Dembski Responds to Rosenhouse

He does give reasons, it’s based (as I have said before) on arguments from protein shape space.

But we do see protein-protein interactions, and we see them evolve. The question then is whether clusters of two or more such interactions can evolve, Behe says probably not, and puts his edge of evolution there.

No it isn’t. That’s still just made up. He doesn’t anywhere show that his imaginary and frankly delusional requirement obtains in reality.

Behe merely mentioning “protein shape space” in the same sentence as his imaginary hurdle doesn’t make it not be imaginary. I can put the words “green cheese” in the same sentence as the moon, that won’t somehow magically make the actual moon into green cheese.

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And he’s just wrong then. Maybe what Behe says isn’t a good guide to what can and does happen in reality.

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Rosenhouse responds to Dembski’s response to Rosenhouse:

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If he has reasons and you have read his book. why have you been unable to summarize any of those reasons? All we get from you is incoherent gobbledygook.

Exactly. Behe says they couldn’t evolve, but we see them evolve.

According to my theory, bacteria with jet packs couldn’t evolve, and we don’t see them evolve.

Maybe I’m the one who should be writing a book.

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I did post an extended set of quotes from his book, outlining his argument. Would you be willing to read his book, if you want to discuss it further?

No, Behe says a cluster of two new protein-protein interactions are unlikely to evolve.

You quoted him making assertions in the same sentence that contained words like immune system. Never did you quote him making arguments that show his imaginary hurdles are true.

And that is all he does. Say that, in sentences that contain terms and names for phenomena he doesn’t logically connect to support his assertion.

This sentence doesn’t demonstrate the truth of the claim that the moon is made of green cheese even though it says so and both referents(the moon, and green cheese) are found in it.

Do you understand the differences between the concepts of demonstration, assertion, truth, evidence, and argumentation? These are not the same thing. One does not demonstrate the truth of an assertion merely by making it. One does not offer support for an assertion by mentioning a tangentially related phenomenon by name only.

Argumentation takes work, and involves reasoning from premises to conclusions that are logically connected.

Michael Behe is just a man. A mortal, flawed, human man. He isn’t a Divinely inspired oracle quoting from an infallible holy scripture(assuming there even is such a thing). He says stuff. That alone doesn’t make it true. The sentence in which he says it containing the terms “shape space” and “immune system” doesn’t do that either.

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The generation of binding sites results in random sequences. The question being asked is how common protein binding sites can emerge from different DNA sequences, so why aren’t antibody binding sites a great way of finding that answer?

B-cells run the math for us. Out of a few billion random sequences we get tons of protein-protein binding sites. This demonstrates that these binding sites can’t be nearly as rare as Behe claims.

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This is not the case and when you make statements like this people that understand his arguments and don’t misrepresent them will fail to take you seriously.

I am pretty sure Lee understands these basics.

The same is the case for evolutionary biologists who misrepresent what the molecular evidence really reveals to us.

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And I have explained to you why those quotes don’t amount to an argument.

You have not yet expressed any criticisms of my argument from the absence of bacteria with jet packs. Is that because you think it is a good argument?

It is not clear what you mean by “a cluster of two new protein-protein interactions.” How would we recognize such a thing?

You saw posters claim that there is a population genetic model that explains the Howe pattern yet Joe agreed that it assumes the existence of a population. The Howe diagram contains 4 distinct populations.

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Bill has outdone himself here.

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Rosenhouse Responds to Dembski at Panda’s Thumb

This may be split off to a new thread, so please make separate replies in your comments.

But if populations evolved into populations, how come there is still populations?

Gotcha!!

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Spit-Take Alert:

It is a person of rare talent who can write at such length without getting anything right.

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Remember: Dembski is writing for an audience of people who make arguments like this:

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I liked this:

Secondly, do take a moment to savor the planet-sized ego it takes for anyone to describe his own work as “seminal”.

But Rosenhouse might well have added the observation that just because the pages of one’s manuscript now stick together, this alone does not render it “seminal.”

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Yes, I did, and have you read his argument?

Here is the crux of the argument:

“Let’s make a rough calculation for the average number of organisms we would have to slog through to find a new protein-protein binding site. As I said, shape space tells us that about one in ten to a hundred million coherent protein-binding sites must be sifted before finding one that binds specifically and firmly to a given target. The simplest way to alter a protein is by point mutation, where one amino acid is substituted for another at a position in a protein. There are twenty different kinds of amino acids found in proteins. That means that if just five or six positions changed to the right residues—the ones that would allow the two proteins to bind—that would be an event of approximately the right frequency, since twenty multiplied by itself five or six times (20^5 or 20^6) is about three million or sixty million, respectively—relatively close to the ten to a hundred million different sites we need. So one way to get a new binding site would be to change just five or six amino acids in a coherent patch in the right way. [12] This very rough estimation fits nicely with studies that have been done on protein structure. [13]” (Edge of Evolution, pp. 133-134)

That would be three different proteins, with two interactions between them.