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.

The debate would have been a better one without Krauss, who generally behaved like a boor, and who engaged in deliberate dishonesty (see below).

From this statement, Krauss draws the totally unwarranted inference that the Center for Science and Culture thinks that “science is bad,” despite the fact that the previous sentence (which he omitted to quote) refutes that notion. This is a clear-cut case of quote-mining on Krauss’s part.

Torley’s comments are worth reading.

Thoughts on Krauss’ performance?

194 thoughts on “Torley Eviscerates Krauss

  1. Kantian Naturalist: Apparently it can’t be a result of philosophical reflection that there are limits to philosophical reflection?

    Of course it can be, but you denied any chance of philosophical reflection by saying “we don’t notice [the bedrock convictions of our worldview] just as we don’t notice the hinges on a door when we go in or out” (and you even attributed this atrocious idea to Wittgenstein). To fail to acknowledge that doors have hinges is to be utterly incompetent as a scientist, as a philosopher, and even as an average joe who has to occasionally fix broken things.

    Worldviews have bedrock convictions and presuppositions. Only someone without a worldview can fail to notice this.

  2. Erik: Only someone without a worldview can fail to notice this.

    Erik: Worldviews have bedrock convictions and presuppositions. Only someone without a worldview can fail to notice this.

    Perhaps I qualify. I’m not really sure what “worldview” means, so it’s difficult to know whether I have one. Is it like raison d’être?

  3. Gregory: They cannot answer to the distinction that Lamoureux made, which seems to have started with Owen Gingerich, that every Abrahamic theist already accepts lowercase ‘intelligent design’,…

    Lamoureux was the most interesting among the three, but this particular statement was disagreeable. He said that he believed in “classical intelligent design”. Unfortunately, there is no such thing.

    Instead, there is the classical design argument which features the concept of design – just that, not intelligent design. In classical terms, “intelligent design” is an impossibility, because it should be contrasted with “non-intelligent design”, but what would “non-intelligent design” be?

    Accommodation of the term “intelligent design” is accommodation of nonsense.

  4. petrushka,

    If you do not accept the Bible as authoritative on science history, there is no reason to doubt the consensus of science on anything.

    Until about a year ago I would completely agree with this. After looking into the details on the theory of evolution I now am very skeptical of any scientific “consensus”. If you have a solid hypothesis that you have validated through experiment why do you need consensus?

  5. Mung: I am also a Christian, and therefore a Theist. As such I reject Deism.

    So given that, what are the alternatives when it comes to the origin, history and diversity of life?

    You could look at it an example of the brilliant design of your god, coming up with evolution as a way of producing life.

  6. Neil Rickert: You could look at it an example of the brilliant design of your god, coming up with evolution as a way of producing life.

    Exactly! Add the extra layer if you wish. It works for theistic evolutionists like Lamoureux. Seems a harmless addition.

  7. colewd: Until about a year ago I would completely agree with this. After looking into the details on the theory of evolution I now am very skeptical of any scientific “consensus”. If you have a solid hypothesis that you have validated through experiment why do you need consensus?

    Care to explain?

  8. Alan Fox: Some call that “natural selection”.

    The thing that makes evolution not design is contingency.

    Replaying from the same starting point will not necessarily go the same way.

    The material presented to selection is constantly varying in neutral ways

  9. petrushka: The thing that makes evolution not design is contingency.

    I’m just trying to take back “design” for science. I have no problem saying the non-random element of evolution is design by the environment.

    Replaying from the same starting point will not necessarily go the same way.

    No, indeed.

    The material presented to selection is constantly varying in neutral ways

    I’m still baffled about what “drift” is supposed to do that adds to the non-random process. I see how it works; I don’t yet see what it adds.

  10. Alan,

    I’m still baffled about what “drift” is supposed to do that adds to the non-random process. I see how it works; I don’t yet see what it adds.

    It isn’t supposed to “add” or “subtract” anything. It just happens.

    And since it happens, evolutionary biologists study it.

  11. keiths: It isn’t supposed to “add” or “subtract” anything. It just happens.

    And since it happens, evolutionary biologists study it.

    Isn’t that what I said? You agree that it happens and that it doesn’t add anything. Is that what you are saying? What has “supposed” got to do with it?

  12. Alan Fox: I’m still baffled about what “drift” is supposed to do that adds to the non-random process. I see how it works; I don’t yet see what it adds.

    Look at the Lenski experiment. Most of the populations varied in ways that did not enable citrate metabolism.

    Selection — given enough material — will tend to produce convergence. Or at least phenotypes will converge if the population is plastic enough and the selection is strong.

    But plasticity is not infinite. Populations are limited and constrained. A good part of this constraint is the result of drift. Changes that have accumulated without regard to increased or decreased fecundity.

  13. Badly worded previous comment. I’m not sure why Larry Moran emphasizes drift as having an effect on outcomes. If the process is neutral, what affects the outcome?

  14. Alan Fox: I’m just trying to take back “design” for science. I have no problem saying the non-random element of evolution is design by the environment.

    No, indeed.

    I’m still baffled about what “drift” is supposed to do that adds to the non-random process. I see how it works; I don’t yet see what it adds.

    It causes change in phenotype over time. And some think that it’s how speciation often occurs.

    It’s just one of the factors in evolution that may lead to genetic isolation, and to the changes that show up. Especially, if you’re thinking that all changes are due to selection, you’ll be wrong about why some of the changes occur. Change sometimes happens because of drift, not because the later phenotype is necessarily selected for anything.

    Glen Davidson

  15. Erik: …but what would “non-intelligent design” be?

    Alan Fox: Some call that “natural selection”.

    When it’s non-intelligent, then in what sense is it selection (instead of mutation or drift)? Selection implies a selector. It’s teleologically loaded.

  16. Alan,

    Badly worded previous comment. I’m not sure why Larry Moran emphasizes drift as having an effect on outcomes. If the process is neutral, what affects the outcome?

    Chance. Drift is the result of probabilistic sampling.

    Rerun “the tape” and the outcome will be different because different alleles will fix due to probabilistic sampling.

  17. Alan Fox: I’m still baffled about what “drift” is supposed to do that adds to the non-random process. I see how it works; I don’t yet see what it adds.

    Well, it does help populations avoid being stuck in local optima. If evolution were completely non-random, every population would head toward the closest peak in adaptive space and stop there.

  18. petrushka: Look at the Lenski experiment. Most of the populations varied in ways that did not enable citrate metabolism.

    Presumably as the result of mutations accumulating. Drift then causes some of those mutationds to fix and some to be lost. It doesn’t impact on which mutations fix. It’s random!

    Selection — given enough material — will tend to produce convergence. Or at least phenotypes will converge if the population is plastic enough and the selection is strong.Selection pressure will resist the accumulation of deleterious mutations and push beneficial mutations to fixation.

    But plasticity is not infinite. Populations are limited and constrained. A good part of this constraint is the result of drift. Changes that have accumulated without regard to increased or decreased fecundity.

    I read the words but I can’t join the dots. 🙁

    Drift tips out some mutations allowing others to fix. It happens. If it didn’t happen, for the sake of argument, how would that impinge negatively on the process of mutation and selection?

  19. John Harshman: Well, it does help populations avoid being stuck in local optima. If evolution were completely non-random, every population would head toward the closest peak in adaptive space and stop there.

    Thanks John. Will stop now and digest that.

  20. petrushka,

    I disagree that the scientific consensus is reason to accept a scientific hypothesis especially when the claims have been only indirectly tested. I think taking an independent look at the evidence is healthy.

  21. colewd:
    petrushka,

    I disagree that the scientific consensus is reason to accept a scientific hypothesis especially when the claims have been only indirectly tested.I think taking an independent look at the evidence is healthy.

    No quibbles about consensus; it’s only something you might accept if you have no other basis for an opinion. But what’s this about “only indirectly tested”? How is an indirect test any worse than a direct test, whatever those two terms might mean?

  22. colewd: I disagree that the scientific consensus is reason to accept a scientific hypothesis especially when the claims have been only indirectly tested. I think taking an independent look at the evidence is healthy.

    Feel free to take an independent look. I note, however, that IDists who are technically qualified not morons — Behe, for example — do not doubt the age of the earth, common descent, or the ability of evolution to create new proteins.

  23. John Harshman: No quibbles about consensus; it’s only something you might accept if you have no other basis for an opinion.

    Consensus in science over a century or more means that anything coming along to overturn it will have to be pretty damn good.

    Evolution overturned Paley, the previous consensus.

    Uniformitarianism overturned catastrophism, without actually eliminating occasional catastrophes.

    Quantum theory overturned classical physics without making Maxwell’s equations obsolete. Same with relativity and Newton’s equations.

    Nothing is going to overturn evolution as a description of natural history, even if we get a visitation from Jesus proclaiming that He personally diddled all those genomes.

    Design is not going to replace Lenski’s observation that evolution is contingent, and most change is adventitious.

  24. John:

    Gregory doesn’t like Mung. Does anyone know why?

    KN:

    Gregory thinks that Mung is a shill for the Discovery Institute. Gregory doesn’t like the Discovery Institute.

    I’m not entirely sure why Gregory doesn’t like the Discovery Institute, but here’s a part of it. He thinks that the DI unwisely concedes too much to the prevailing “scientism” of Western culture. It does so by presenting the religious conviction that the ordered beauty and harmony of the world expresses the creative goodness of its Creator as if it were a legitimate scientific theory.

    A good deal — though not all — of Gregory’s work is based on Sorokin’s thesis that societies can be classified “according to their ‘cultural mentality’, which can be “ideational” (reality is spiritual), “sensate” (reality is material), or “idealistic” (a synthesis of the two). He suggested that major civilizations evolve from an ideational, to an idealistic, and eventually to a sensate mentality.”

    As Gregory sees it, scientism (alternatively: materialism, naturalism, atheism) are just different versions of Western civilization’s descent into the decadence of the sensate mentality, which is disenchanting and dehumanizing. The Discovery Institute appears to fight against this — see the Wedge Strategy — but in doing so, they seem to be fighting against materialism by conceding everything to scientism. Gregory does not think that this is conceptually coherent program.

    KN,

    Man, I wish Gregory would put even a tenth of the effort into understanding your positions that you have put into understanding his.

  25. petrushka: Consensus in science over a century or more means that anything coming along to overturn it will have to be pretty damn good.

    How can you know what’s pretty damn good without some knowledge of the field? “Scientists believe X” is not as good a reason to believe X as actual evidence favoring X is. That’s all I’m saying.

  26. keiths: KN,

    Man, I wish Gregory would put even a tenth of the effort into understanding your positions that you have put into understanding his.

    Yes, that would be nice. Alas, we all know it’s not going to happen.

  27. John Harshman: “Scientists believe X”

    Because it’s not a case of scientists believing X in the sense that scientists believe beets could hold the key to curing cancer.

    A consensus held on some major proposition, such as evolution, or the big bang, or the periodic table of elements, is not in the same mental category as the latest pronouncement from the press release machine.

    There are general outlines of physical and biological history that are supported by masses of consilient data.

    I do not have the knowledge to affirm or deny any of the big ideas in science. But I can sort stupid reasoning from sharp reasoning.

  28. Erik: When it’s non-intelligent, then in what sense is it selection (instead of mutation or drift)? Selection implies a selector. It’s teleologically loaded.

    Selection does not inherently require an goal-oriented selector. Soil routinely selects the items that can pass through it and those that cannot. There are many naturally occurring semi-permeable filters in the world and all engage in the “natural selection” of different sizes of items. If you prefer the term “natural sorting” or “natural differentiation”, have at it. The actual phenomenon is still the same.

    This same phenomenon applies to environmental pressures on species populations. Groups within populations have characteristics that increase or decrease (filter) their reproductive success compared to the average of the group as a whole and compared to the average of other similar groups. And because those groups with characteristics that increase their reproductive success tend to pass on those characteristics to their offspring, those offspring with such characteristics tend to increase in population relative to those offspring that don’t have those characteristics (further filtering). So, there’s a “selection” (or sorting or filtering or differentiating or whatever other term you prefer) for that characteristic. That’s why the term “selection” is used.

  29. Erik: Worldviews have bedrock convictions and presuppositions. Only someone without a worldview can fail to notice this.

    Well, KN did say at one point that he had no worldview. Didn’t know what one was, if I correctly recall what he wrote.

  30. Gregory: For Torley, uppercase ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ *cannot* be abandoned for any reason if one is to remain a Catholic Christian.

    What about for you & your (Protestant) Christianity: can you possibly reject ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ and still remain a (Protestant) Christian? If so, how? Will you attempt to articulate this?

    I would disagree with Torley. I am not a Catholic, but based on my own readings other Catholics would certainly disagree with him as well.

    I was a Christian before the DI came along and will continue to be one if it goes defunct. My becoming a Christian had nothing to do with Intelligent Design theory and no doubt there are countless Christians who have never heard of “the scientific case for intelligent design.”

    If you are asking whether I could live my life as a Christian without Intelligent Design Theory the answer is yes, it is possible.

  31. Mung:
    Well, KN did say at one point that he had no worldview.

    Yes, I noticed, but that would be a fundamental problem for him. Worldview is simply keeping one’s own views/statements/propositions logically connected. KN finds stuff to disagree with here and there when things don’t make sense to him, but if he at the same time holds that there’s no need for things to make sense (i.e. things to be logically connected so as to form a coherent continuum or a structured system known as worldview) then he is disagreeing without any reason and for no purpose, just emitting noise.

  32. John Harshman: Well, it does help populations avoid being stuck in local optima. If evolution were completely non-random, every population would head toward the closest peak in adaptive space and stop there.

    I don’t think drift does any such thing. You’re basically saying drift overcomes selection.

  33. I’ve still seen no evidence that keiths understands the bicycle lock analogy used by Meyer in the debate.

    Larry Moran gets it.

  34. Mung:
    I’ve still seen no evidence that keiths understands the bicycle lock analogy used by Meyer in the debate.
    Larry Moran gets it.

    I don’t see your point. Moran, I think, would argue there is a low probability of evolving a protein of a specific kind suited to a particular pressing need.

    That isn’t the way evolution works.

  35. Mung: I don’t think drift does any such thing. You’re basically saying drift overcomes selection.

    You are free to think or not think as you like. But drift does overcome selection under the proper conditions. Weren’t you paying attention in that long discussion of genetic algorithms and such? Drift overcomes selection when s < 1/(2N-sub-e), approximately. When s = 0, that's true neutral evolution, and it's the case over most of your genome.

  36. Gregory: Once you acknowledge this is indeed possible, it’s time to drop your support for the Discovery Institute’s ideology. Otherwise you put science above faith, embracing scientism unwisely.

    I reject a 6000 year old earth. Have I put science above faith?

  37. John Harshman,

    How is an indirect test any worse than a direct test, whatever those two terms might mean?

    A direct test would validate the hypothesis. An indirect would create in inference to the hypothesis. The Lenski experiment showed that evolution can enable a protein (citrate enzyme) that was previously silent in an aerobic environment. While this is evidence for evolution it does not show me how man and chimps split from a common ancestor.

  38. colewd:
    John Harshman,

    A direct test would validate the hypothesis.An indirect would create in inference to the hypothesis.The Lenski experiment showed that evolution can enable a protein (citrate enzyme) that was previously silent in an aerobic environment.While this is evidence for evolution it does not show me how man and chimps split from a common ancestor.

    I think you make a distinction where none exists. Pretty much everything in science involves inference. What do you mean by “how” in that last sentence? The processes that lead to speciation in general? The processes that led to speciation in that single instance? The claim that there was a split at all? Whichever, there are much more relevant results for it than Lens’s experiments.

  39. John Harshman,

    The word how refers to the mechanism or cause. Can we have common decent without a cause for the split? If we are missing a testable cause then does common decent mean common biochemistry? I agree there is strong evidence for common biochemistry.

    Pretty much everything in science involves inference

    Interesting point, will think about this.

  40. colewd:
    John Harshman,

    The word how refers to the mechanism or cause.Can we have common decent without a cause for the split?If we are missing a testable cause then does common decent mean common biochemistry?I agree there is strong evidence for common biochemistry.

    Interesting point, will think about this.

    If by “common biochemistry” you refer to similarities in DNA sequences, then you have it backwards: common biochemistry means common descent. That is, the sequence features that humans and chimps have in common and that other apes lack are best explained by there being a species ancestral to both humans and chimps but not to other apes. There is in fact no other credible explanation, so this sequence is a very powerful test of common ancestry.

    Now as to the mechanism of speciation, nobody is sure, but I would suggest that the most probable is geographic isolation of two populations for a considerable length of time, during which differences evolved that made hybrids less fit, which in turn caused reinforcement of species differences to be selected for. What those differences were or what caused the geographic separation is unclear.

    As for direct tests, how do you know there are such things as atoms? Is there a direct test for that?

  41. Mung:
    About A Bike Lock

    Evolution does not need to unlock any particular lock. Only an IDiot would go on about bike locks. It’s as stupid as going on about fishing reels or isolated islands.

  42. Alan Fox,

    Badly worded previous comment. I’m not sure why Larry Moran emphasizes drift as having an effect on outcomes. If the process is neutral, what affects the outcome?

    The same thing affects the outcome regardless of selection coefficient. That thing is population resampling, which eliminates variation both with and without selection (merely a bias in the same process, not a different process).

    Elimination of variation is really the key to change (slightly paradoxically – the paradox is resolved when one notes that new variants are continually being fed in across the range of possible selection coefficients).

    And note (something that took me a while to grasp) that drift does not only affect neutral (unbiased) sampling.

  43. Mung,

    I don’t think drift does any such thing. You’re basically saying drift overcomes selection.

    No, it’s right, You can see it in GAs, and even design it in … drift may push a population out of a local maximum where selection is not too strong for it to do so. It’s not guaranteed to though. You seem to want a deterministic account of drift. That’s a contradiction in terms, obviously.

  44. The demand for a test for human-chimp split history seems akin to the demand for a detailed account of the wanderings of ancestral tribes. Without which, would one conclude no-one ever went anywhere, or everyone came from space?

    The wanderings of a population, and the causes of stemming of gene flow, be it of people, chimps or their common ancestors, are typically lost in the mists of time. Their footprints are erased. So you look at something else – DNA for example (which is also used to trace tribal movements). Only the most blinkered, IMO, would accept DNA evidence for tribal relationships while denyng it above species.

  45. Mung: About A Bike Lock

    Lol, you paid for that. And what did you get for your money?

    Watson and Szathmáry conclude, “to better explain how the process of random variation and selection results in the apparently intelligent designs it produces.” My emphasis, obviously — but it is a telling phrase.

    And what was that from? It was from footnote seven. And what refered to footnote seven?

    That is one reason why so many mainstream evolutionary biologists are now abandoning neo-Darwinism and looking for other evolutionary mechanisms to account for fundamental innovations in the history of life. 7

    So the “evidence” for the abandonment of neo-Darwinism is a telling phrase it seems.

    Hi-lar-ious.

  46. Mung: Have I put science above faith?

    No, you support the obviously wrong ideas of the DI and therefore you have put faith (in their ideas) over science (their ideas are demonstrably wrong).

    Can anyone spot the deliberate error?
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/03/about_a_bike_lo102722.html

    Moreover, as I discussed in Toronto, and show in more detail in Darwin’s Doubt,6 every replication event in the entire multi-billion year history of life on Earth would not generate or “search” but a miniscule fraction (one ten trillion, trillion trillionth, to be exact) of the total number of possible nucleotide base or amino-acid sequences corresponding to a single functional gene or protein fold. The number of trials available to the evolutionary process (corresponding to the total number of organisms — 1040 — that have ever existed on earth), thus, turns out to be incredibly small in relation to the number of possible sequences that need to be searched. The threshold of selectable function exceeds what is reasonable to expect a random search to be able to accomplish given the number of trials available to the search even assuming evolutionary deep time.

  47. Jebus effing cabbage.

    Even Behe recognizes that evolution can produce the changes required for malaria drug tolerance, Not just one, but two mutations required, one of which is deleterious in the absence of the drug.

    The simple fact is — a fact that mung would discover if he actually wrote a GA — that mutation doesn’t explore the universe of possible sequences. It explores the universe of sequences one step at a time from existing sequences that work.

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