Posts with Comments by George
Your genes, your rights – FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren misleading testimony under oath
I like L's idea of contacting your congressman. If you want an easy way to find out who your congressman is you can use the website for the House of Reps here:
http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/
Being Michael Behe
you do know that the majority opinion is that it is scale independent, right?
Any good refs?
Any good refs?
One can sense Behe's onto something reading Thorton's response. It has several independent ponts, and uses a lot of analogies, which is a sign of an argument that is not very compelling to the other side. Most importantly, he gets into arguments about whether improbable things can happen, are unlikely, or are impossible. This is the crux of the debate, and all interesting science is about probabilities, not possibilities.
For me, until someone can say, within a factor of 1 million, the odds of a cow turning into a whale over, say, 100MM years on Earth, I have no idea whether the mechanism of incremental molecular mutation, drift, and selection makes sense as an explanation. Lots of things (like monkey playwrights!) can happen, but what are the odds? 1 in 1E30? 1E50? 1E500? The fact no one can estimate these things makes questions about whether a small probability event is likely or unlikely, reasonable debates.
Again, I'm not saying Behe has proved Charleton Heston designed us in some Celestial SimCity, just, the standard Dawkins or even Gouldian, view, has a lot of hand waving. I'm comfortable saying I don't know the essential mechanism behind macroevolution, even though I'm an atheist.
For me, until someone can say, within a factor of 1 million, the odds of a cow turning into a whale over, say, 100MM years on Earth, I have no idea whether the mechanism of incremental molecular mutation, drift, and selection makes sense as an explanation. Lots of things (like monkey playwrights!) can happen, but what are the odds? 1 in 1E30? 1E50? 1E500? The fact no one can estimate these things makes questions about whether a small probability event is likely or unlikely, reasonable debates.
Again, I'm not saying Behe has proved Charleton Heston designed us in some Celestial SimCity, just, the standard Dawkins or even Gouldian, view, has a lot of hand waving. I'm comfortable saying I don't know the essential mechanism behind macroevolution, even though I'm an atheist.
I think if look at it from the molecular view, the non-scalability of the small mutation mechanism seems pretty convincing. Malaria resistance is straightforward, but then when you need a combination of mutations to overcome a local fitness maxima, your climb up mount improbable becomes stuck. When you think of all the specific proteins and sequences of processes involved in creating a flagellum, it seems improbable that this happened incrementally. The proof against Behe on this: some parts have analogues in other cells! Neither argument is a strict proof, and one should be able to appreciate why neither side convinces the other.
Many argue, we have billions of years, organisms, even Universes (the multiverse). But a billion is not infinity. Monkeys can type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but only in more time than the Universe has existed by many fold. The same argument of incredulity people apply to Behe applies to many Darwinists, in that they are incredulous that with billions of years and organisms, the microevolution we see all around us has to have been the mechanism behind macroeovolution. But many processes do not scale, they work in small groups, not large, and 4.5 billion is < inf.
Clearly, ID has no alternative that's within the bounds, but I'm sympathetic to the standard evolutionary mechanisms do not seem to scale, the permutations involved in mutation space blow up, with almost all bad. Creating new tissue, new species, is highly improbable, as fruit fly scientists have figured out (legs on eyes is not very compelling). A clear example of macro evolution, without handwaving (eg, this looks like a proto-whale!--err, so does a seal, a manatee, a hippo, etc.)
I'm aware there is a lot of other evidence for evolution, homologies, vestige organs or functions like goosebumps, all sorts of microevolution like skin color and finch beaks. I'm not saying Behe's closed the case, I just think it's a reasonable criticism.
Many argue, we have billions of years, organisms, even Universes (the multiverse). But a billion is not infinity. Monkeys can type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but only in more time than the Universe has existed by many fold. The same argument of incredulity people apply to Behe applies to many Darwinists, in that they are incredulous that with billions of years and organisms, the microevolution we see all around us has to have been the mechanism behind macroeovolution. But many processes do not scale, they work in small groups, not large, and 4.5 billion is < inf.
Clearly, ID has no alternative that's within the bounds, but I'm sympathetic to the standard evolutionary mechanisms do not seem to scale, the permutations involved in mutation space blow up, with almost all bad. Creating new tissue, new species, is highly improbable, as fruit fly scientists have figured out (legs on eyes is not very compelling). A clear example of macro evolution, without handwaving (eg, this looks like a proto-whale!--err, so does a seal, a manatee, a hippo, etc.)
I'm aware there is a lot of other evidence for evolution, homologies, vestige organs or functions like goosebumps, all sorts of microevolution like skin color and finch beaks. I'm not saying Behe's closed the case, I just think it's a reasonable criticism.
IE issues….
XP Version 5.1, IE 6, the post text is running under the grey side bar.
But I just open in Chrome and it looks fine.
But I just open in Chrome and it looks fine.
Kenan Malik and Kerry Howely on race
Bring back "ethnoi".
One Nation Under Gods, and Mitt Romney, over before it began
you want to see a religion that truly adapts over time, not just this biased one? Research Catholicism in depth.
La Griffe is back
I think he applies the idea of Bayesian updating to a case where it obviously applies. We have good population data, and we have updates based on test scores. Though it seems most unfair, purely 'future score maximizing' logic would discriminate against underperforming minority groups. Harsh. But this just highlights the degree of intereference caused by going the other way, and giving bonus points for having particular grandparents.

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