# Is there really information being conveyed within a cell?

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/is-there-really-information-being-conveyed-within-a-cell/16951>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Created:** [December 31, 2024, 4:02am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/is-there-really-information-being-conveyed-within-a-cell/16951 "2024-12-31T04:02:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 109

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**Author:** ![Don\_Mc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3e96dc/32.png) [@Don\_Mc](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Don_Mc)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 1:31am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/is-there-really-information-being-conveyed-within-a-cell/16951/109 "2025-01-15T01:31:31Z")

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> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> Welcome back, @Don_Mc! I saw when your book came out. 🙂

Thanks for that, @Dan_Eastwood!

One incidental bit about that book: a brainy engineer friend who reviewed it (and disagreed with the better part of it) was put off by the subtitle – _The Failed Dogma of Evolution and a Fresh Model of Creationism_ – because in his view evolution is a genuine scientific theory and not a dogma. Yet I chose it not simply to be provocative but to suggest that evolution fails _as_ dogma, i.e., when presented and promulgated as an unchallengeable truth. I take it that precisely _because_ evolution is a genuine scientific theory, it is (in principle at least) only provisionally confirmed and always amenable to potential falsification like any other. I say that to clarify that I’m not just trying to be offensive for offense’s sake.

– none of which really matters, since I’ve sold maybe two copies over the last three months. 😅

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> You know that cuts both ways, right?  
> Maybe even harder the other way. For example, a review of the defense of ID claims made by ID proponents would support this. There has never been any admission of error or retractions in the ID literature, and there are some pretty big errors.

All I can say is it wouldn’t completely surprise me. I won’t pretend to be an unbiased observer of the situation, but often it seems to me like ideology has infected the dialogue to the point that maybe Peaceful Science simply cannot be had. That’s why I embrace a third way, which is to leave scientists and educators to their work, essentially promote creationism (or ID, teleology, etc.) as a branch of apologetics rather than science education, and (informally) encourage the teaching of systems theory rather than evolution as a neutral unifying theoretical paradigm of biology. I don’t know of anyone who agrees with me, though.

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> That said, I have wandered off-topic, so I’ll leave it at that. I can split the thread if anyone really wants to grind this out again (but let’s don’t and say we did). 🙂

Fair enough. In that case I will just mention in passing that I was ready, though certainly not eager, to acknowledge an error (regarding my evident misreading of @Mercer’s “retrospective explanations”); then push back a bit on @John_Harshman’s reply; then reply again to @Mercer re: his take on explanatory power and hypothesis testing. But if you’d rather let the thread die, I would just as soon get back to things that cause me less stress anyway.

> [@Dan\_Eastwood](#):
>
> ETA: It was unfair of me to ignore this …
> 
> > [@Don\_Mc](#):
> >
> > “…[C]reationists would be well advised to present the narrative account of the creation in Genesis not as some sort of testable scientific theory, but rather a divinely revealed historical-theological truth for which there happens to be considerable scientific evidence” (p. 59).
> 
> I appreciate the first part, and I can deal with the second part being addressed to a Creationist audience. Thank you for putting that in writing.

Thanks likewise for that acknowledgement.

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