Thanks @bjmiller, with the current blitz from ENV, it is important to me that we continue to highlight positive dialogue between us. This is an example of such positive dialogue. Peace.
There is five things I would like you address.
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The first one is T-urf13 which has been put forward by @art, and is an example of a three part irreducibly complex system that appears to have arisen without selective benefit, by Constructive Neutral Evolution. This is not Darwinism, but neutral evolution, so you may need to reorient your rhetoric.
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How are you going to account for the point that @Rumraket has made, legitimately, that you are not taking negative selection into account in your analysis?
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It does appear that an irreducibly complex beta-lactamase can arise out of an unselected library of less than 10^-10 sequences. We discussed this at length with @Agauger here: Antibody Enzymes and Sequence Space. If this is true (and I believe it is), it appears you are back to square one. This substantiates all the critique @Mercer has been making with hard evidence.
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I want to know your situation here, as a proxy for Axe. If you found that Axe was wrong would you be able to and willing to publicly admit it? Or do you need approval to do so? Or do you honestly plan to argue his case no matter what the evidence shows? I ask this question without judgement, but to understand what we can realistically expect from you in this exchange. If you can’t or wouldn’t ever admit error, even if you were convinced of it, it would be good to just know up front.
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Getting to the point on #4, can you acknowledge any errors in your own reasoning or in Axes reasoning that you can acknowledge? If not about this, can you provide any evidence of a place where you personally have admitted error publicly? This would go a long way to calming concerns I have, and making much more hopeful for progress.
I do not mean any of this as insult or to be invasive. Answering this last question for myself, I plan to be writing up in a blog post soon for myself. I have admitted error more than once after being corrected by ID proponents. I would like to know if we are being fair to each other now.
Finally, there is one personal question I have.
- Why is it that the DI has repeatedly called me a Darwinist? I am not a darwinist and have explained this recently: http://peacefulscience.org/agree-behe/. Do they mean this as an insult? Are they intentionally trying to misrepresent me? What do you think should be done about this.
These are all the questions I have, and they are each important to me. Thank you for addressing them. I very much look forward to your response.