I am always interested in non-polemical criticism coming from non-ideological individual scientists, but “the scientific community”, as used by Wikipedia, is an imaginary construct of the flimsiest nature. A dozen or so book reviews by the most heated partisans, a couple of statements of scientific organizations (who did not poll their members on ID before taking an institutional position, and therefore can’t claim to represent the view of their members), and those only American organizations (as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist or isn’t important in science) – that’s hardly a way of measuring what “the scientific community” thinks. The appeal to “the scientific community” was pure rhetoric – like just about everything on Wikipedia concerning origins issues.
If you want some non-polemical, constructive (as opposed to hate-filled) criticism of Behe or other ID authors, you could read the review of one of Behe’s books by James (not Robert) Shapiro, and you could read the works of Rope Kojonen and Del Ratzsch. You might be surprised to learn of the existence of civilized intellectual criticism – something almost never seen coming from atheist quarters here, from the NCSE, etc.
No, you aren’t. You weren’t interested enough to bother to figure out why “peptidyl transferase is a protein” is false despite reflexively arguing about it for months.
As I already showed with reference to the original conversation, I held to that view for at most a few days, and probably less than 24 hours. Six posts after advocating it, I renounced it. Like Wikipedia, you exaggerate, and your motive for exaggerating (polemics, culture-warring) is the same.
So, how did you celebrate this past Christmas? Rereading Nick Lane? Attending church services? Caroling? Reading the Gospel Christmas stories with the family at home?
No, not false. In the March 2019 discussion I did not say that a ribozyme was a protein. I did not say that until much later, and then withdrew the claim almost instantly. You claimed that I argued that a ribozyme was a protein for “months”, but I never did. You simply have the facts wrong. Either you are conflating two things (that I early on questioned your rejection of Meyer’s entire book based on an error on one page of it, and my later error about protein), due to fuzzy memory and huffy impatience with anyone who disagrees with you about anything (a characteristic flaw of yours), or you are deliberately misrepresenting me. Which is it?
I didn’t claim you did. You literally described Meyer’s blatant falsehood, easily concealing Nobel-winning evidence from incurious marks like you, as an “alleged error.” That’s clearly arguing about it.
It’s obvious even in Wikipedia:
Peptidyl transferase is an enzyme that catalyzes the addition of an amino acid residue in order to grow the polypeptide chain in protein synthesis.[3] It is located in the large ribosomal subunit, where it catalyzes the peptide bond formation.[4]It is composed entirely of RNA.
Nope. You argued about this particular falsehood for months, without the slightest attempt to verify it. That says everything about your commitment to scholarship. You danced around it for months before clearly restating Meyer’s lie.
Hilarious.
That’s false. You wrote,
Calling it “alleged” is clearly arguing about it. You also ignored all of the other misleading passages, on other pages, that reinforced it.
And another point regarding the DI’s lack of integrity: why have none of your idols corrected these blatantly false statements they’ve made in their books, as real, ethical scholars do?
Note that real scholarly corrections need to appear in the books or journals themselves, not hidden away on some web page.
Again, I’ll close with @sfmatheson’s response to your silly attempts to tout Meyer as having anything significant to say about the RNA World hypothesis:
@Art had already explained this to you months before, but you continued to dig. It’s the perfect case study for illustrating the DI’s (and its aggressively ignorant cheerleaders’) lack of integrity.
I originally, like, about 10 years ago, asked you to explain whether Meyer’s terminological error (calling peptidyl transferase a protein), assuming it was an error (which I neither affirmed nor denied at the time) invalidated the argument of his entire book. You never answered that question on BioLogos and to my knowledge you’ve never answered it here. Is Meyer’s whole book about the origin of life flawed because he called peptidyl transferase a protein?
I see you’ve since updated your answer to include some remarks of Matheson. I notice that you don’t mention the part of Matheson’s reply where he offered me “praise and respect” “unconditionally” for admitting my error. You of course never offered me anything similar. Gee, I wonder why?
You seem to specialize in not answering questions. You haven’t answered my question above about the invalidation of Meyer’s entire book because of a terminological error, and you haven’t answered any of my recent questions about your religious beliefs. Both of these refusals to answer have gone on for years, both on BioLogos and here. And generally, a refusal to answer a question indicates that the answer to the question would be embarrassing to the person being asked. I could of course understand any refusal to answer were your professional career at stake, but you are now retired and there is nothing your old employers can do to hurt you, so I have to assume that you could not honestly and directly answer the questions without embarrassment. Your silence compels me to infer what those embarrassing answers might be. I’ll draw the logical inferences, until such time as you give explicit answers.
One would hope that your alleged professional training in text interpretation would extend to the ability to compose interpretable text. In particular, you should not say one thing when you mean another. You should know that a lot of what you say looks to an observer like after-the-fact excuse-making.
No, that’s not the only reason. He buttressed that lie with multiple misrepresentations of the hypothesis itself and of its predictions, both of which you mindlessly parroted over months of argument.
So as @sfmatheson noted, that ENTIRE chapter is worse than worthless. It actively deceives people in multiple ways, not about interpretations of evidence, but the evidence itself. It worked quite well on you.
The rest of the book is a joke because it is simply sophomoric. If you think it has important, accurate parts, simply cite them.
I just quoted it.
Because you added other falsehoods that you didn’t retract.
No, I specialize in getting you to elaborate on how you’ve been so easily conned.
See above. You are simply lying when you try to portray it, as you did for years, as a mere terminological error, because it is supported by multiple additional misrepresentations. Meyer does not want his readers to know that the enzyme assembling every protein in your body is RNA. It worked on you, which is why you falsely claimed that
You swallowed all of those falsehoods, blatant and subtle, hook, line, and sinker.
You should know that a lot of what you say looks to an observer like picky catch-you-out caviling, uttered in grumpy or imperious tones. Apparently your parents, wife, friends, colleagues, etc., never called you out on these features of your interpersonal communications, and they’ve become ingrained habit.
Acting in the context of the ribosome – which is not entirely composed of RNA. And also acting in the context of cellular life as we know it, with the DNA-RNA-protein relationship. In the RNA world hypothesis, at the earliest stages, none of that would have existed. Don’t you want your readers here to know that? Are you misleading your readers by speaking “every protein in your body”, and thus causing them to think of what RNA does now, in the current complex context, in hopes of inducing them to think sloppily about the very major differences between now and then?
Far from not wanting his readers to know that every protein in the human body is assembled by the ribosome, Meyer mentions that fact many times in his books and articles.
Terminological error is just another way of saying that what he said is factually wrong. And wrong in a particular way that could easily mislead someone about a significant piece of evidence for the RNA world hypothesis. That it is the RNA itself that is responsible for carrying out all it’s catalytic and translocation functions.
What a weird and illogical request. Total red herring. Does Meyer being factually and demonstrably wrong about his oddly and accidentally-convenient “terminological error” have to invalidate the argument of his entire book?
It seems to me that it is enough, in and of itself, that he makes such an oddly convenient “error” that the reader is left with the wrong impression and is not informed correctly about evidence for the RNA world. Not only is the reader left without that evidence, but the “terminological error” results in a view of the translation process where it could be interpreted to be evidence against it.
The enzymatic active site of the ribosome is ENTIRELY composed of RNA. You are trying to deceive.
We still live in the RNA World. Meyer lied about the hypothesis itself:
p. 298:
According to this model, these RNA enzymes eventually were replaced by the more efficient proteins that perform enzymatic functions in modern cells.
But, in reality, they weren’t.
Not in the least. The point, Eddie, is that evolution was incapable of replacing that catalytic RNA. We still live in the RNA World.
Now that’s some spectacular mendacity in the service of the DI.
Hmmm…can anyone here see the difference between:
and:
Keep digging, Eddie. You are providing a beautiful illustration of the DI’s lack of integrity.
Mercer is referring to a conversation between us that started on BioLogos 10 years ago or more. He did then – and you weren’t there, so you wouldn’t know – say or imply that the entire book by Meyer was worthless, and he kept harping on this single terminological error, as if he thought that utterly destroyed the entire value of the book. He was asked then, very clearly, does this error invalidate the argument only of part of one chapter, or of an entire chapter, or of the entire book. He was asked that question repeatedly on BioLogos, every time he raised peptidyl transferase (which he raised repeatedly and often). He refused to answer it. He continued that refusal when he took his travelling show to PS. So this is a conversation that was never finished between us, and there is no need for you to intercede in it. But I see now that he has finally given a half-baked answer, 10 years later.
I know this, but that’s in current organisms, in which the RNA is part of the ribosome. In the hypothetical RNA world, in its earliest stages, there was no ribosome, no DNA-RNA-protein system, and not even any cell walls at the very beginning. Would loose strands of RNA of varying length, floating around without boundaries, catalyze lots of useful reactions, creating lots of useful proteins? You’re acting as if the differences between the current reality of life and the most primitive state of the RNA world aren’t huge. As a biologist, or biochemist, or whatever you are, you ought to know better.
No! You are misusing the term. It was originally coined to name a hypothesis about the origin of life, in which life started before the DNA-RNA-protein system even existed. Your science scholarship is really lousy. Too much time in the lab, I guess. Read up on the history of the term before you argue about it.
The rest of your reply is just nit-picking pedantry (as it typical of your contributions on all websites I’ve seen you on), so I ignore it.
And that hypothesis predicted that constraints on evolution would prevent all ribozymes from being replaced by proteins, but Meyer simply lied about that:
p. 298: According to this model, these RNA enzymes eventually were replaced by the more efficient proteins that perform enzymatic functions in modern cells.
The bolded bit is a lie. The most important evidence is that some were not replaced. Meyer also easily concealed a second, still-existing class of RNA enzymes from you. The chapter is utterly dishonest.
I’m well aware of it. Perhaps you should have read up on the identity of peptidyl transferase before arguing about it for months.
No, you “ignore” it because you can’t offer a cogent defense of Meyer’s and your dishonesty in this matter. And mentioning it means that you aren’t ignoring it.