Jerry Coyne represents himself as the epitome of science, reason and critical thinking. But “Dr. Reason” or shall we say “Dr. EvolutionIsTrue” often ends up as the butt of jokes and sarcasm in the ID community.
He got hoodwinked recently. He was pranked into believing a particular internet account was real and then started quoting from it to support his arguments. Turned out his evidence was from a faked source. Finally someone intervened to stop Coyne from making anymore a joke of himself. Coyne was forced to make a retraction:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/more-twier-hilarity/
But more seriously, Coyne might not make retractions when fellow scientists discover serious flaws in his own work. First I point out physicists have overturned his claims that the “backward” wiring of the human retina is a design flaw. In fact because the wiring acts as light channel, the wiring acts serves an important photon segregating function. He totally embarrassed himself:
(Phys.org) —Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly.
Hear that? Coyne’s ideas are called folly.
But that’s not all, he got called on the carpet by nuclear chemist Jay Wile who pointed out Coyne didn’t even bother consulting basic embryology textbooks. Coyne claims lanugo hair has no function and uses his false claim as evidence evolution is true. Wile point out Coyne’s error:
From about the third month lanugo hair (Latin, lana = wool) hair is initially formed and it has a role in binding vernix to skin.
Indeed, this is such a well-known fact that review materials for the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam discuss it. For example, Philip R. Brauer in his review book, Human embryology: the ultimate USMLE step 1 review says:
Vernix caseosa is a culmination of sebaceous gland secretions and dead epidermal cells, and the lanugo hair helps retain it on the outer skin surface.
I do credit Coyne with getting one thing right
In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to [the pseudoscience of] phrenology than to physics.
Well, I’d suggest an antitheist as someone wishes to suppress theism by force of law. Is that one of Jerry Coyne’s stated ambitions? I suppose someone could ask him.
Will Provine and David Raup, though evolutionists, have been venerated by IDists. Even myself, I’ve often spoken of themin glowing terms. Why? They are viewed as honorable.
In contrast, Coyne is despised. This should illustrate the reason why:
Coyne’s bigoted campaign against people like Francis Collins and Ben Carson or scholars and citizens clearly more accomplished than himself shows a level of putting bigotry ahead of reasonable tolerance. What do I mean by reasonable tolerance? Look at Collins, a Yale PhD in Physical Chemistry/Quantum Mechanics and a MD and head of the genome project, etc. Coyne might otherwise be grateful there is someone qualified like that to be head of the NIH, but Coyne finds it threatening that not only someone who believes in Jesus can actually be a good scientist, but also someone a lot more accomplished than “Dr. Reason”.
Now, as to the issue of Lanugo hair and Retinal wiring, it is not the issue of common descent, it is Coyne’s inclination to use the bad design argument. But if he’s going to use it, to the extent he fumbles in stating it in his propaganda pieces, he can expect to get called on it.
Darwin wanted to vomit when he saw the Peacock’s tail because he knew what it suggested, an Ingenious Designer. Now, in the sense of survivability it could be considered “bad design” on so many levels. The sexual selection theory actually doesn’t solve the problem because one could then say, “why should species that implement a sexual selection strategy that is metabolically and reproductively costly be naturally selected?”
The problem of the Peacock’s tail is the problem of Rube Goldberg extravagance. Unlike Coyne, Darwin appreciated its significance. Jerry Coyne and other “bad design” proponents sound like philosophers debating the ingenuity of inventors making systems like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMEWSS5ziG0
Those with an engineering mindset things tend to view things differently. And it is irritating to hear Coyne just keep going on and on about how an engineer would or would not do things. It depends on the engineers goals, what we call the requirements from which requirements specifications and final design are constructed.
If Rube Goldberg extravagance or biological warfare or self-destruct mechanisms were the goal of the designer, then the picture of what constitutes good or bad design in biology changes. Self-destructing biological designs? What for? See:
I’ll give an example one thing I found particularly irritating about evolutionary philosophy. On a debate forum evolutionists complained, “why should there be error correction in DNA replication, the designer should get it right the first time”. Any engineer who understands Shannon’s theorem and its applications would understand the folly such “bad design” arguments. To achieve high physical compactness of data storage, it is better to allow lots of errors in the read and write process that are remediated during the read and write process. We see this strategy, for example in Compact Discs or other media the use Reed-Solomon encoding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_error_correction
If the design goal was a Rube Goldberg machine with high data compactness, a machine with error correction, makes incredible sense.
But aside from John Maynard Smith, most evolutionary biologists aren’t engineers. [And here is curious picture of him, notice the pro-ID book that is on his shelf right beside one of Darwin’s. 🙂
http://evolution-textbook.org/content/free/figures/24_EVOW_Art/24_EVOW_CH24.jpg
]
So Coyne uses flimsy “bad design” arguments to promote “Why Evolution Is True” and there is no designer. Sure he can promote common descent if he wants. He can promote common descent plus bad design if he wants.
But when he goes on a bigoted campaign against believers in Jesus and wanting to oust them from participating in the scientific enterprise or who knows what else, that’s just plain low. Just couldn’t help rub it in when he again puts his fallibility on display. But it gave a nice opportunity to point out his evolutionary reasoning and justification is flawed.
The issue is not so much the common descent part of evolutionary theory, it is the bad design argument part of evolutionary theory.
Sal, have you read WEIT? How much of it is a negative case against design? Compare that to ID and how much is a negative case against evolution.
You clearly have a culture-war bug up your ass regarding JC. That’s your prerogative, but I’m fairly sure your not on his radar, and aren’t likely to be.
And there I was thinking that it was because they gave (oft quoted) soundbites that IDists find sympathetic to their cause.
Will Provine and David Raup actually went out of their way to help IDists in their careers. Raup wrote a letter of recommendation for Kurt Wise to Stephen J. Gould all the while knowing Wise was a creationist. That’s how Wise got to Harvard.
Provine gave Johnson a fair hearing, promoted his books in Provine’s classes, gave housing in his own home to Johnson when Johnson was in town.
Cancer.
@ Sal
Thanks for reminding me of Mike Gene. Seems he’s given up on his “design matrix” and has reverted to religious apologetics. He doesn’t like Jerry Coyne much, I see. Plenty of snark there but little substance in his over-the-top attacks on Coyne.
Regarding the question of Jerry’s “own work”, I was referring to his work as a propagandist, not his work as a fruit fly scientist.
Self-destructing designs.
You can still ask such daft questions when you put your mind to it. 🙂
Individuals have to survive to breed. Genes in individuals have to be passed on and proliferate to survive. It’s not a strategy that’s planned. It’s a strategy that works. There’s a trade-off between the economic cost of strategies to improve your attractiveness to potential mates and the chance to be around to take those mating opportunities.
My theory is natural selection selects against what is Rube Goldberg extravagant (like multicellular, sexually reproducing animals). Exotic birds are getting selected against, not for. They are going extinct at a very high rate. Observations agree with theory. 🙂
That’s what happens when the niche environment changes too rapidly for evolution to keep up. Species go extinct.
Richardthughes,
I’d think a good Christian like Sal would be more circumspect about a Jew with the initials J.C.
Correction, the word “adaptation” should be used not evolution.
Extinction is part of evolution. It’s a mistake to think “evolution tries to keep up”. Real evolution is what happens in the wild. Adaptation does not define all of evolution. If evolution is “change over time”, then extinction is part of evolution. You can say adaptation doesn’t keep up, but evolution certainly keeps up because extinction is part of change over time.
“What happens is what happens”. Evolutionary theory would be more correct to say it is a theory of “What happens is what happens” rather than “What happens is what we believe ought to happen”.
Evolutionist believe adaptation ought to happen enough to build complexity and avoid extinction until that complexity is constructed. It is a theory based on human notions of “oughts” not actually what “is”.
Evolutionists think things ought to adapt to unoccupied niches. But “ought” does not mean “can” nor “will”. Not to mention, nature is under no obligation to make available said niches for very long. Raup proved that and we see that in the present day. Extinction is an example of real evolution. Adaptation does not define all that changes over time.
Propagandist = someone not batshit insane.
Coyne gets it from all sides. He’s a militant atheist who lives outside the politically correct tent.
>Sal, have you read WEIT?
Sorry, I should have responded earlier. Apologies.
Answer: No. I just quote from Jerry’s publicly available snippets. You know me. 🙂
Instead of reading WEIT, I personally recommend this book which I’ve only read a few sections of. I speak reverently of its author because population geneticists are usually regarded highly by creationists:
http://evolution.gs.washington.edu/pgbook/pgbook.pdf
stcordova,
Why does it have to be instead?
I think he was making a funny. Creationists are fond of irony.
In the same way that god is fond of beetles.
Rich,
Sorry, you’re right. Also, it’s not right that I should diss a book I haven’t read like WEIT.
Sal
FYI:
I was sincere about Joe’s book. There are certainly writings on the ID side I’ve been far more critical of publicly (like 2nd law arguments, self-evident truths, ID is science, etc.)
Joe’s book has some good math and basic science in it, and some of the stuff in it has been used in Mendel’s Accountant in various forms. I recommend it to anyone interested in these obscure topics.
From Joe’s book:
Live long and prosper in your retirment, Joe. Thanks for making your book for free and available on line.
I am underwhelmed. That blog post equates “number of published papers” with “contributions to scientific knowledge”. But that isn’t so. Some papers are far more important than others.
I’ll agree with Gregory, that Coyne is anti-theist. I did think his criticism of Francis Collins was inappropriate. However, I don’t have a problem with his criticism of Ben Carson.
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=6756;st=60#entry246792
stcordova,
Joe is definitely ‘top tier’. We’re immensely fortunate to have him contributing here.
Give WEIT a go. I doubt it (or anything!) will change your mind, but at least you’ll know what to argue against.
Despised? Not at Amazon.
Faith Versus Fact is #35 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Science & Religion
Being As Communion is #574 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Science & Religion
Dembski’s most quoted book, No Free Lunch, is #2050 on the same index.
I don’t see any Dembski book breaking 200 in any category, although he does well in Creationism.
Despised by ignorant pseudoscientists, was Sal’s point.
Because that really matters.
Glen Davidson
Evidence that consciousness does not imply self-awareness.
I would imagine that sal is an expert on being despised.
I don’t know if there is an “accepted” definition of “anti-theist”, but I don’t see why suppression by force of law need be part of the definition. That said, this is not an issue that I care about in the least, so I certainly don’t want to argue about it.
Leaving aside the veracity of Sal’s critiques against a book which he has not read, I find the “argument from bad design” in general to be not that interesting. To the extent that such arguments use inferences regarding the evolutionary history of a particular trait and show that said history is much more easy to explain based on known processes than by divine fiat, I think they’re okay. That said, “this trait is poorly designed, therefore it’s probably a product of evolution not intelligent design”, is less convincing to me.
Of course, if Sal were to read WEIT he should hopefully see that the chapter regarding bad design–which was my least favorite chapter in any case–tended to be more the former style of argument than the latter.
It’s not the badness of the design that matters; it’s the fit with history.
Bad designs are not judged to be evolved because they are bad, but because they imply a molecular history.
If only he’d eat and drink with us sinners.
Mung,
Based on what I’ve read of Coyne’s blog, I suspect he’d be up for a dinner invitation. Especially if he could wear boots to the meal.
Creationists believe in limited common descent. Instead of a Universal Tree, they argue for an Orchard.
They believe an empirical way to identify the trees in the orchard is through hybridization experiments. If a dog can interbreed with a wolf, jackal or coyote, then they consider that evidence of common descent from a created ancestor.
What would be the ancestor for a tree and a fish and a bacterium? Kind of hard to argue for common descent. Most evolutionists say the common ancestor of a tree and a fish and a bacterium is a bacterium. But that would entail the macro evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes, and that would entail the evolution of things like spliceosomal introns and conversion of Shine-Dalgarno sequences to Kozak sequences and a host of other things we don’t even know. It’s not that we can concoct some phylogenetic story, is the question of mechanical feasibility.
Ivy League PhD and associate professor of biology in Missouri highlights the problems of this macro evolutionary step. It suggests at least an orchard for 2 or 3 domains of life, and if we can suggest an orchard for 3 domains, we might suggest an even bigger orchard and in the process of disposing of Universal Common Ancestry.
https://answersingenesis.org/biology/microbiology/information-processing-differences-between-bacteria-and-eukarya/
“God did it”, seems more believable to me because the evolutionary transition seems to need far more miracles to make it work than evolutionists are willing to admit.
That’s why it is correct to call you an IDiot. You feel superior to folks who argue ID from the Second Law, but refuse to learn further.
Sal, suppose you demonstrate your competence by playing devil’s advocate.
Pretend you are an evilutionist and give us your best shot at defending common descent. Let’s see if you know enough to doubt the judgement of thousands of biologists.
Of course, you actually mean ‘We believe’, since you still call yourself a ‘creationist’, but apparently aren’t man enough to say it here because it means, even to most Christians worldwide, that you’ll look like a fool if you do.
From Tan’s paper:
From
https://answersingenesis.org/biology/microbiology/information-processing-differences-between-bacteria-and-eukarya/
A minimal bacterium has in the ball park of 400 genes (M. genitalium). To evolve to a Eukaryote like yeast (S. cerevisiae) 1100 genes, how did the Origin of Replication Complex (ORC) sites get changed for every gene?
Evolving one from the other seems indistinguishable from a miracle. If it is indistinguishable form a miracle, we can accept it as a miracle. But if we accept miracles, we can accept special creation.
Yes, it is unlikely that birds evolved from squirrels.
Is this an example of your understanding of evolution, Sal?
Sal doesn’t need a label to look like a fool. All he has to do is display his ignorance.
No need to get personal. You make me feel like you don’t like me. :-<
Do you have no self awareness at all? You start a thread with a monumentally stupid personal attack on Coyne, and you are surprised that decent people loathe you?
You post squirrel to bird evolutionary scenarios so you can shoot them down, and are mystified that people think you are a waste of oxygen?
Why not dazzle us with your brilliance by playing devil’s advocate? give us your best shot at arguing for common descent. Take your ID arguments and tell us how you think a competent biologist would respond.
Change Tan is a competent biologist. I predict competent biolgists won’t respond because there is no answer. Tan reported what is already in peer reviewed papers, but which no one really is eager to highlight.
Ok:
How’d I do, Petrushka? 🙂
Pretty feeble. You’ve just quoted someone making general assertions. Neither you nor your essayist actually demonstrate much understanding. If you want to demonstrate understanding, take the general principle that we “know” how to trace human ancestors via DNA and explain how that is extended to broader lineages.
You learned to do the math for entropy. Show us how the math works with common ancestry.
Why do you intentionally attempt to deceive people, stcordova, with your ‘they’ referring to ‘creationists’ when you continue to label yourself a ‘creationist’, as if you couldn’t possibly be a Christian and a non-creationist (or non-IDist) at the same time? Have you hoodwinked and duped yourself?
Well, Gregory, it appears that there are Christians and Nominal Christians.
I assume that’s different from hypocrites and True Christians. And different from Three Sunday Christians and regular attenders. And so forth.
Not to mention Adventists, JWs, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Unitarians and Quakers.
Yes, because scientific theories are overturns by mocking essays.
Yet that makes no sense. At all. Cancer is because “self-destructing designs”. And measles because plim plam ploo?
So, please go on Sal and tell us all how and why Cancer is part of the design? After all, a “self-destruction” feature sounds far too complex to have evolved, so it must have been designed. Is that right? Do you agree so far?
petrushka,
If memory serves correctly, stcordova has said here and elsewhere that he is a Presbyterian Protestant, which apparently means he’s been hoodwinked and duped by his sectarian denomination into thinking that he cannot possibly be a Christian and a non-creationist (or non-IDist) at the same time.
Mung otoh, has apparently been hoodwinked by the IDM in some alternative strange way that resists admitting the Discovery Institute is full of double-talk PR folk that have made very little if any ‘scientific’ contribution to knowledge, along the way disrespecting theists who rightfully reject IDism.
These two IDist/neo-creationist characters are like oil and vinegar to each other nowadays, nevertheless both opposing Coyne’s anti-theism.
I’m a CREATIONIST!
It’s important to capitalize all the letters so that the concept is clearly associated with GOD and to clearly distinguish it from YECism.