A commenter at Uncommon Descent wrote
Keith, I am not convinced that you are an atheist. I believe that you are angry at God and suffer from cognitive dissonance. And to say that the evidence supports your materialist belief system is completely absurd!
I’ve seen versions of this “angry at God” accusation levelled at non-believers quite often and I wonder why those that use it think it makes sense.
The indomitable KeithS responds later in the same UD thread:
Okay, here’s some psychologizing for you guys:
You realize that atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God and that they make good arguments to which you have no intelligent response. This makes you very anxious. In a vain attempt to lessen the anxiety, you try to convince yourselves that the atheist isn’t really an atheist, he’s just angry at God. That way you don’t have to take his arguments seriously. It’s much easier to write them off rather than acknowledge the painful truth: you cannot answer them, and your faith is irrational.
I’m not sure I agree with Keith on “…atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God” and I would say myself that I have never had an inclination, need or desire to believe in “God” and thus never needed to convince myself that disbelief is a better option. I have never been a smoker. As a kid I tried to emulate others and puffed away but I couldn’t get past the point where addiction presumably kicks in. I have great respect for those who, having succumbed to addiction to nicotine, have been able later to kick the habit. Similarly, I can admire an ex-believer who has decided to quit. It must involve a great effort of will but at the same time I just can’t grasp the appeal of believing in the first place.
I’m sorry if the analogy regarding addiction is somewhat pejorative to people with religious convictions but I do find great difficulty in understanding the whole concept of “virtuoso believing“. I’m sure it involves emotion much more than reason. So while I’m puzzled that anyone could categorize an atheist as “angry at God” I can see why there is mutual incomprehension between believers and non-believers. Also being a non-smoker makes me less of a campaigner against smoking. As long as people don’t insist in blowing smoke in my face or that I should try this new/old brand of cigar, then I claim no right to stop other people from enjoying a quiet smoke.
I think there are one or two non-believers here. Is anyone angry at God?
petrushka,
Aside from the fact that this is not what Behe says, I find it interesting that the only evidence you need for your extraordinary claims that copying errors created life’s complex novel functions is…..
None.
Ah well, so much for your principals.
Oh, marvel the brilliance of evolutionary biologists:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/17/men-evolved-skills-more-sex_n_6159438.html
Must have been a bad copying error.
Man, it must really suck to be advocating for the position held by the laughing stock of the scientific community, if you can really call a collection of mostly lawyers and christian apologists anything related to science.
I also have to note the irony of all the swipes at religion here, “evangelists”, “religious preaching”, “interfering in the lives of others”, “Its a disease”. So I take it you think religion is terrible shit and a disease and should be kept out of school altogether? I agree.
Wikipedia is a useful first stop in gathering web information on a subject. The web is too anarchic (and long may it remain so) to prevent the dissemination of ideas. I don’t think “evolutinary evangelists” have the capability to censor the spread of ideas, sensible or loony. I strongly doubt there is any intent do do so either.
Seems a non-sequitur. Any public statement (be it a sermon or a blog post) should be open to challenge; though claims and rebuttals fare better when based on reality and supported by evidence.
You make yourself ridiculous comparing Jerry Coyne, who has been prepared to meet and discuss with religious groups, with the Taliban, some of whose followers felt entitled to shoot Malala Yousafzai in the head.
It’s even worse than that: the whole natural word censors evidence so that all the evidence we can gather supports evolution. Damned living things!!!
No, that’s almost impossible. It’s not fair.
What phoodoo has to do is much more simple: to show us a not-natural, intelligently guided mechanism that introduces novel functions in wild living organisms.
phoodoo,
You might get somewhere if you were better informed. Many of your objections to evolutionary theory are based upon misunderstanding, which no amount of clarification seems to shift. So you’re really complaining that no-one is teaching the objections to your straw version of evolution, or your general head-shaking doubt about it all. It seems unlikely? It seems unlikely that light is both particulate and wavy, but people just have to suck it up! The differences between clades look exactly like an accumulation of copying errors, at a detailed molecular level undreamt of by Darwin. They might not be in reality, but there is simply no reason to suppose this.
The sad fact is that yours is a minority position. Not so much among the general public perhaps, but since when did they get to pontificate on the detail of a syllabus in which they have no qualification? Among biologists, Creationism (which seems very much to be what you peddle) has few takers. Evolution, meanwhile, is massively supported by data.
It does make me chuckle when people whinge about conspiracy and hidden agendas. Wikipedia FFS! It’s editable by everyone. And still you can’t get your edits to stick. So it’s pretty much a minority opinion among those-who-can-be-arsed-to-edit, too. One would, of course, hope that technical articles are mostly contributed by experts. And they’re certainly against you. A consensus can look pretty much like a conspiracy, from the wrong side of it.
“As I explain in my latest book, The Edge of Evolution, I think Darwinian processes can explain diversity of species, genera, and perhaps families. But not the biological level of classes or higher. The reason for this distinction is that it has been discovered in the past decade or so that complex genetic regulatory circuits are needed to distinguish classes, and such complex circuitry is very unlikely in my opinion to have arisen by Darwinian processes. On the other hand, new species can potentially arise by very simple mechanisms, such as by a large chromosome inversion, which makes it difficult for the mutant organisms to mate with the parent species. So Darwinian mechanisms can explain lower levels of biology, but not higher categories.”
Michael Behe, 2010. The interview is both in spanish and english.
http://lacienciaysusdemonios.com/2010/03/08/m-behe-%E2%80%9Cpienso-que-los-procesos-darwinianos-pueden-explicar-la-diversidad-de-especies-i-think-darwinian-processes-can-explain-diversity-of-species%E2%80%9D/
This?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7381/full/nature10724.html
Or this?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13673-evolution-myths-mutations-can-only-destroy-information.html#.VG0yI9KG-2Q
Or this?
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n1/full/ng.2829.html
Now, it’s your turn to explain whatever you think is the source of biodiversity and porvide evidence for it. You can’t, can you?
Rumraket,
Yes, evolutionary theory doesn’t belong in the classroom, unless its a theology course.
Allan Miller,
You don’t know much about Wikipedia do you Allan?
You should read more about who and how things get edited.
Something that is proven to be true is not a conspiracy theory.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/13/wikipedias-dark-side/
Definitely, a blog article is much better to judge if Wikipedia represents the consensus on evolutive biology than actually CHECKING the amount of SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS referring the different theories.
What is the explanation for biodiversity Wikipedia is censoring?
You are aware that many of us got banned in UD (in my case, for asking incovenient questions like “And how do YOU explain it, then?”) and many of your fellows at UD CHOOSE not to expose their views here, where there is no banning or censoring, don’t you? Where if you ask “How does ID explain this? How is the “design” performed?” your questions won’t just disappear.
Seems to me that banning, censoring, segregating, are tools that IDiots are comfortable with.
Tell that to the teacher when you get to fourth grade? What are you, six years old?
If you still pretend to discuss the scientic value of evolution, I remind you that IT WAS YOU who left questions unanswered in the post about the supposed tautology of “survival of the fittest”.
It’s one of the downsides of religion: you make something bad, ask god for forgiveness and you don’t need to feel guilty anymore (something that immoral atheists can’t enjoy.. mmmm). I imagine you manage to arrange it in you head somehow that you deny to acknowledge evidence and explanations put right in frony of you, yet somehow you are the one who’s right given the lack of evidence you somehow don’t get to realize you are denying to see.
The main reason why evolution can’t explain the higher taxa is that they don’t exist. The creatures that would fill the gaps are extinct, and Behe knows this. The in-between \genomic sequences are lost.
This is not unlike the lost connections between isolated languages –the best known of which are Basque and Korean. We know — because we have written evidence — that languages evolve and speciate. We have written records establishing this for European and mid-eastern languages. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Korean and Basque simply dropped out of the sky.
Nor is there any reason to believe that isolated gene sequences dropped out of the sky./
petrushka,
Anyway, you said “Michael Behe, an ID advocate, and a bit more qualified than you, has no problem with copy errors accounting for new proteins and for the differences between related species”
And that’s exactly what Behe is saying, wether phoodoo is willing to acknowledge it or not.
Were that coming from the mouth of a politiction or school board member it might matter. From you, might as well not have been said for all the difference it’ll make in the real world.
So troll away trolling troll. You’ll get answered anyway and any passer by who happened to think that ID was science will soon change their mind when they read your comments and your lack of cogent responses.
phoodoo,
What a laugh. Wikipedia itself, not the editing public, is censoring the ‘debate’ on evolution? My, they must have their work cut out, doing all that on their own, and nary an edit from a qualified expert. How many Wikipedes are there, and how many of them are full-time dedicated to this task?
Effectively, Wikipedia is the internet, and there are no other outlets for Creationist views. Nor are there any Creationist, or evolution-critical articles, on Wikipedia. None.
tinfoil hat time
phoodoo,
So, there’s this bit about Gibraltar, and Wales being a bit shabby over a former lover, and slanted biographical pieces, and … well, the people in any community are not universally angelic and upstanding. Therefore [insert pet project here] is being unfairly reported there. Ho hum.
So … should research stop with Wikipedia, or start there?
Unfortunately almost the entirety of the scientific community disagrees with that statement.
In stark contrast to ID which has clear religious connotations. I’m glad we agree theological ideas should be kept in theology classes though, that makes the whole “debate” about IDcreationism settled. Keep it in religious class. Phoodoo has spoken.
Wikipedia is gameable. I fell foul of a fervently anticommunist group on there when editing an article once. They even had enough influence to get me banned. For one day.
Anyhow, that is pretty much irrelevant since there are the 3 million scientific papers, consensus of scientists, and museums Phoodoo has to explain away too. Oh, PBS is in on the conspiracy too.
davehooke,
Jimmy Wales has certain political agendas he wishes to promote through Wikipedia. For Allan to claim that any censorship that goes on there is perpetrated by rogue editors is simply not true. They pursue a materialist atheist agenda (amongst other pet ideas, which Jimmy Wales supports), and they intentionally slant the resumes of any scientists who disagree with evolution, by claiming they are not really scientists (like they did with Rupert Sheldrake), or that books written by prominent dissenters of evolutionary theory are considered poorly written or inaccurate by the scientific community (critical opinions are supposed to not be allowed by editors, but they overlook these infractions of written policies when the subject matter is something they want to discredit).
Even when they have been shown to be including outright lies about a persons background, they refuse to change it, if they think it helps paint the person they wish to discredit in a poor light. There are also groups of guerrilla skeptics who go around editing anything about a subject they wish to skew the opinion on, and the editors gang up on anyone who tries to force them to retract misinformation. Once you have been attacked by the editors, it is almost impossible to edit, and you will be blackballed.
Its despicable.
Wikipedia is where you go to get a consensus definition of concepts, or a consensus history. Encyclopedias have always been edited, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
The 1911 Britannica is beloved of some conservatives because of its point of view. A late century edition had articles on eastern European countries written under the supervision of Soviet historians. As one of my college professors said, It doesn’t matter that it’s in the textbook; it has to be right. There is no magic place you can go to get the TRVTH.
So to phoodoo, I’d say: stop trying to tear down evolution, and tell us what ID has to offer as an alternative. It has to be something as heuristically useful as evolution, something that explains the data and leads to further research. And presumable has testable entailments that differ from the expectations of mainstream biology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
Where’s this intentional slant of resumes that claims Sheldrake is not really a scientist? The article certainly reports cases where Sheldrake is criticised, but it also includes responses by Sheldrake and his supporters.
What emerges is that Sheldrake is a controversial figure. But that’s actually true. The same is true of the article on Richard Dawkins, it contains quotes and references to criticisms of his views on both science and religion, including his views on the gene-centric view of evolution and so forth.
Is this a slant of his resume roo?
I remember arguing at Wikipedia over the designation of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed as a documentary. Why it wouldn’t simply be called a propaganda film was unfathomable based on the facts. The only answer I seemed to get was that they were tired of fighting over it, so let it be called a documentary.
So yes, I don’t trust Wikipedia, even though I recognize that on non-controversial fact-based matters it’s pretty good. Not always, as the idiotic notion that muskrats propel themselves primarily by their tails was on that entry the last time I saw, but on most non-controversial facts it’s a good first stop.
But with Expelled–one of the most appalling propaganda films of the last thirty years anyway–being called a documentary,* I can say that the skew isn’t entirely against propagandists like the IDiots. To be sure, they still made it clear that Expelled is a wretched mess of lies and distortions, but that’s the least for which one could hope if there’s any objectivity in it at all.
Glen Davidson
*I suppose it could be called a documentary, so long as it’s also labeled as a propaganda film. I’d say much the same of Triumph of the Will, which by now is a documentary in a way hardly intended by Hitler and Riefenstahl (and no, ID isn’t in league with Nazis, but propaganda tends to converge in several aspects).
phoodoo,
All I am saying is that the ‘censors’ have their bloody work cut out. The idea that there is a cabal of dedicated atheist-materialist editors performing unregistered edits (if this is the kind of thing you are hinting at) seems unlikely on its face – there is one hell of a lot coming in from the public – but it could be subject to empirical scrutiny. Find a page whose documented history, edit-to-edit, doesn’t add up. It would be a front-page sensation.
Allan Miller,
“The idea that there is a cabal of dedicated atheist-materialist editors performing unregistered edits (if this is the kind of thing you are hinting at) seems unlikely on its face…”
You have never heard of guerrilla skeptics?
Sometimes unlikely things are not true (evolution) and sometimes they are true ,there is a cabal of dedicated atheist-materialist editors (but they are registered.)
How convenient. Unlikely things are untrue when you disagree with them, and true when you don’t.
By the way, how “unlikely” is evolution? Show your work.
That you have to invent a conspiracy to explain the failure of ID as science is very telling. And amusing!
Have you ever checked your score on the crackpot scale?
Luckily ID has many, many journals where cutting edge ID science can be published! They don’t need no stinkin Wikipedia with it’s materialistic bias!
And yet those journals seem very thin. Why is that?
Well, I hadn’t till you mentioned the name. Let’s see:
The group was founded by Susan Gerbic, a professional portrait photographer living in Salinas, California and the co-founder of Monterey County Skeptics. She organized GSoW with the intention to improve skeptical content on Wikipedia and to guide and mentor fellow skeptics regarding how to contribute.
Their slogan:
She seems like a terrible person!
And the point is, phoodoo, that evidence ought to be more convincing than innuendo. Is there anything wrong with objecting to unsupported claims from psychics and cranks?
phoodoo,
Nope.
I’m afraid all I can do at this juncture is point and laugh. What busy little bees these skeptics must be. Can you cite even a single example of their work – an edit to a page relevant to evolutionary theory, for or against, in which claims made therein depart from the literature on the subject? Or is referencing the literature in itself the act of a guerrilla skeptic?
Anyone can form a ‘guerrilla group’ and edit their socks off. I’m quite sure there are ‘guerrilla theist’ groups out there. We certainly see a lot of carbon-copy Creationist arguments on blogs such as this, for example – it’s like there’s a seminary or something. But they fight a losing battle in a scientific article because there is a mountain of literature on the one side, and a mere grain on the other. Your convictions notwithstanding.
As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if the work is sloppy or inaccurate, it will tend to be replaced. Your complaint boils down to one that rigour is expected, and the people demanding this rigour tend not to be the ‘right kind’ of skeptic. Which, as I say, tends to come from the consensus mode of operation than anybody sitting round in smoke-filled rooms plotting to push the materialist agenda. You are simply in the minority.
Alan Fox,
They have broken the first rule of shadowy, secretive organisations by blurting their mission to all and sundry. Don’t these people understand how the internet works? 😉
Allan Miller,
“I wish I worked as efficiently as Wikipedia’s editors. Last week I noted here that notwithstanding the impressive volume of pro-ID peer-reviewed publications, by researchers within and outside the intelligent-design movement, Wikipedia’s article on ID carries the ridiculously false statement that “The intelligent design movement has not published a properly peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal,” with a footnote to the six-years-old Kitzmiller v. Dover decision.
Writing us at ENV, a reader in South Africa promptly took it on himself to try to correct the Wiki article and report back about the results. A worthy gesture, but I could have told him he was probably wasting his time.
As anyone knows who’s followed the popular Darwinist blogging sites, Darwinism is an ideological movement seemingly rich in believers unhindered by responsibilities to family or work or both, with little better to do day and night than engage in (usually anonymous) skirmishes on the Internet. Editing the Wiki article, our South African friend inserted references to the 50-plus peer-reviewed articles from our updated list of pro-ID scientific literature. Sure enough, within just 30 minutes, someone had erased his additions and substituted snide and again false language….”
Allan Miller,
” Obviously, as I already assumed somehow, even the subjects on Wikipedia that should be controlled by the people questioning evolution were slightly adjusted by people who have an evolution agenda. As can be noticed from reading many Wikipedia articles about this subject, there is a negative undertone in certain articles about Intelligent Design or Creationism. Wikipedia is not correct in it’s display of definitions of many subjects involving evolution, intelligent design, religious articles, political articles, etcetera. Wikipedia’s science articles seem to be controlled by people who do not accept criticism of evolution.
Many authors of Wikipedia articles about evolution refer to sources that come from the same organizations that are sponsored by mainstream science organizations that fanatically promote evolution worldwide. Examples are TalkOrigins and Panda’s Thumb as sources for bolstering many evolutionary subjects. Those organizations are strongly linked to NCSE and AAAS which are by definition pro-evolution, and opposed to everything questioning evolution.
Among Gerbic’s stated successes has been to use Wikipedia to increase ‘hits’ to the JREF homepage,[54:05] create and promote pages of JREF fellows [50:20] and raise the profile of Randi’s million dollar challenge for evidence of the paranormal.[49:10] Since winning requires defeating odds of 1 in 10 million, signing away unacceptably restrictive legal terms and knowing that Randi, the magician, claims he always has “an out” – the Challenge is really no more than an amusing charade. As Randi might say to his audience – You decide?
Allan Miller,
“Wales is an outspoken atheist and an adherent of Objectivism, a philosophy popularized by author Ayn Rand. Objectivism privileges individualism, capitalism and reason.”
Allan Miller,
“It used to be that with Wikipedia, all you had to worry about were errors written by people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Nowadays you don’t just have to contend with mistakes on Wikipedia, though. You also have to contend with overt censorship, bullying, and ideological thuggery–all of it invisible on the front pages of Wikipedia, but which can be seen on Talk, Revision, and Blacklist pages all over Wikipedia, by the people who control what the general public sees on the front pages…”
http://www.basfeijen.nl/evolution/wikipediabias.htm
http://realitysandwich.com/179887/wikipedia_battle_rupert_sheldrakes_biography/
Is this all this rambling about Wikipedia necessary?
phoodoo, you pretend to convince us that evolution is wrong and ID is right by proving Wikipedia is biased?
Why don’t we try this: so far, your arguments AGAINST evolution have failed. Let’s see your arguments FOR ID. Let’s see ID explaining things. Let’s see ID explaining biology and ecology.
Guillermoe,
Guillermoe,
Are you as angry at God as Jimmy Wales?
I’m convinced. ID is science and “evolution” is not because Wikipedia is biased toward reality.
Yawn. Now explain why scientists are not convinced by ID as none of the above does that.
So where are these 50 peer reviewed pro-ID papers again? In what journals were they published?
Rumraket,
They are a lot easier to find than the theory of evolution, if you bother looking.
Come back when you are educated on the topic.
I just went through the references this guy says are lacking, and then compared them to the references on the actual Sheldrake page on Wikipedia, it seems to me he’s making shit up. How surprising.
Did YOU check the references or did you just buy this guy’s crap wholesale because you agree with him?
By the way, you actually following a blog on “psi” ? HAHA.. that’s some serious crank magnetism right there.
I have bothered looking multiple times, I have yet to find any published in a credible journal, which explicitly support ID.
I challenge you to give me 5.
How can you be angre at something you don’t believe in? How’d that work?