many others have pointed out before, this is a propaganda tactic to attempt to diminish evolutionary theory to the quaint ideas of one guy. It is also misleading, for the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory differs in significant ways from strict Darwinian theory.”

Curiously, we find the use of the word Darwinism and Darwinist throughout the Darwinist literature.

The AAAS’s own journal, Science, commonly uses the term “Darwinism” to describe modern evolutionary biology.

I just did a search of http://www.sciencemag.org on ‘Darwinism’ – the term shows a mere 741 times in the magazine! – and it’s die-hard pro-Darwinism magazine. 114 hits on ‘darwinist’.

So this bitchy little nonsense over use of a term is indeed lame.

Scientists use the term in their popular writings. Richard Dawkins writes that “There are people in this world who desperately want to not have to believe in Darwinism.” (The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, 1996, pg. 250) The term “Darwinism” has over 20 entries in the index to Stephen Jay Gould’s magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.

So talk about nit-picking and utter nonsense. As always from the man who ‘thinks’ he is nothing but a pack of neurons, a bag of animated meat – yet wants to convince the world that a bag of meat has something meaningful to say!

Sorry logic on Novella’s part indeed.

Yet the man persists :

“The science of evolution is rock solid. It has withstood tough scientific challenge – the scrutiny that counts. The issue is not about wanting to shield a theory from criticism or close examination, but the quality of science education. ID is simply not science. It is chock full of misinformation and logical fallacies.”

Rock solid? Well it depends on which definition of evo you’re using of course. As macro-evolution is without the slightest grain of evidence beyond every Darwinian fundamentalist scientist preaching that there are “mountains” of it – yet never being able to produce it – and the ubiquitous just-so story Mr. Novella is so good at telling. Indeed all these Darwinians seem to think that some other scientists has the mountains of evidence since not one of them can produce even mole hill’s worth.

Don’t believe me? Wel then where are the macro-evo lab experiments? Experiments showing macro-evo?
Oh dear! There are none! Why? Because it takes gazillions of years so we have to illicitly extrapolate micro into macro and you must take it by blind faith thereon out. How convenient for the theory n’est-ce pas?

ID is far more science than Darwinism ever will be.
Indeed, this is even testified to by some prominent NDE supporting scientists.

Just take the following example:

“A scientific theory is an established and experimentally verified fact or collection of facts about the world. Unlike the everyday use of the word theory, it is not an unproved idea, or just some theoretical speculation. The latter meaning of a ‘theory’ in science is called a hypothesis.” – http://www.whatislife.com/glossary/t.htm

compared to :

“The history of organic life is undemonstrable; we cannot prove a whole lot in evolutionary biology, and our findings will always be hypothesis. There is one true evolutionary history of life, and whether we will actually ever know it is not likely. Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else.” Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, February 9, 2007

Sorry but Mr. Novella’s fighting a losing battle and his own slew of perpetuated logical blunders and mis-information is not only not helping but is truly worthy of a “Darwin Award” of the year.

Mr. N’s answers are incredibly off, for example –

“Intelligent Designer proponents have been abusing information theory for over a decade now – another discipline that they do not make sufficient efforts to understand.”

Exactly what do you know of information theory yourself, sir? By your responses I’d say nothing at all.

Code implies intelligence intrinsically.

There is no such thing as complex coded information processing without intelligence.

Moreover, it isn’t going to happen soon or ever. Code by very definition implies symboloy and convention, syntax, and semantics (ever heard of semantic biology? didn’t think so) – which cannot exist without will and mind.

Code even implies purpose.

Given that the genetic code is not analogous to code but IS code (Yockey) and that it is the most concise, efficient, compressed code in the known universe, your statement rings vacuous – as most everything you have to spew out in favor of your gods “scientism” and “pleasure”.

Do you actually know anything about the genetic code? Certainly isn’t showing here.

Can you understand the very simple concept that error detection and correction mechanisms intrinsically mean foreknowledge of correct system state? It is impossible for error detection and correction to exist without knowledge and knowledge requires a mind. DNA contains all of this.

Sheesh this isn’t even grade school hard!!

As a professional informatics specialist I find your remarks exceedingly naive.

You snot Egnor for his use of the word “random” – as though IDists coined the term in relation to mutations. If your knew anything at all about genetic entropy and mutational meltdown coupled with Kimura’s (and others) mutation/selection distribution graphs, you would also know that Darwinism is doomed due to what we now know about that alone.

You might be a half-decent neurologist but your ignorance of coded information systems and information theory is appallingly evident throughout this blog.

Shannon’s theory is insufficient for deciphering the genetic code the more recent algorithmic information theory is better adapted to genetic information since the genome contains millions of precise functional algorithms.

Maybe you should go into politics – that’s where good liars, hand wavers and smoke and mirror specialists make the best money.

RickK-
It is not my job to produce scientific hypothesis for theories I do not fully understand or agree with (necessarily).
I made the point that if IC is part of ID, then it is a testable hypothesis.
“We will find a transitional form,” is a testable, but not falsifiable hypothesis. (How many years are we going to wait)

If I told you I was going to build a staicase to the moon, you might question it. I could point out that I have an algorithm and time.

I find the ‘unquestionable’ science absurd.
What questions do you have about evolution?

All right, how do you predict irreducible complexity (IC)? Where will it appear? How often will it appear? What constitutes irreducible complexity? If a biological pathway is found to create something you call irreducibly complex, does that invalidate all examples of IC? Or can intelligent design proponents just run along pointing at feature after feature saying “oh yeah!?, but can you explain THAT!?”.

The burden of proof is on ID. We’ve observed evolution. We’ve got an increasingly continuous record of evidence to support (sometimes gradual, sometimes rapid) NATURAL evolution from static species to static species. We’re adding daily to our understanding of the mechanisms of early replication, natural mutation (and other vectors for variation) and selection. We’ve observed in nature and demonstrated in labs the awesome power of the of combination of genetic mutation and natural selection when a population is small and/or under stress. All the building blocks are there, formed into a foundation for an increasingly robust theory. It’s so good a theory that we can point to a gap in the fossil record of species and say “we know this should have existed, we know when it should have existed, and we know where. Now let’s go dig one up.” And it WORKS!

So the burden is with ID to present the components of a proper theory:

- What is the mechanism? How does flesh go from “un-designed” to “designed”?
- Where is the documentation of “design” occurring? Where are the observations?
- How does ID fit with our other sciences? How does it mesh with paleontology, geology, physics, chemistry, etc.?
- What can you predict with ID? For example, do you predict that a particular irreducibly complex feature must have existed in a “reducibly” complex form earlier in that creature’s evolution?

Anyone can get into the science game, all you need is the ante. If you’ve got a good enough hypothesis to get a seat at the table, (and you can survive the inevitable trash-talk from the other players) you can play too.

Ante up.

Many evolutionists think ‘punctuated equilibrium’ is hokum, btw- for a more modern approach-
http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21

How can you say that ID makes no testable predictions and then give the example of IC in the very next paragraph? Isn’t IC a prediction of ID? If not, then how would IC be accomplished?
(Again the ‘destroyed argument isn’t what Miller claims it is- but that is a different topic)

The use of the term ‘Darwinist’-as “I am a Darwinist.” would fit with Dennett and Dawkins nicely.
Hasn’t anyone here read “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”?

I agree that ‘plausability v incredulity’ is a fuzzy line. When someone says a lichen ‘evolved’ into an elephant- I could say “Good, would you demonstrate that please”
I say no more on that.

As an interesting note- mutation is not random. Look up the term ‘mutation SOS response’ or go to
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6646.abstract

But we should not allow creationists to do this. It’s like someone saying all of chemistry is invalid because it doesn’t explain where the elements come from. It’s a tactic, and we should call them out on it every single time.

And Egnor is using his degree, blatantly in the title of his sad little article, to convey some legitimacy, to convey that he understands the scientific method. Of course, the text of the article demonstrates to the educated that he has exactly zero understanding of what science really is.

Or, he’s just doing some extreme lying like some reality show contestant in an attempt promote his name, thinking any publicity is good publicity.

You are assuming that all scientists are materialists, just because you are.

Great, show me wrong. Tell us about the discoveries of new complexities of the cell that have been uncovered by scientists working with non-material methodologies. Be sure to post your references so we can see for ourselves how this non-material science works.