Klinghoffer: Early Science Review of Darwin Devolves — A Panic Attack?

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/early-science-review-of-darwin-devolves-a-panic-attack/

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Lol. Where are they getting this no reply to the main argument in the book from? This is how the DI works. If no one reviews a book it’s because evolutionary biologists are scared of the arguments. If the book is reviewed it’s because biologists have anxiety about the arguments or it shows the arguments have merit. No matter what happens they can spin it to try to make themselves look good.

[@moderators: edit for tone]

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“Head we win, Tails you lose.”

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From Mike Behe. Can we at least agree that he ought to know?

I have no idea what your point is. Evidence is abundant that he either does not know or is not letting on? Are you calling him dishonest? That seems over the top, even for you!

I see that you still don’t know me. :smiley:

Well, you are an anonymous ID advocate. Vanilla and one dimensional it seems :stuck_out_tongue:.

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6 posts were split to a new topic: Anonymity and Peaceful Science

Better the devil you know, some say. :slight_smile:

The DI posts two hurried, crazed, scattered posts with no actual content, just rambling rants, within 18 hours of our short article in Science magazine, and we are the ones having a panic attack? This is where just a pinch of self-awareness might really help.

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I like how Dennis explains yalls back and forth with the DI

Behe’s been on this kick for a while, dating back to his article in the Quarterly Review of Biology (or something like that).

His argument has always struck me as akin to presenting countless examples of erosion, avoiding all discussion of tectonic uplift, volcanic action, etc - and then claiming that mountains must be the result of supernatural processes.

Author: erosion is really, really common. We see it all over the place. Here are hundreds of known examples. Mountains can’t be natural.

Reviewer: the author doesn’t address what we know about all the many, many geological processes that cause rock uplift.

Author: the reviewers don’t even address my main argument!

Nathan Lents, Joshua Swamidass, and Richard Lenski review Michael Behe's "Darwin Devolves" - #6 by aarceng - Faith & Science Conversation - The BioLogos Forum.

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Of course it’s a “Klinghoffer” - a response 100% rhetoric without even an attempt at arguing the science of the issue.

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I think it was meant as satire.

That would be hilarious, but I’m not sure there is any evidence of it being satire, is there?

That’s doubtful, self-targeting satire is pretty rare.

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Reminds me when Dembski made some some incredibly stupid posts at UD then later tried to cover himself by claiming they were just “street theater”. :slightly_smiling_face:

Well that is fairly notable. Even one of our ID advocates wonder if the response is a parody of itself. Wow.

The DI going POE? What is the world coming too??!?!? :wink:

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We have a third ENV response. It is definitely looking like some panic.

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/first-review-of-darwin-devolves-relies-heavily-on-circular-reasoning/

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“The need for specificity in the genetic re-engineering is supported by the striking similarities between the genes involved in echolocation in dolphins and in bats. However, the very research the authors cite indicates that the time frame in which an aquatic mammal is believed to have evolved from a completely terrestrial one is long enough to allow for only two coordinated mutations, far fewer than would have been required.”

Unsurprisingly, Brian Miller is quite behind the modern literature on these subjects. First, he links to Parker et al. (2013) to support his statement about echolocation, apparently unaware that Thomas and Hahn (2015) and Zou and Zhang (2015) overturned their results.
To quote Thomas and Hahn:

“We find that when the proper comparisons are made there is no surprising excess of convergence between echolocating mammals, even in sensory genes.”

Then there’s the part about there not being enough time for aquatic mammals to have evolved. Miller cites this uncommondescent article about a finding of a Basilosaurus jawbone found in sediments from Antarctica that were apparently 49 million years old, from back in 2011. Given that the DI have covered this next paper before now (atrociously), I don’t believe for a second that Miller is unaware of the conclusions of Buono et al. (2016), which are that this particular jawbone is from sediments more likely to be between 40 and 46 million years old, not 49:

“we interpret the age of the horizon that produced MLP 11-II-21-3 (i.e., TELM 4) as early middle Eocene (~46–40 Ma”

This was a completely unnecessary citation on Miller’s part, as the main part of his argument has to do with the “waiting time problem” whereby he claims (a la Sternberg) that only 2 or fewer mutations could have become fixed in the timeframe that whales are supposed to have evolved from terrestrial ancestors. A few million years here or there makes no significant different to this argument, so there’s no reason for Miller to cite anything including the erroneous age of 49 million years.

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