The spin here is owned by both creationists and evolutionists who use it for their argument for or against primate common ancestry.
Look, I’m gonna be blunt here: Don’t give us that “both sides” bullshit on this one. Luskin got caught. The question from @Faizal_Ali was “would anyone care to defend DI on this one?” not “what do you think of this issue?”
@colewdwould you like to defend Luskin on this one?
My guess is “no”, since your response was to…not respond. But have enough respect to everyone else here to at least say that instead of blowing smoke.
Hi Dan
I said I don’t think the percentage similarity articulates all the challenges in confirming Primate common ancestry. If a mine field exists when traveling from point A to B the length of the journey while important is no more relevant than the density of the bombs in the field.
In this analogy the bombs in the field are deleterious mutations that move you away from function and the length of the journey is the number of changes we are observing.
Behe and Stokes 2005 paper is much more relevant to this discussion than Luskin’s appeal to more sequence differences.
The discovery argument is about whether RMNS can account for the differences given a larger divergence. I think the bigger problem to RMNS explaining divergence is the deleterious nature of primate mutations. This includes differences in alternative splicing between species.
Why do you think it is necessary to call the other side dishonest if you are solid in your position that RMNS can explain the differences?
Because they got caught in a blatant lie? Why do you seem to want to talk about anything except the topic that we’re all talking about?
Let me ask you a similar question: Why does Luskin have to manipulate the figure he showed if he is solid in his position that the data support his argument?
Can we just appreciate this for a moment? “Why do you have to say [thing that is true]?” But never “Why has my side been repeatedly caught doctoring figures to hide data?”
If that’s their argument, why don’t they actually say so? And of course this argument would rely on obscuring a number of facts that they hope you don’t understand (successfully, in your case). The 15% difference, for example, is mostly due to a fairly small number of mutations, a great many of them Alu insertions in one lineage or the other. One single indel mutation can result in thousands of bases of “difference”. And they, like you, appear to discount drift as a real phenomenon; most of the differences are neutral or nearly so, most in fact within the junk fraction of the genome. That’s another couple of levels of dishonesty on top of the obvious one of suppressing data.
Why are you Gish Galloping to yet another misrepresentation?
This is not merely an argument. It is no longer a hypothesis. It is a full-blown theory, repeatedly tested, producing mountains of data that you are misrepresenting.
Why?
And another one! Evolutionary mechanisms are not limited to Darwinian ones. How many times has this been explained to you?
So in summary, you are avoiding addressing Luskin’s dishonesty by providing two additional misrepresentations. Why?
And another one! Science is about testing hypotheses, not merely explaining after the fact. Why?
You can’t have an informed opinion without being familiar with the data. I’ll lead you by the nose here. Why don’t you HYPOTHESIZE how many genes are present in humans that are absent in the other great apes, and vice versa?
I don’t, because I am a diploid organism. Aren’t you?
I will remind people that Bill simply does not understand words all that well. He really seems to think this is what Luskin was writing about in that article.
Here’s an interesting point. If an evolutionist had been so mendacious as to photoshop a graph from a DI article to make it appear to support evolution, and presented it in public as the actual graph, he would be pilloried by his fellow evolutionists and forced to apologize. I have no doubt about this.
Has anyone in the ID movement yet taken Luskin to task for doing that very thing?
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”
I would note that in whining piteously about people “call[ing] the other side dishonest” (when they are being blatantly dishonest), you are (i) carefully avoiding addressing Luskin’s dishonesty, and (ii) repeating the Disco’ 'Tute’s lie that evolution is nothing more than “RMNS”
My point is, if you don’t want your “side” called “dishonest”, it would make sense to be careful not to be dishonest yourself.
about people “call[ing] the other side dishonest” (when they are being blatantly dishonest), you are (i) carefully avoiding addressing Luskin’s dishonesty, and (ii) repeating the Disco’ 'Tute’s lie that evolution is nothing more than “RMNS”