Uses of logical arguments in debate

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Timothy_Horton

What design process is that? When have you ever observed a supernatural Being physically manufacture a living creature?

No but we have observed a living creature create complex software.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

No but we have observed a living creature create complex software.

Human software writing is the same process the omnipotent supernatural Designer used to create the entire universe and all life in it?

We’ll have to ask for your evidence to back up that remarkable claim Bill.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Timothy_Horton

Human software writing is the same process the omnipotent supernatural Designer used to create the entire universe and all life in it?

We’ll have to ask for your evidence to back up that remarkable claim Bill.

Back to a straw-man fallacy. At least your consistent

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

Back to a straw-man fallacy.

Back to Bill making his usual lame denials after sticking his foot in his mouth. At least YOU’RE consistent.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

C’mon @colewd and @Timothy_Horton. No one cares about the circular back and forth sniping.

[Agauger (Ann Gauger)]

@T_aquaticus
Read the statement again.

@T_aquaticus

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

It says nothing about intelligent design. It merely says we are skeptical…Careful examination of the evidence should be encouraged. Every skeptic would agree with that. You could sign that statement and be an atheist, or even someone who just wants to examine the evidence for evolution more closely, rather than declare it a “fact”.

I signed that statement well before I was convinced by design. I read it carefully to be sure I could agree.
Now many who sign it do support ID, but you cannot assume.

You imported the intelligent design into that statement. What logic were you using?

[CLAVDIVS (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus)]

@Agauger

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

It says nothing about intelligent design. It merely says we are skeptical…Careful examination of the evidence should be encouraged. Every skeptic would agree with that.

The statement may be innocuous, but in the past the Discovery Institute has disingenuously trumpeted it as evidence of a “controversy over evolution”.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Agauger

I find this deeply curious on several levels also. First, who besides me has been talking about this?

I can’t reveal my sources. xD

I have documentary evidence how long I have been thinking and talking about it.

Fair enough, if I’m wrong here then I am wrong. Time will tell if we’ll start hearing “we predicted it all along” from ID proponents if this kind of research into autocatalytic metabolic networks shows any kind of promise.

@Agauger

You have to be really deeply in your bubble of pathological distrust to suspect me of copycatting without bothering to ask me first.

You misunderstand me there I think. My last comment was meant as a criticism of the latest flurry of ID responses to Frances Arnold’s Nobel prize (as if artificial selection of enzymes when rational design failed is somehow vindication for ID), not of you personally. That is what you have to be really deep in your ID bubble to not see through.

[Timothy_Horton]

@Agauger

It says nothing about intelligent design. It merely says we are skeptical…Careful examination of the evidence should be encouraged. Every skeptic would agree with that. You could sign that statement and be an atheist, or even someone who just wants to examine the evidence for evolution more closely, rather than declare it a “fact”.

What was the DI’s motivation in producing that statement and publicly crowing about its number of signers if it had nothing to do with their ID claims?

[Agauger (Ann Gauger)]

@Rumraket

@Rumraket

You misunderstand me there I think. My last comment was meant as a criticism of the latest flurry of ID responses to Frances Arnold’s Nobel prize (as if artificial selection of enzymes when rational design failed is somehow vindication for ID), not of you personally. That is what you have to be really deep in your ID bubble to not see through.

Fair enough back at you.

I’ve been meaning to ask. I think back in about 2015 -2016, some did a write-up of the nylonase story at TSZ and got the story completely right about the frameshift not being necessary, the point mutations that cause the nylonase activity, etc. I didn’t find the article until after I had posted mine or I would have given credit. Do you know who wrote it? It was well done. Was it you?

[John_Harshman]

@Agauger

Do you know who wrote it?

You aren’t talking about Sal Cordova, are you?

[Agauger (Ann Gauger)]

@John_Harshman

You aren’t talking about Sal Cordova, are you?

No, Sal’s review was later.

[T_aquaticus]

@Agauger

It says nothing about intelligent design. It merely says we are skeptical…Careful examination of the evidence should be encouraged. Every skeptic would agree with that. You could sign that statement and be an atheist, or even someone who just wants to examine the evidence for evolution more closely, rather than declare it a “fact”.

This doesn’t jive with the DI webpage:

During recent decades, new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, “artificial intelligence” research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism’s central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail.

Yet public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin’s theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things. The public has been assured that all known evidence supports Darwinism and that virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.

The scientists on this list dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second. Since Discovery Institute launched this list in 2001, hundreds of scientists have courageously stepped forward to sign their names.

The list is growing and includes scientists from the US National Academy of Sciences, Russian, Hungarian and Czech National Academies, as well as from universities such as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and others.
A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism – Dissent from Darwin

You can accept the modern theory of evolution as tentatively true and still agree with the statement. That doesn’t carry over to the description from the Discovery Institute.

[Agauger (Ann Gauger)]

@T_aquaticus

You can accept the modern theory of evolution as tentatively true and still agree with the statement. That doesn’t carry over to the description from the Discovery Institute.

@T_aquaticus if you take Darwinism as you yourself define it, as the old out-dated version of evolution 1.0, then yes, you could sign the statement and still accept evolutionary theory as a whole as tentatively true. But you could do exactly the same thing with DI’s statement because it uses the same term “Darwinism”. Not that they intended that distinction, or that the signers did either.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

But @Agauger, why would any one sign a “Dissent From Newtonian Physics”? Signing a statement like the Dissent from Darwinism would indicate I didn’t know the content of modern evolutionary theory.

[T_aquaticus]

@Agauger

if you take Darwinism as you yourself define it, as the old out-dated version of evolution 1.0, then yes, you could sign the statement and still accept evolutionary theory as a whole as tentatively true. But you could do exactly the same thing with DI’s statement because it uses the same term “Darwinism”. Not that they intended that distinction, or that the signers did either.

@Agauger
The question is why the Discovery Institute didn’t make it a straightforward statement, something like “The undersigned reject evolution as a complete explanation for biodiversity and instead believe that an Intelligent Designer was involved.”. Why be cute with it?

[Patrick]

@Agauger As I am getting to know you, I am getting more empathetic to your thinking. Given your Catholic background, why isn’t this okay with you?

Ask A Franciscan: Pope Francis, Big Bang, Evolution

This gives you complete freedom to be a practicing evolutionary scientist and a good Catholic. What wrong with that?

[Mung]

@Patrick

This gives you complete freedom to be a practicing evolutionary scientist and a good Catholic. What wrong with that?

Why are you making things personal?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mung

Why are you making things personal?

Of course it’s personal. Many of us are becoming friends.