If the person makes a very specific factual claim when being recorded, whether on YouTube or anywhere else, I assume that the person means what he says. Dawkins says “the same”, not “similar”, not “almost the same”. And according to others here, “the same” is wrong.
As for the inconsistency you are implying that I am guilty of (obviously you are suggesting that I apply a different standard to Dawkins and to Denton), it vanishes when you reflect on the context. I was criticizing you for treating a popular summary of a complex line of argument as if it were the whole case for that line of argument. But I’m not doing that with Dawkins. I’m not saying, as you were about Denton, that Dawkins is obviously a scientific incompetent and therefore I can make sweeping dismissals of his thought without reading his books. I’m simply saying that when Dawkins said “the same” he was saying something that is not correct. As usual, my criticisms are much more academically cautious than yours.
Hi Ron
I agree this non nested chromosome pattern is problematic for both evolution and YEC theories.
The paper you cited is contradicted by what we know about the reliability of reproduction and the reproductive problems that come with chromosomal mutations such a Robertsonian translocations…
The nested hierarchy claim is severely challenged since it is a claim of a branching pattern due to reproduction and variation. Chromosomes are an important part of the reproductive process. Chromosome changes are a problem for reproduction.
Here is one of many papers showing fertility problems with one Robertsonian translocation.
Not yet. Nor do I say that the conclusions of the article are false or that anything about the article is bad. I quoted from it merely to show that the discrepancies I was talking about are discussed in the technical literature. It is doubtless popularizations of ideas from the technical literature that I have seen in the past in culture-war discussions over trees. I could not immediately find any of the popular discussions I was referring to (not surprising, since I’ve read tens of thousands of blog columns, blog comments, etc. over the past 15 years, and don’t index every single one of them by topic), but I was able to find the technical article rather quickly.
You should read it. You would learn a few things. You should read the various other things people have suggested in this thread too. But you appear to have cited this article to support something nobody has challenged you on, instead of supporting what you were actually asked about.
Buggs uses both the printed quotation and the video. I only watched Buggs’s lecture once and remembered the image of Dawkins talking on the video, and looked up the video on YouTube. Frankly, I forgot that he also quoted a printed text. I now grant you that the printed text statement is more qualified. I could quibble and say that the printed text is from 2009 while the video is from 2010, and the later statement reflects his actual view, but that would be petty. I’ll take it that he was just being sloppy in the interview (whether deliberately to mislead the interviewer and audience, or simply to keep things simple for a popular audience, I can’t say), and I’ll accept that his real understanding is the more nuanced one in the printed text. So your point is granted.
So, what does this do to the position that “Dawkins and most others claim that from any gene in an organism you will generate the same phylogenetic tree, i.e., you won’t get clashing trees depending on what gene you pick.”
Harshman asked me to state what I thought Buggs was saying. The words you quote were my part of my attempt to do that. I did not say Buggs was correct to say what he said. I was representing what appeared to be his argument.
If his statement misrepresents the technical phylogenetic discussion, then people here can point that out; that’s why I started the discussion. I didn’t start it to defend Buggs.
BTW, I have had the chance to attend quite a number of these lectures within our own department, though here we call them “professorial lectures.” And, as I said, the speaker is usually pretty much given free rein to discuss whatever aspect of their academic work they wish.
Prior to Buggs, I can’t recall anyone using that opportunity to expose their rank ignorance about an aspect of their discipline.
Ah. I wonder whether, after hearing this inaugural lecture, the people responsible for that appointment felt just a wee pang of regret. He’s liable to become a serious embarrassment.
If you had bothered to listen to the video, you’d know that his views on Christianity were well-known to the college beforehand, and that in fact the head of the college asked him to speak specifically on science and faith. So they knew exactly what they would be getting in the lecture. And if you had listened, you would know that while it was called an “inaugural lecture”, it was a belated one, and that he had been teaching at the college quite a bit before that – so they knew of the contents and quality of his scientific work before asking him to do the inaugural lecture. He also holds a parallel post at Kew Gardens, a major UK botanical institution, and he would not have obtained that post without an excellent research record. I don’t think they will consider him an embarrassment.
Actually, he shows a talent in presenting scientific concepts in language accessible to the layman. And at a city college like his, that’s considered a virtue. Finally, his plea for certain biologists to stop slamming the religious beliefs of their students is a very appropriate one if the goal is to encourage more students to undertake graduate study in biology. Who would you say is more likely to want to do graduate study in biology, a Christian student studying biology under someone like Buggs, or a Christian student studying biology under someone like Dawkins, Coyne, or P. Z. Myers?
But in this case, the speaker was specifically asked by his college to discuss faith and science issues, so we don’t know what would have been in his inaugural lecture had he been free to discuss what he wished. From his prefatory remarks, it’s likely he wouldn’t have mentioned faith questions at all.
How odd. You still don’t seem to understand what the issue is here. Hint: It’s not that Buggs talked about his faith. Maybe take off your Culture Warrior helmet, it seems to be obscuring your vision.
Uh huh. Is that why you came away from his lecture with the impression that most evolutionary biologists believe that there should be absolutely no genes that diverge from a tree pattern?
Which is completely beside the point.
I do not recall the University Head saying that Buggs had been asked to say something stupidly wrong that would deceive people into doubting common ancestry. Do you?
He doesn’t have to of course with his target audience. All he needs to say is that there are problems, and characterize them as “significant”. It’s all dog-whistles in a way.
Y’know, I watched it in its entirety almost immediately after you posted it. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to describe what was wrong with it less than two hours after you posted it.
But, as @Faizal_Ali points out, the way in which he’s likely to embarrass the university is not by being a Christian, or through his research record. It’s by being a nutter.
I’d think, now that you’ve seen the reactions, that you’d realize that this is not what he’s doing. He’s doing the typical creationist schtick: taking the likely ignorance of his audience and exploiting it, to make it appear as though he’s made a really important point. This is artful, to be sure, but it is of no value to his marks and/or students.
For anyone interested, I can report what I’ve been told by plant sytematists but can’t say from personal experience. There are several main difficulties with doing molecular phylogenetics on plants as compared to animals: 1) mitochondrial genomes, handy in animals, apparently evolve so slowly in plants as to be nearly useless; 2) frequent allopolyploid speciation, perhaps as much as 5% of all speciation events; 3) perhaps related to #2, very frequent gene duplications and losses, making orthology hard to determine. Conceivably some of that has colored Buggs’s view of phylogenetics.