In the thread FMM throws Jesus under the bus, I had the following exchange with colewd:
colewd:
Until you have an eye there is nothing to select for. You have 300k of nucleotides drifting toward a meaningless group of sequences. Until you find a group of sequences that can provide reproductive advantage (sight) it is drift drift drift.
keiths:
This is just a version of the “what good is half an eye” PRATT.
Seriously, Bill, how can you possibly have missed everything that’s been written on this subject, from Darwin onward?
colewd:
No, I have read Dawkin’s ” just so” stories in the blind watchmaker and other books such as half a wing is better then none. I am surprised a man as sophisticated as you would fall for this bullshit. We do lack a hair bit of evidence that a one winged bird would even survive in the wild. If you want to argue that half an eye or a single wing or part of a wing aids in reproductive advantage, knock yourself out.
I am also surprised that a true skeptic as yourself would not have looked into this more carefully.
keiths:
Guffaw. Ever heard of bilateral symmetry, Bill? Do you really think birds needed to evolve one wing first, and then the other?
Man oh man are you clueless about biology.
Having dispensed with the one-winged bird objection, let’s see if we can get Bill beyond the “What good is half a wing?” canard.
To get the discussion started, I’ve linked to a relevant video from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute above.
newton,
What we don’t do is exaggerate the depth and evidence behind our position.
Rumraket,
Thats right its half a winged birds. Way to catch the straw-man. 🙂
newton,
A target rich blog 🙂
What use is half a winged bird?
True, you never speak about it at all, because you have literally none. There is no actual depth or evidence behind your position. Yet you believe it with the level of convinction of.. well, a fundamentalist.
What does evolution have against single-wing birds?
I agree, we make lots of arguments, and then you guys mock them. Instead of explaining what’s wrong with them, or making arguments of your own, or bringing any evidence for your position. You’d much rather just sit back and mock and act out your denial, than try to compare evidence and arguments. Because you know you’d lose.
Make a thread where you make a positive case for design. The first one ever on this website?
Rumraket,
Open your eyes Rummy you may actually see some evidence. Occum’s razor has forced your eyes shut.
Since it is considered the default position by its devotees, no evidence or mechanism is required.
You’re going to have to rephrase your post because as it stands it doesn’t make sense.
Please give me a single example of an ID-hypothesis that both explained and predicted some biological entity before it was found, and which was observationally confirmed after the prediction was made.
Maybe that’s a limitation in our imagination. Our imagination is mainly based on things that have actually happened. So the things that could not possibly evolve are mostly things that we could not possibly imagine.
Rumraket,
My position is that the TOE is a theory full of unsupported claims. Your side continually makes unsupported claims that lack any detailed explanation. Keith’s thread is a shining example and a target rich environment for mockery. Your counter is that creationists want too much detail.
Like asking for the origin of the nucleotide sequence that allows an eye to be built during embryo development. The origin of genetic information is one of the pillars of the design argument yet Keith’s ignores it. The existence of sequential information inside DNA that builds eyes, brains’ ears, hearts, lungs etc is explained by intelligent cause. I understand how limited this explanation is but it beats the shit out of random change to a sequence followed by the serendipity of a reproductive advantage.
No you don’t, because it’s not an explanation at all.
It’s just the goddidit that you want.
Glen Davidson
newton,
It is not as if a mechanism would not be better then no identified mechanism.
Evidence is used to support the design argument. The irreducible complexity of the flagellum motor is evidence of design. So is the transcription/translation mechanism, and alternative splicing which utilize sequential information. So are characteristics of atoms that make up all these mechanisms.
When you make the claim that there is no evidence of design in nature, like Rummy, I assume your eyes are closed.
Like cats that are both alive and not alive at the same time and in the same place?
GlenDavidson,
You guys continually make polarized statements as if you are the keepers of what evidence is or what an explanation is. This is not an argument.
No, it’s what we’ve argued and that you’ve neither countered properly nor taken in as intelligent thinkers. Look, you are so damned ignorant about evolution that you blather about a bird with one wing.
Of course it’s not an argument, the arguments we make are ignored and demands made that we explain everything while you sit on your lazy asses explaining nothing at all. You’re not willing to face up to the fact that your “designer” is too stupid to make bird wings out of single rigid bones instead of what used to become articulated bones in their ancestors, and too stupid to supply mammalian-type ear bones to birds. Evolution makes sense of such things, while you just snipe at evolutionary explanations, as if you had ever explained anything using your made-up shit.
So go ahead and ignore the actual facts that you’ve been supplied, write more meaningless attacks with no arguments, then whine again about non-arguments (and polarization–quit making false accusations for once about our motives) when we respond to your non-arguments with observations of the mindless stupidity of your entire approach. It’s apparently all that you can do.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Solid use of logical fallacies. Keiths would be proud.
The fact that Glen Davidson understands the design tradeoffs of biological designs? Oh yea, this is “frog in the well” Keiths post, my bad 🙂
No argument, no sense to your baseless accusation.
What’s the “fallacy”? Can’t figure it out?
Like I said, you ignore the issue. You have one idiotic claim that you don’t back up with anything, an appeal to “design tradeoffs.” Funny how these follow the patterns entailed by evolutionary mechanisms, isn’t it? Non-explanation, just one more false claim.
Dumb response, as expected.
Glen Davidson
Evolution is so much smarter than our designer. 🙂
#IntelligentEvolution
It was tongue in cheek comment thought you read it…
This is the most serious statement I have heard from Rumraket…I gotta check my underwear to make sure I didn’t have an accident due to the “scary content” of the video…
O’RLY?
Moi getting the first spot in being brain of supernaturalist religion and ID-creationism?
I don’t know about others mentioned here but I take it as a complement…
I don’t know what I have done to deserve this honor but I would definitely argue the order of the recognition…
Thanks Rum! This is one of the nicest things you or any other Darwinists has ever said
about me…
It only motivates me to post more nails in the coffin, one of which I already have worked out…I’m sure you will not be speechless and finally come up with some counter-evidence rather than sobbing and weeping …;-)
J-Mac,
You’re making Rumraket’s point for him:
GlenDavidson,
Logical fallacy ad homenim.
Probably what you claimed when you received a bad grade from the teacher.
There’s nothing fallacious about noting what a pathetic “critic” you are, especially with your “what good is one wing” BS.
Maybe someday you’ll learn what an ad hominem fallacy is, like after being informed a few hundred more times. No reason to think so, though.
Glen Davidson
Let’s see, who is your designer?
GlenDavidson,
Not surprised like Keith you are in denial here.
Sure, if you don’t have any standard to the quality of your arguments.
Glen, to colewd:
I think even colewd gets it by now. But just in case:
Bill,
If I were to say “Bill is incompetent at science and logic, and feigns a confidence that he lacks; therefore he is wrong about X”, that would be an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.
That is not my argument. As you know.
When someone points out your deficiencies, I’m sure it feels good to label their statement a fallacy. But that itself is fallacious, and it just confirms the validity of the diagnosis.
keiths,
I can understand you want pointing out someones deficiencies to not be an ad hominem argument because it is a tactic you use constantly. If your argument is addressing the person and not the argument that is by definition ad hominem.
Allan, Alan, Neil, Joe, Kantian, Newton skillfully avoid this fallacy.
colewd,
For once in your life, learn something instead of repeating the same mistake over and over:
Quite!
And a line is infinite!
Neils has taught me a valuable lesson, everything that is imagined in science has actually happened!
“He [Mivart] said to Darwin, how do you explain in the evolution of birds from reptiles, the function of half a wing?”
Is there a cite for this story? keiths? Anyone?
Mung,
Why are you asking me? I didn’t produce the video.
I didn’t actually say that.
colewd,
A group of kids in the neighborhood love coconuts, so now they are building some wings made out of chicken feathers, so they can climb up the tree to knock them down.
I suggested a ladder perhaps, but they said no,no, they heard wings are great for climbing.
Who needs a designer when lucky accidents work so well.
Well, you DID say this.
In case of emu and ostrich, evolution must’a heard our primates complaining with their few grunt vocabulary about emus and ostriches flying over the heads and pissing all over them as if they had pitols as big as garden-hoses…
So as usual, evolution problem-solved it, and made emus and ostriches eat McDino’s fast food, which made them fat and discouraged them from flying…
The rest of the story we already know…
Emus and ostriches settled down on the ground and their having evolved urinary bladders along with flying ability evolutionary omni-mistake in the first place was corrected…
This must have no doubt led to another genetic explosion similar to Cambrian in the brain of primates leading to homo sapiens miraculously evolving larger frontal cortex with abilities of reasoning, planning, abstract thought and other complex cognitive functions in addition to motor function not to mention broca’s expanded vocabulary from few grunts to unlimited vocabulary in 2000 plus languages…
If I were the intelligent designer, I would have never designed emu and ostrich with the ability to fly and with a urinary bladder with jet-engine pissing ability that people would mistake for pouring-rain…
But in the world of miraclevolution…everything seems to even out… with a bit of dumb-luck smarter than anybody could ever predict…
Ostrich taking jet-engine-like leak
I will admit that I have on occasion made an ad homonym argument against Bill, as when I criticized him for writing “then” when he meant “than”.
Good one, John. It will probably go right over Bill’s head.
ETA: Especially considering that he writes things like this:
keiths,
Not to mention “Occum’s razor”.
Point mutation substitution…Big deal for miraclevolver on which he based almost his whole faith…
keiths,
And this man’s opinion supports your claim how ?
colewd,
You claim to have graduated from college — from Berkeley, no less — and you are asking that question?
ETA: By the way, what was your major?
keiths,
I agree with you here. Since Glen is devoid of an argument here it cannot be ad hominem. Adult winning is not an argument. Thanks for the education.
That quote is not from me, Bill.
keiths,
Economics/Mathematics
Not a double major but economics studied from the view of both calculus and statistics.
keiths,
I agree. Again thanks for the education on ad hominem arguments.
colewd,
Did you actually learn anything, or will you continue making the same dumb accusation every time someone says something uncomplimentary about you?