It’s not that strange. There’s a conservative Christian apologist on another board whose ‘debate technique’ can be summed up as:
Darwin was a virulent racist and a closet homosexual.
Huh? How did you come by the idea that darwin was homosexual???
So you agree that Darwin was a virulent racist…
It does. It’s just that you don’t understand Denton’s version of structuralism, so you don’t know how it follows.
It’s not surprising or inappropriate that you would not have encountered the idea there. You could also read many sources on physics and cosmology without reading about the idea that our universe is a computer siimulation. The idea is out there, and there is reason to seriously consider it. But it remains a peripheral idea at best, and completely superfluous to a current understanding of cosmology. And, or course, much written about it is just pseudoscientific nonsense.
That said, I managed to come to an understanding of structuralism that, as is evident from the questions you are asking here, far exceeds yours without having read Denton. So maybe he is not the best person to be learning it from.
Well, of course, Gould’s ideas OTOH are quite central to current evolutionary thinking. But I would suggest you actually read him with the goal of understanding him, rather than just to cherry pick parts that you can quote mine to support creationist pseudoscience of the sort promoted by Michael Denton. If you did, you would understand why historical contingency is overall a much better explanation for the phenomena Denton tries to explain than is his form of “structuralism.”
You’re right; it’s not surprising, but not for the reason that you give. It’s not surprising because Gould is a thinker, not a mere high-level technician, like the other people I named. So one is going to get a richer, fuller, more historically grounded and philosophically reflective account of evolution from Gould than from the others I mentioned.
That’s how I read Gould, and Denton, and everything else. You, on the other hand, haven’t read Gould’s account at all, and have looked at Denton’s thought only superficially, and from the outset you were motivated by polemical intent: (a) to prove he was a creationist [false], and (b) to prove his evolutionary thought was worthless [which you haven’t read enough of him yet to know].
No disagreement from here.
What gives you that impression?
I know, right? I mean, imagine judging someone’s scientific ideas based on his writings meant for publication in peer-reviewed journals! What could I have been thinking?
Still, wouldn’t it be nice if only there was someone around here who has read enough of Denton’s books meant as religious apologetics, and understood enough of what he had read there to explain how Denton responds there to historical contingency as an explanation for homology, if at all?
Know anyone like that, Eddie?
You’re missing context, Chris. Faizal Ali’s attitude toward Denton, from long before he posted his question, was gauntlet-throwing and polemical. If you aren’t aware of that, then you’re reading his question in a contextless vacuum.
Basically, Faizal has served notice that if Denton doesn’t answer a question that Faizal considers of central importance, and answer it in a way that Faizal likes, then he can rightly conclude that Denton doesn’t understand evolutionary theory. It doesn’t matter to him that Denton might deal with a hundred different questions about evolution, and deal with them ably; if Denton doesn’t give the “right” kind of answer to the question Faizal deems a litmus test, then Denton flunks. This is not the proper spirit in which to discover the thoughts of an author.
I reject the whole premise of Faizal’s question, given this context. I’m not going to answer a question on the playing field and according to the rules set forth by him. He needs to expand his notion of what the issues are, what the important questions are. And to do that, he needs to read things he’s not accustomed to reading.
The fact is that often a book is, like Darwin’s, “one long argument,” with all the parts cohering, and the book can’t have its full effect until it is read patiently and fully, and by readers who haven’t already decided to pigeonhole it as “creationist” or “pseudoscience” or something else. Answering single questions when one knows the person asking for the answer will misuse the answer due to lack of context of the overall argument of a book, can do no good.
I read Darwin’s Origin of Species slowly, carefully, and for the purpose of understanding what Darwin argued. I then read books by Dawkins, Miller, Collins and others in the same way. All I’m asking is that people who pretend to be interested in what Denton thinks will take the same care. I don’t care if they end up disagreeing with Denton; agreement is not the important thing. It’s the genuine willingness to engage with Denton’s thought (not as summarized by a third party, and not isolated parts of it) that is crucial.
That’s not what Faizal Ali is doing here. The only piece by Denton that he has read, he read already having decided that Denton was a creationist, and already having a strong suspicion that Denton was a snake-oil merchant selling pseudoscience. He read it looking for a flaw, looking for errors in Denton’s understanding. He did not read it looking for possible insights as well as possible errors. He did not read it as a humble layman-student of evolution who might learn something; he read it as if he was a master of evolutionary theory qualified to set Denton straight. His attitude was all wrong. And that attitude still projects in the way he asks his question. His attitude is gauntlet-throwing and judgmental. I decline to respond until I see a change in attitude. And I suspect that the change in attitude will never be forthcoming. So I will once again try to take my leave of this discussion.
By the way, Chris, I hope you caught, under the other discussion, my several references to establish the existence of a “let’s make global warming skepticism legally punishable” movement. I gave four references, but could give many more. If you want to open a new topic on that subject, by all means, go ahead, but we shouldn’t take it up under the Meyer column, or here.
Ah, that clears things up, Eddie. So we can now revise @Chris_Falter’s statement as follows, in light of the further context you have provided:
“The other is to claim to have read the book, but to make lame excuses for the fact that you have not articulated whether Denton ignored X or not.”
Very helpful, thanks!
No, you’re really not grasping this whole science thing.
At a minimum, a hypothesis must not contradict any extant data. Furthermore, it must make predictions about the direct observations we will make, with all interpretation already baked in, in the future.
Only after a hypothesis has a long track record of successful predictions do we promote it to a theory.
This is why “ID theory” doesn’t exist.
But as you have repeatedly attributed “random mutation” to Darwin, it’s clear that you failed.
But despite your claims of doing so, you often appear to be completely ignorant of non-Darwinian mechanisms like drift.
And you didn’t read any of the 50+ papers that falsify Behe’s claim in his first book, despite your interest in the Dover trial. It appears that your reading is polemically selective and not at all careful.
If that’s the case, then the hypothesis of Faizal Ali, that all IDers are necessarily creationist, fails as a hypothesis, since we have data contrary to it (the existence of ID proponents who are not creationists).
I never once attributed the phrase “random mutation” to Darwin the historical individual. But it is central to the “Modern Synthesis” of Mayr, Dobzhanksy, Gaylord Simpson, etc. That Modern Synthesis came to be called “neo-Darwinism” (something of a confusing misnomer, but the name stuck). And quite often people use the term “Darwinian” to cover not only the ideas of Darwin himself but also neo-Darwinism. Indeed, the popular conception of evolution from the 1940s onward was largely neo-Darwinian; most people’s picture of how evolution worked was something like “random mutations filtered by natural selection.” They stuck the name of Darwin onto this conception, but it was in most cases neo-Darwinism rather than the writings of Darwin that they were imbibing. Thus, the usage of the term “Darwinian” as a substitute for “neo-Darwinian” is readily understandable in the proper context.
It wouldn’t matter if they did falsify it; it was still improper to dump a stack of journal articles in front of Behe in the courtroom and expect him to comment on their detailed arguments then and there. It was a piece of courtroom theatrics. If the lawyer had been interested in a serious intellectual response by Behe to the detailed argument of any of those articles, he would have sent the articles to Behe ahead of time. But of course, he was trying to put Behe in an awkward position, not to hold a proper scientific discussion of the merits of the articles. Lawyers are concerned with victory in court, not with truth.
Which is, of course, besides the point. Behe is allegedly a scientist. He made a scientific claim that required his being familiar with the content of those papers. His confession that he was not aware of their contents was sufficient to discredit his claims.
I agree that Behe should not have said or implied things about the contents of the papers without reading them. What he should have said is what I said above, i.e., that if the lawyer wanted his opinion on the contents of those 58 papers, he should have mailed those 58 papers to Behe a month or two before the trial, so that Behe could study them. He should have refused to characterize those particular papers (except any of them that he had actually read), and stuck with the line that he was not aware of any papers which did what he was looking for. And indeed, he sometimes did say, not that no papers existed that did what he demanded, but that he was not aware of any that did:
“Again in the context of that chapter, I meant no answers, no detailed rigorous answers to the question of how the immune system could arise by random mutation and natural selection, and yes, in my, in the reading I have done I have not found any such studies.” [emphasis added]
The key words here are “detailed rigorous answers” and “by random mutation and natural selection.” I think that Behe sincerely believed that up to that point in time, the scientific literature had not produced the kind of account that he demanded. So he was being honest about what he thought. Whether he was incorrect in his assessment of what had been demonstrated is another matter, but he wasn’t dishonest about what he thought.
No, Eddie, that is opinion, not an empirical observation.
What part of:
do you not understand?
So because most people don’t understand that natural selection acts on existing variation, which is a million-fold greater than new mutations, it’s OK for you to try to perpetuate that misunderstanding? Or do YOU not understand it?
Not when you pretend that existing variation doesn’t exist.
It’s perfectly proper, given the blatant falsehood of his claim.
Why would anyone think that a “serious intellectual response” would be forthcoming when the statement being questioned was such a blatant lie, blatant incompetence, or both?
Behe hadn’t read them, remember? He was literally denying their very existence.
Just for you, there were multiple textbooks in the stack. 
And your hero Behe lugged the goalposts all over the field:
Q. But you didn’t search for transpositions, is that correct?
A. That’s correct.
Q. And that word appears in a number of the titles here?
A. It does, but the critical difference is the word random. There’s lots of mutations, and it’s entirely possible that intelligent design or some process of the development of life can occur by changes in DNA, but the critical factor is are such changes random, are they not random, so just there are also many occurrences of the word mutation, but it was not just mutation that is the critical element of Darwinian theory. It is random mutation.
Is that true, Eddie, or did Darwin only consider existing heritable variation, which both you and Behe ignore for polemic reasons? Or do you really not know?
The truth was the weapon used in this case. You know this, which is why you pathologically avoid reading those 58 papers and book chapters while worshipping Behe.
I think this thread has gone on long enough.
I don’t know what to call Denton. I’ve read and owned all his books, because I really like reading him. He doesn’t do much on structuralism anymore. Mostly on anthropomorphic fine-tuning type stuff. Such as his books on fire and water. He doesn’t seem to be a classical creationist or even a classically ID proponents. His books have never come off as apologetic works. He doesn’t throw the word design at you every paragraph like all the other ID folks.
Well structuralism is an outlier, it was more popular in the 80’s, it’s still a respectable position and i think Denton would be welcome in most departments.
He accepts evolution through natural processes (even if these processes were fine-tuned by a designing intelligience) and common ancestry.
I think he is mistaken on some things but I have far less disagreements with him
Than i do with every other creationist or ID person
This thread needs to come to a close
So by your own criterion, he’s not a serious scholar. Even worse, he didn’t write this online, but in a book!
Eddie, he was caught in a lie about what he said that he had looked for:
That’s not even close to what Behe wrote. He was caught in a lie and was frantically revising it.
But those key words were not present in the published statement that was being challenged. Therefore, your calling them “key words” is either dishonest or a blatant error.
That wasn’t what he had demanded. The literal demand that he backpedaled to, that papers about transposons must include “random mutation” in the title or abstract, was ludicrous.
And since you haven’t bothered to do the reading, you have no evidentiary basis for any opinion.
No. I’ve read the papers, you are afraid to.
Without reading the relevant scientific literature, you have no reason to have an opinion.
And Faizal Ali in effect “predicted” that we would never find an ID proponent who accepted evolution. But there are many ID proponents who accept evolution. Therefore, his prediction has been falsified.
So Mayr, etc., who founded the Modern Synthesis, were perpetuating a misunderstanding when they many times referred to “random” mutations as an important component of evolution? (And don’t bother denying this; when the poster “John” on BioLogos claimed that only “creationists” referred to random mutations], within 45 minutes “Rich” had produced a long list from journal articles, standard textbooks, etc. written by atheist and agnostic scientists concerning “random mutations” and their important role in evolution. In response to this, “John” mumbled and made clumsy excuses, but had no explanation of the clear and unambiguous passages.)
Which I never did. Obviously selection can act both on existing variation and on random mutations. And Behe’s argument applies to existing variation as well as random mutations, since both are, according to the theory, undirected with respect to adaptive ends.
The lawyer’s claim about what they proved was never demonstrated in the courtroom. The lawyer’s claim was assertion, not demonstration. Behe expressed skepticism that they proved what the lawyer said they proved. And rightly so, given the track record of evolutionary biologists in their articles of glossing a core of genuine research with imaginative Darwinian storytelling. Up to that point, Behe had never seen anything else, and there was no reason for him to suppose that a partisan lawyer would suddenly come up with articles of a character entirely different from anything he had seen in years of reading. The lawyer was simply parroting what Miller, Padian, Pennock, etc. were telling him about the articles. No reason why Behe should trust an interpretation of the articles coming from those sources, given that he knew the slant those authors put on everything. His error was not in being skeptical that those sources proved what the lawyer said they did; his error was only in asserting declaratively that they contained no such proof. He should have just stuck with: “I’m unaware that any of these articles demonstrate the capacity of Darwinian mechanisms to do what I’m asking, and if you want me to respond further, give me a couple of months to study them and call me back to the stand then.” But it’s understandable that in the confrontational courtroom situation, with a lawyer performing a staged theatrical trick, Behe might overreact – especially when he knew who was pulling the lawyer’s strings.
He had a momentary lapse of scholarly rigor in a high-pressure courtroom situation, confronted by a hostile lawyer about articles he had never seen. That is not the same as the situation I’m talking about here, where Faizal etc. have had years to read Denton’s work and have never taken the time to do so, except for one article which Faizal read with a chip on his shoulder and a preconception that Denton was a creationist.
If you really believe that, then tell Faizal that without reading a larger sample of Denton’s thought, he has no reason to have an opinion about Denton’s level of understanding of evolutionary theory.
I’m heading out to see Laurie Anderson right now, so I would appreciate if the thread were kept open at least long enough for me to make my final comment. Thx.
T.j_Runyon:
I thank you for your last post, as well as some of your earlier remarks on Denton. If the others here wrote about Denton in the careful, qualified way that you do, we would never have had this long, protracted, partisan discussion. But it’s always this way on websites about origins run by Christians but which actively court the involvement of programmatic atheists. The conversations always end up like this. Whatever the particular topic of the day is supposed to be, e.g., “What does Denton think?”, that topic always ends up becoming merely a proxy for the same old larger battles between atheism, bottom-up reductionism, chance, etc. with theism, top-down understandings, design, etc. It’s a direct function of the people involved.
If people are interested in a Christian website that intelligently discusses creation, evolution, design, Christianity, etc. without constantly devolving into polarized discussions like this, I recommend the British site, Hump of the Camel, run by Jon Garvey.
I second the motion to end this partisan bickering. I wish a Moderator would step in and close the thread.