Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

I think I can see both sides here. Clearly there is some confusion as we have apparent non religious types advancing arguments that look surprisingly similar to abrahamic apologetics. The common ground may be unfortunate, but is certainly there.

I guess it would be nice to see the folks that are advancing ‘some intelligence’ give some reasoning as to why a Christian god is an unlikely candidate? Or preferably give a better candidate? Persistently avoiding these questions, whilst protesting injury, starts to look a bit coy and rehearsed.

Because religion comes with a lot of baggage, for one thing. Biblical literalism, for example: Adam and Eve, the seven day creation story, Noah's ark, worship, fear, the concept of sin, the need for baptism, intolerance of other beliefs - you are an atheist so you know all the arguments against organised religion. Some of us here have those same objections without going as far as saying there is nothing more than the physical. Or that the complexity and sheer elegance that we see in nature is purely accidental.

It looks rehearsed simply because it is the response to the consistent charge of the atheists: that those who are not atheists must be religious and subscribe to all that ideological bullshit. So we have to constantly explain but the explanation falls on deaf ears because the charge is repeated the next time and the next. How many times was this discussed on the Skeptiko forum yet here we are again, back at square one.

Many of us use the word "God" but we don't all mean the same thing when we do. My concept of God is nothing like that of a Christian fundamentalist. I reject the guy-in-the-sky notion as much as I reject the all-by-accident notion. Atheism is easy - just say there is no God and you have covered everything at a stroke. Everything else can be explained away by random accident. No need for philosophy, no need for intelligence or introspection or inspiration. All is accidental and it is just a matter of explaining how one accident led to the next, and so on.

I guess it would be nice to see the folks that are advancing ‘some intelligence’ give some reasoning as to why a Christian god is an unlikely candidate? Or preferably give a better candidate? Persistently avoiding these questions, whilst protesting injury, starts to look a bit coy and rehearsed.

It's slightly bizarre that neither side of the debate believes in the suggested Christian god. Why then would you seek to introduce it - is it because you are a secret believer?

edit: this was slightly clumsily worded, but I will leave it, as it is concise.

I didn't say nbtruthman was proposing a designer. I'm wondering in what way this is supposed to represent some sort of fatal problem to the field of evolutionary study....

Linda

There are numerous fatal issues to the unproven beliefs proposed by the majority of those professionals who sheparded "evolutionary study" for generations.  The sick and deceptive experiments of August Weismann to prove a metaphysical abstraction are one grave example.  It set genetic research back for 100 years.

 Suzan Mazur: You question whether the Weismann barrier exists. Would you say more?

Corrado Spadafora: We inoculated mice with human melanoma cells, expressing the reporter gene EGFP (green fluorescent protein) as a recognizable marker, then examined the spermatozoa of those mice. We found that the sperm cells actually contained EGFP RNA. So, the genetic information had passed from the human cancer cells into the germ cells.
In developing this work, which we are now terminating, we found that oocytes fertilized with these sperm cells generate individuals that contain EGFP RNA, with the mosaic distributed in the tissues of several organs.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzan-maz...89146.html

Do you accept, now after the flood of evidence, that random mutation is not a primary cause of functional phenotypes?  RM is a natural occurrence in organic information transfer and what is causal --- is its exploitation by natural bio-evolutionary processes.

This dogmatic materialism, to me, is clear in the language of Darwinists. Dawkins is fond of talking about the "appearance of design" to explain that is what Darwinists mean when they use the word design (which they often do). Again, wouldn't it be more parsimonious to agree that the appearance of design suggests design? Not for them because that would infer a designer which, in turn, would infer God. Again we have this binary stance: either Darwin or God (and by God they mean the Abrahmic god). In their terms it is either religion or science and that, in my book, is unfair to the lay public to deny us a real debate instead of an ideological squabble. As it happens, Dawkins himself has admitted that the appearance of design might actually mean design but, as I am suggesting, he draws the line when it comes to God.

This is a clip from the "documentary" Expelled, no intelligence allowed.  
A nasty piece of propaganda made by, guess who?, Indeed, our old friends over at the Disco Tute.

Kamarling, if you wanted to provide us with more evidence of the DI's tenuous relation with the truth, you did good.

Interviewees for this piece of trash were mislead as to what sort of movie they were appearing in:

The film has been criticized by those interviewees who are critics of intelligent design (PZ Myers, Dawkins,[66] Shermer,[28] and Eugenie Scott), who say they were misled into participating by being asked to be interviewed for a film named Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion, and were directed to a blurb implying an approach to the documentary crediting Darwin with "the answer" to how humanity developed:[67][68][69]

It has been the central question of humanity through the ages: How in the world did we get here? In 1859 Charles Darwin provided the answer in his landmark book, "The Origin of Species." In the century and a half since, geologists, biologists, physicists, astronomers, and philosophers have contributed a vast amount of research and data in support of Darwin's idea. And yet, millions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other people of faith believe in a literal interpretation that humans were crafted by the hand of God. The conflict between science and religion has unleashed passions in school board meetings, courtrooms, and town halls across America and beyond.
— Defunct Rampant Films website for Crossroads[70]

But before the interviewees were approached,[67][71] the film had already been pitched to Stein as an anti-Darwinist picture:  

   
Furthermore the Richard Dawkins quote from that clip is, of course, taken completely out of context. :

In Dawkins' interview, the director focused on Stein's question to Dawkins regarding a hypothetical scenario in which intelligent design could have occurred.[33] Dawkins responded that in the case of the "highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett)." He later described this as being similar to Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel's "semi tongue-in-cheek" example.[33][64]
The editing of the interview with Dawkins leads the viewer to believe that Richard Dawkins is saying that some intelligent designer (God) may be discovered when the evidence of cellular and molecular biology is examined. Dawkins is midway through a hypothetical statement, making the greater point that a designer would have to be designed (and this is highly unlikely), when Stein's voice-over interrupts, asking, "Wait a second, Richard Dawkins thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit?" Dawkins concludes, "But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable, process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That's the point."[65]
Stein states afterwards in a voice-over, "So Professor Dawkins was not against intelligence design, just certain types of designers, such as God."

  They also played the old "let's blame Chuck D for the holocaust" gambit, from this article:

 Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...

...about intelligent design and evolution

1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.
When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes.

And, in a way, we can not even blame the DI for that. They do what their backers ask, they live up to their promise:

 To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God. To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.  

They have no allegiance to the truth, or science. Their loyalty lies with their theistic dogma. If the science goes against that end goal, it is not their conviction that must change, it is the science.

That should be clear for anyone to see, and yet it seems that the defenders of ID exclusively rely on the output of the Discovery Institute for scientific  information about evolution?  

This seems absurd to me, this is like going to cookie monster for health advise about sugar intake.

Furthermore the Richard Dawkins quote from that clip is, of course, taken completely out of context. :

Sorry, but I don't agree with you there. I think it's clear enough what he's saying. 

It would be one thing if he were just arguing that there's no evidence for design and no necessity for it. But once he starts to speculate about extraterrestrials intervening in terrestrial evolution, he's definitely discarded Ockham's razor, and become another amateur metaphysicist making unevidenced assertions.

Sorry, but I don't agree with you there. I think it's clear enough what he's saying. 

It would be one thing if he were just arguing that there's no evidence for design and no necessity for it. But once he starts to speculate about extraterrestrials intervening in terrestrial evolution, he's definitely discarded Ockham's razor, and become another amateur metaphysicist making unevidenced assertions.

I would agree if this was a conversation that talked about the issue directly, but it wasn't.
apparently, the context was a discussion about a hypothetical scenario, according to the quote from wiki:

Dawkins is midway through a hypothetical statement, making the greater point that a designer would have to be designed (and this is highly unlikely), when Stein's voice-over interrupts, asking, "Wait a second, Richard Dawkins thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit?" Dawkins concludes, "But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable, process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That's the point."[65]

Stein states afterwards in a voice-over, "So Professor Dawkins was not against intelligence design, just certain types of designers, such as God."

So if the context of a hypothetical situation is obscured, then it is taken out of context.
 
Now, you could say, he should have been more careful to go into  hypotheticals, and i might agree.
But we must also not forget that he was already mislead by the fake premise of the movie.
Would he have known the true intentions of the movie, he could probably have been much more guarded in his answers.
He might have taken more care to not leave easily misquotable statements, or as he later said, he would not have taken part at all.

He explains a bit here (starts at 49"):

I would agree if this was a conversation that talked about the issue directly, but it wasn't.
apparently, the context was a discussion about a hypothetical scenario, according to the quote from wiki:



So if the context of a hypothetical situation is obscured, then it is taken out of context.
 
Now, you could say, he should have been more careful to go into  hypotheticals, and i might agree.
But we must also not forget that he was already mislead by the fake premise of the movie.
Would he have known the true intentions of the movie, he could probably have been much more guarded in his answers.
He might have taken more care to not leave easily misquotable statements, or as he later said, he would not have taken part at all.

He explains a bit here (starts at 49"):

He would have needed to consult a crystal ball in order to see how his words were to be manipulated. I'm certain he would not have participated had he know. This goes for the other hapless participants.

Sorry, but I don't agree with you there. I think it's clear enough what he's saying. 

It would be one thing if he were just arguing that there's no evidence for design and no necessity for it. But once he starts to speculate about extraterrestrials intervening in terrestrial evolution, he's definitely discarded Ockham's razor, and become another amateur metaphysicist making unevidenced assertions.

Don't for a moment think the producers were honest. They used bait and switch.

Don't for a moment think the producers were honest. They used bait and switch.

For all I know they may have been dishonest. But if someone is happy with speculation about extraterrestrials seeding evolution, they forfeit any claim to parsimony. Once they go into that territory, they need to say why their speculation is better than other people's. They can't just dismiss other people's speculations out of hand, if they are speculating wildly themselves.

So if the context of a hypothetical situation is obscured, then it is taken out of context.

You think anyone could listen to that and believe Dawkins was proposing it as a fact rather than a speculative hypothesis? I don't.