Among creationists with background in population genetics, Dr. Felsenstein is respected and even revered even though he is an evolutionist. I feel privileged to have had interaction with him, even when he has been occasionally critical of things I’ve said.
This has really nothing much to do with the origins debate, but I noticed this claim in Wikipedia:
This is how Joseph Felsenstein`s scientific genetic computer software[41] placed them, considering their haplotypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron
The question of Y-Chromosomal Aaron has some religious and political significance to the Jews. If Dr. Felsenstein has any involvement with or opinions on the project, I would be interested to know.
Thank you Joe, in advance.
[UPDATE: I removed the first sentence “Joe Felsenstein holds a unique place among creationists.” That gave the unintended possible meaning that he was a creationist. I changed some of the wording to emphasize he is not a creationist.]
I am not sure what the point of this is except flattery. They used my PHYLIP package of phylogeny computer programs. They could have used many other packages instead.
The implication of the first sentence of the post is that I am a creationist. I suspect that implication was unintended.
Sal’s just trying to boost his new YEC blog / message board. It’ll die the same death of disinterest that his old one did, “Young Cosmos”.
“The implication of the first sentence of the post is that I am a creationist. I suspect that implication was unintended.”
I removed the sentence and tried to clarify. My apologies.
The reason I raised the question was that while reading the Wiki article, I got the impression that you could have been involved in the project, but it wasn’t clear whether you were or weren’t. Indirectly, the project is of interest to creationists. It just stood out that the wiki article went out of its way to mention your name.
Thank for you clarifying. I did not want to publicly misrepresent that you were part of the project when you weren’t since I have mentioned Y-chromosomal Aaron in passing.
Thank you for responding. That was my only intention to get clarification.
Could you pop into the Why is there no Creationist Isaac Newton? thread and clarify your position on the criticisms of Jonathan Wells’s “gotcha”?
Boy, that phrase wins the award for sheer awkwardness. I wonder who wrote it and what they were trying to accomplish by stringing "scientific" "genetic" and "computer" together.
It actually sounds like they're DIers with Ann Gauger's fake lab photo "see, we've got science, and um, microscopes, and um, there's DNA in those beakers, and um, don't forget the computer".
Except, of course, the author(s) of this wiki article are (presumably) sincere and not trying to shuck and jive their way through a fraud like the Discovery Institute does. Well, no big deal, it's just an awkward thing that caught my eye.
I always am astonished when some nonbiologist describes me as a “biogeneticist”. As opposed to what other kind of geneticist? A specialist in mineral-genetics?
But are you 100 percent organic?
No, given what I eat. But all of what I eat claims to be “100% natural”. So I must be too.