http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6152/1344.1.full
Just in case We haven beaten this book to death, let’s have another round.
His case against current scientific explanations of the relatively rapid appearance of the animal phyla rests on the claim that the origin of new animal body plans requires vast amounts of novel genetic information coupled with the unsubstantiated assertion that this new genetic information must include many new protein folds. In fact, our present understanding of morphogenesis indicates that new phyla were not made by new genes but largely emerged through the rewiring of the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) of already existing genes.
As Meyer points out, he is not a biologist; so perhaps he could be excused for basing his scientific arguments on an outdated understanding of morphogenesis. But my disappointment runs deeper than that. It stems from Meyer’s systematic failure of scholarship. For instance, while I was flattered to find him quote one of my own review papers—although the quote is actually a chimera drawn from two very different parts of my review—he fails to even mention the review’s (and many other papers’) central point: that new genes did not drive the Cambrian explosion. His scholarship, where it matters most, is highly selective.
Charles R. Marshall
The word “chimera” is interesting. The rules of this site forbid characterizing what Meyer did
Actually the rule only apply to those posting here.
What Meyer did was lie. Flat out, bare-faced, no excuses lie.
He’s a Creationist. Lying is what they do. It’s all they do.
Just in case We haven beaten this book to death without having actually read it, let’s have another round.
Hear! Hear!
In true “Skeptical Zone” fashion.
Someone else somewhere else read the book and panned it, therefore I don’t need to read it myself, even if I do decide to create an OP
Long live skepticism!.
Mung, have you responded to Smilodon, who is discecting the nook practically page by page?
3 million papers on evolution for you to read, Mung.
“Mung, have you responded to Smilodon, who is discecting the nook practically page by page?”
My interest is in people here at “The Skeptical Zone” who have read the book.
If you haven’t read it, and you don’t intend to read it, why not create an OP in which you make that abundantly clear, and in which you make it clear that you prefer to leave your thinking to others because you just can’t be bothered to think for yourself?
Now Neil made it possible for you to author a response to ericB showing how EA’s can solve the problem he presented, and I await that OP. I’d love to have some EA’s that can write code for me!
thorton:
I can count on one finger the “skeptics” here at “The Skeptical Zone” who actually read the book, and that person decided to start her own thread. That person was not you.
So you are interested in winning rather than having a conversation?
As dozens have pointed out to you, you don’t have to read the book to know the ideas in it that were widely presented in Meyer’s other work like Darwin’s Dilemma.
Pity you’re too much of an intellectual poltroon to actually address critiques of the ideas in the book instead of playing your childish evasion games. But I guess that’s just Mung being Mung.
I’m not sure whether I’ve ever seen a more ironically titled OP.
When not having read the book trumps anyone who has read it?
I suspect the author of the review (one of Meyer’s primary sources) read the book, if only to see how badly Meyer mangled his work.
petrushka:
I’m not even sure what this question means.
I started a thread on Meyer’s book. I came across a single person who actually claimed to have read it in all the flood of alleged “skeptics.”
Joe Felsenstein, to his eternal credit (and I hope I never forget this) admitted as such and decided to withhold judgment.
What is it that I can “win” here at TSZ? Respect? You must be joking.
You want a conversation about Meyer’s book? Fine. Read the book. Let’s talk.
You want to have a conversation about something else? Start an OP about it.
Sorry. There are dozens of books published on evolution every year. Only a few are woth reading. If this one is worth reading, it’s promoters need to do a better job of promoting it.
So far the descriptions presented by its defenders indicate it is garbage.
Come on, Mung. Give me something to make it interesting. Give me an argument from the book that arouses some curiosity.
petrushka:
It’s your OP. If you read the book and found nothing worth discussing just say so.
But if Prior Belief Trumps Skepticism then I think you’re OP needs revision.
Why are you so unwilling to discuss what professional scientists have described about the book? Seems to me that’s fair game in any honest appraisal. You must realize that Meyer’s weaseling and stupidity is indefensible.
thorton, why are you so unwilling to actually read the book and form your own opinions and arguments?
thorton:
I have already answered this silly question. But here it is again:
If they are willing to post here and defend their claims, I will discuss them. If they don’t post here and cannot defend their claims here why should I be expected to address any claim here which they are not prepared to defend here?
So far we have here, Elizabeth Liddle, who I have responded to and continue to respond to, and Joe Felsenstein. Is there someone I’ve missed?
We have here who, what?
Isn’t it wonderful Mung, to be able to come to a site and defend your position against nay sayers, openly. I say this because on the web I always use my real name; I’m not ashamed of the ideas I accept or find credible. I see that you are also a regular at uncommondescent. I visit that site too. i cannot post there however as I have been banned, I believe it was because I described Denise O’Leary as a, ‘clueless hack’. Pretty accurate actually. You, however are free to respond here whenever you will. Why is that do you suppose? I mean if your ideas are defensible shouldn’t you be able to defend them, and be free to defend them, anywhere, and not be cofined by narrow dogmatic idiocy I believe that is known as free speech, an archaic idea to be sure, not much practiced by your lot, forever editing,eviscerating, and beuatifully mangling reality. My mind goes back to the wonderful immage of William Dembsky fleeing Dover for fear of being confronted by, heaven forfend, people who know stuff. You keep posting on this free and open site however.Do you detect clear hypocracy? I do!
That must be why ID has lost every time it makes it into court!
Bwywya1!!ayaya!!!!11ionononeone!!!
So you think the scientific community worldwide are deliberately pushing a fiction. Not because you have read the literature, but because you have a prior belief that it must all be wrong. Meanwhile, all the names in ID admit that evolution happens. They just protest that there is a magic barrier to macroevolution. This doesn’t stop the attacks on (micro)evolution, because it is a propaganda game.
For you to be right, there must be a conspiracy preventing good science refuting the theory of evolution from being published and then accepted by the scientific community.
Please tell me how the scientific conspiracy works, especially in America where creationists have so much power and are in the overwhelming majority.
The title is the title of the linked review. By all means give us your critique of the review.
Welcome aboard, Robert. Your post was caught in the moderation queue for a while. Sorry about that.
The prior belief title comes from a paleontologist who was extensively misquoted by Meyer.
So Meyer has been called a fabricator by one of the experts he quoted in the book.
The patent office no longer reads applications for perperual motion or free energy machines. Can you think why?
If Meyer want his book read by people who understand evolution he needs the book’s promoters to come up with something better than god of the gaps. God of the gaps arguments are the biological equivalent of perpetual motion. Not worth reading.
Are you ever going to respond to the criticism of the book instead of trying to get people here to bite on your red herring?
A reckognized expert on the Cambrian has read it and finds that it’s crap. What will your response be to him?
“In fact, our present understanding of morphogenesis indicates that new phyla were not made by new genes but largely emerged through the rewiring of the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) of already existing genes.”
Really interesting. Darwinism now is going back to saltationism. Do not need anymore a step by step RM + NS or drift, big ramdom rearrangement of genes is enough to make a bee or a worm from a misterious common ancestors of all animals. I wander if such mechanisms would produce a “tree of life”, Did we still need HGT? Did we still convergent evolution? The actual change in allele frequency is still the model of evolution? Which was the last rearrangement of genes to produce a new body plan? Is evolution an ended process?
How do the parts of your post follow from the review posted. More importantly, how does your post follow from Marshall’s body of work?
The reviewer is not merely an expert. He is one of Meyer’s star witnesses.
Blas can’t handle complexity. He needs an origin story that has only a SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY mechanism. The possibility that the evolution can use many mechanisms is beyond his ability to comprehend.
Thirty thrre posts so far — including quite a few from friends of Meyer — and not one defending Meyer against the charge of lying or defending Meyer’s science.
One complete incoherent post from blas that isn’t related to the topic at all.
No, it is not. Your statement doesn’t follow from what Marshall wrote at all.
Uhh, yes you do. You don’t seem to understand that what is mutating is primarily transcription factor binding sites and regulatory elements, instead of protein coding genes. These mutations are still just random mutations subject to natural selection and genetic drift.
No, not mere rearrangement. Again, developmental biology is still subject to mutations, natural selection and drift in all the classic ways. What is primarily responsible for new body plans are mutations in the regulatory elements. That is, transcription factor binding sites and the like.
It will.
For single-celled organisms yes, mostly. Though it can still happen between large muticellular organisms through virus infections. This is very rare though and does very little to “upset” the tree of life.
Yes, convergent evolution will still happen for all the same reasons as usual.
Yes.
Define “new body plan”. Rigorously.
Yes. It ends at the extinction of all life.
And schepticals have no problems with evolution doing one thing and the contrary at the same time.
So try to frame your argument positively instead of sniping.
Give a specific example of Marshall invoking saltation or Aardvark being self-contradictory.
Seems to me that some people don’t know what a book review is about–which is informing others about whether it’s a book worth reading.
The same people don’t seem to realize how important it is to read books (articles, etc.) that actually try to deal with the issues instead of those that merely try to wedge their beliefs into the data, cherry-picking and distorting information in order to do so.
Does one have to read everything von Daniken wrote to realize that his next book is unlikely to yield solid scholarship? Fool me once…
Really, how stupid would it be for most people to read yet another rehash of creationist tripe? People on the science side typically learn over time, which appears to distinguish them from most on the other side.
Glen Davidson
I find it interesting that Michael Denton wrote Darwin’s Black Box, which became an icon of ID, and he also wrote Nature’s Destiny, which is basically Deism.
Between those books, Denton came to accept mainstream biology and pushed design back to the moment of creation. Which removes it from the realm of science.
It’s not surprising that his second book never caught on in the ID community.
petrushka on September 23, 2013 at 4:45 pm said:
I find it interesting that Michael Denton wrote Darwin’s Black Box, which became an icon of ID, and he also wrote Nature’s Destiny, which is basically Deism.
Between those books, Denton came to accept mainstream biology and pushed design back to the moment of creation. Which removes it from the realm of science.
It’s not surprising that his second book never caught on in the ID community.
Yes.
Except that Denton wrote Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Michael Behe did DBB.
Glen Davidson
I’ve moved some stuff to Guano. Please read and keep to the site rules.
Thanks.
It was such a crisis for me that I forgot the title. Not the first time I’ve made that same mistake.
Tell us how ID advocates are blocked from publishing in their own journals.
You know, Mendel published in an obscure journal and was ignored for decades, but a hundred years later we speak of Mendelian genetics. The prestige of the journal may affect one’s salary and career, and plenty of name brand scientists have died in obscurity, but ideas do not remain blocked if they have any value.
But ID has been around for 210 years without advancing beyond Paley. In fact, Paley remains the most lucid and convincing exposition of ID. And the least error-ridden.
Axe and Gauger have an actual laboratory and actual skills, but waste their time doing research that doesn’t speak to any issues in evolutionary theory. Why do you suppose they don’t do something along the lines of Lensky or Thornton?
I already knew darwinists and special here at TSZ are master of eating the cake and claiming they have it, here another example. One solve the CE saying that you only need the rearrangement of genes, then ToE predicts the disparity of life forms in short terms and the other says that still you have ramdom mutation of genes now called “regulatory elements”. But this don`t put the theory back to a step by step change in the life forms that we do not see in CE?
Rumraket:
It will.
I agree that it can, but not necessary it will.
Rumraket:
For single-celled organisms yes, mostly. Though it can still happen between large muticellular organisms through virus infections. This is very rare though and does very little to “upset” the tree of life.
But if genes were all already before CE, probably as petrushka said they were in prokariota, why we need HGT to explain the appearance of the genes in unrelated branches of the tree? Just because CD should be true?
Rumraket:
Yes.
Wishfull thinking, “change in allele frequency” do not lead to gene rearrangements.
Rumraket:
Define “new body plan”. Rigorously.
Forget definitons, when I give one all the skeptical cry “word games”. When was the las time a gene rearragement produced a long neck mammal? It will produce another?
Poor Aardvark is under the impression that evolution “uses” HGT, gene duplication, among other mechanisms to actually do stuff.
When did evolution all of a sudden become an intelligent entity, Aardvark? ….
Is it not organisms that ‘do’ stuff???
Aardvark: “Blas can’t handle complexity. He needs an origin story that has only a SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY mechanism. The possibility that the evolution can use many mechanisms is beyond his ability to comprehend.”
Yeah Hooke, evolution happens because organisms make it happen.
Evolution doesn’t ‘do’ sh$t.
Individual organisms don’t evolve. So no, an individual does not “use” HGT in any meaningful way that relates to that individual.
So you are wrong. And if you are wrong about that simple thing perhaps you are wrong about more then you realize?
Maybe they did, and then they felt that they had to hide their results when the data turned out too favorably toward evolution’s side and not favorably at all for their must-be-design hypothesis.
Well, that would explain why they’ve been so quiet abut their labwork for years now.
The word ‘use’ doesn’t have to mean a conscious intent. Rivers use the force of gravity to flow downhill, but that doesn’t make rivers into sentient beings.
Maybe if you spent less time word-lawyering and more on actually correcting your scientific ignorance you’d get farther in your arguments.
I guess this thread is DOA. No response from the ID crowd regarding Marshall’s work on the Cambrian, and no real response to his review of Meyer’s book.
I suppose Blas “responded,” if tantrums are responses.
Word-lawyering. I call it hyperliteralism. They absolutely depend on conflating vernacular with more formal definitions for the dreck they peddle to their audience but let us use a less formal meaning and we’ll be hit over the head with it for a week.
ID: Intelligent Design as Imitatio Dei (report on the 2007 ‘Wistar Retrospective Symposium’):
petrushka:
Well, if you count the “skeptics” here at TSZ who have actually read Meyer’s book and who have also read Marshall’s review, you might come up with a total of one, if that. So yeah, DOA.
My recommendation would be that if you want to create an OP critical of a book, read the book. Alternatively, find a way to get Marshall to post here.
Marshall’s review is here awaiting your comments.
How about we follow your lead – ignore all your blustering until you get Meyer to post here?
robert van bakel,
guano