Edward Feser has a blog post up that is highly relevant to much of the debate that takes place here at The Skeptical Zone between theists and non-theists.
Empirical Falsifiability
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Author Archives: Mung
Miracles of Evolution
From time to time, when I am not actively engaged in “dishonest quote-mining” of materialists and evolutionists, I take time to actually read their writings. Today I was reading John Maynard Smith.
I now want to take a great leap forward in time, and suppose that not only has a modern protein-synthesizing machinery evolved, but that specific enzymes exist catalysing specific reactions, and that the organism has a cell membrane which prevents the products of catalysis from diffusing away.
– p. 115
This isn’t a great leap forward in time, it’s just a great leap. Poof! A cell membrane! I love how that just magically appeared. Let’s assume a fully functional cell membrane.
A Beautiful Question
I’ve just completed the book A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design by Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek.
This book is a long meditation on a single question:
Does the world embody beautiful ideas?
Our Question may seem like a strange thing to ask. Ideas are one thing, physical bodies are quite another. What does it mean to “embody” an “idea”?
Embodying ideas is what artists do. Starting from visionary conceptions, artists produce physical objects (or quasi-physical products, like musical scores that unfold into sound). Our Beautiful Question then is close to this one:
Is the world a work of art?
Torley Eviscerates Krauss
Over at UD Vincent Torley has absolutely shredded Lawrence Krauss’ performance at the debate the other night.
Ironically (given recent events here at TSZ), we find out that Krauss is a dishonest quote-miner.
Feser Pigliucci Teleonomy
There are a few reasons this OP could be a flop.
1. It links to an article by Ed Feser.
2. It raises issues of teleology and teleonomy (again).
In any event, for those interested in the subject I think Feser’s article is worth a read.
Weasel Wars – Directed Evolution
This is just an effort to help keep Joe’s thread focused and to help keep it from being derailed. People can use it or not. I hope they will.
CharlieM: Can someone explain to me, why is all of this not just a model of directed evolution? Surely it is set up to be directed towards a target?
The Great Chain of Being: Anthropocentrism
I am reading a book in which the authors set forth the evils of belief in “The Great Chain of Being.”
The Great Chain of Being is, in fact, firmly ingrained in our culture and spirits. It leads to certain grave errors that are commonly acknowledged but difficult for teachers to correct.
The first of these is Anthropocentrism, “the view that man is the measure of all things.”
Structuralist Quackery
Throughout the history of evolutionary biology, as well as many other sciences, there has been a conflict between two styles of thinking. One is conventionally called functionalism, although in evolutionary biology the term “adaptationism” is more frequently used today because a trait’s “functional fit for it’s office” is produced through adaptation by natural selection (i.e., function is explained by adaptation through natural selection). The functionalist stance is one that explains organismal traits through their functional and adaptive values.
The alternative style of thinking does not have a generic name in biology, although in other areas of study it is called “structuralist.”
Michael Denton in Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis or Gunter P. Wagner in The Intellectual Challenge of Morphological Evolution: A Case for Variational Structuralism?
Spontaneous Generation
A century later we know that the overwhelming obstacle facing spontaneous generation is probability, or rather improbability, resulting from life’s enormously complex phenotypes. If even a single protein, a single specific sequence of amino acids, could not have emerged spontaneously, how much less so could a bacterium like E. coli with millions of proteins and other complex molecules? Modern biochemistry allows us to estimate the odds, and they demolish the spontaneous creation of complex organisms.
Looks like IDists aren’t the only ones to appeal to probability arguments. How does Wagner know what the probabilities are, or that spontaneous generation is even within the realm of what is possible?
The Biology of the Baroque
There exists in nature biological forms not explicable by Darwinian theory.
A new video has been posted on youtube.
Do non-adaptive and beyond-adaptive order pose an existential challenge to Darwinism?
Denton says yes.
Genetic Algorithms: When Drift Overcomes Selection
I often encounter posters here at TSZ who claim that Genetic Algorithms (GAs) either model or simulate evolution. They are never quite clear which it is, nor do they say what it means to model or simulate evolution (what would be required) and how GAs qualify as either one or the other. My position is that GAs neither model nor simulate evolution. In addition to other reasons I’ve given in the past I’d like to present the following argument.
GAs are often used to demonstrate “the power of cumulative selection.” Given small population sizes drift ought to dominate yet in GAs drift does not dominate. Why not?
The Discontinuity of Nature
Typology is perfectly consonant therefore with descent with modification. Each cladogram is witness to descent with modification and the existence of distinct Types. The modifications are novel taxa-defining homologs, acquired during the process of descent along a phylogenetic lineage, each of which defines a new Type.
– Denton, Michael. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis
I repeat, Michael Denton accepts common descent is is not a Creationist. My original thread has been inundated with scoffing and mocking and young earth creationism, all of which are far removed from the subject matter of Denton’s latest book. Trying again.
Still a Theory in Crisis
Michael Denton’s new book is out, Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis.
Denton’s stance is for structuralism and against functionalism, especially as functionalism appears in it’s current form as the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinism (the cumulative selection of small adaptive changes).
Denton argues for the reality of the types, that “there are unique taxon-defining novelties not led up to gradually from some antecedent form” and that the lack of intermediates undermines the Darwinian account of evolution. He also argues that a great deal of organic order appears to be non-adaptive, including “a great number of the taxa-defining Bauplans,” and that this also undermines the Darwinian account of evolution. Evo-devo is also showing us that “Darwinian selection is not the only or even the main factor that determined the shape and main branches of the great tree of life.”
Featured Thread
Featured threads ought to be featured because of their content, not because their content suppresses dissent.
The amazing sudden disappearance of the Feature posts here at TSZ is puzzling.
ID is Dead (Again)
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”
If that’s not enough to convince the reader that Elizabeth is no prophet, there’s aways other things we can point to.
New Rules at TSZ
Are there any plans to publish the new rules for OP titles and OP contents?
If there are no rules restricting OP titles or OP content, why was my OP closed for comment? What existing rule or rules did my OP title and/or it’s contents violate?
The Stench of Censorship
Why are threads that are garnering little to no interest given “Featured” status?
I have a theory.
When my cat takes a dump, he tries to cover it up.
The War Against Barry A.
Salvador Cordova recently posted in Noyau the contents of a private email he received from Barry.
Administrator Neil Rickert thanks Salvador for posting it and suggests an OP.
Administrator Alan Fox suggests an OP.
Administrator and site owner Elizabeth Liddle suggests an OP.
None of them call into question the wisdom of posting the contents of private emails on the site.
Extremely poor judgment by them all.
Those Weasely IDCists!
A couple recent comments here at TSZ by Patrick caught my eye.
First was the claim that arguments for the existence of God had been refuted.
I don’t agree that heaping a bunch of poor and refuted arguments together results in a strong argument.
Second was the claim that IDCists do not understand cumulative selection and Dawkins’ Weasel program.
The first time I think I was expecting more confusion on Ewert’s part about the power of cumulative selection (most IDCists still don’t understand Dawkin’s Weasel).
In this OP I’d like to concentrate on the second of these claims.
Moral Outrage (The Opprobrium)
This post is long overdue.
One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of moral outrage aimed towards theists in general and Christians in particular here at The Skeptical Zone.
Judgmentalism, oddly enough, is prevalent. A pungent odor of opprobrium frequently wafts its way forth from the atheist trenches, and it stinks.