He's a creationist, so what can you expect?
In my four decades of experience, I've learned that almost no creationist ever knows what he is talking about. All they know is what creationists have told them, which they memorize and are able to spout off at the drop of a hat (which is why I never wear a hat -- old Woody Allen joke about an ex-wife: "She'd have sex at the drop of a hat, but the marriage failed because I wouldn't wear a hat"). Basically, they learn scripts of encounters which they play out all the time without ever understanding anything behind the script -- I saw this half a century ago with the proselytizing training materials for the Jesus Freaks and it hasn't changed the least bit since then (which is why I love to go off-script with them).
That is why the worst thing you can do to a creationist is to try to discuss his claims with him (he has no response because he doesn't understand anything about his own claims except that he was taught that just uttering those magic words would cause "evolutionists" to shrivel up before his eyes) but far worse than that would be to ask him, "What are your talking about?" In decades of engaging online with creationists, none have ever even tried to answer that question honestly.
Now, the YECs were easy. Their bogus claims were so transparently bogus that we could refute them immediately and with no effort (just think of candle2 and radiocarbon dating methods). But this new breed is a bit more difficult. The Old School creationists would assume authority far outside their fields of expertise and so made themselves very vulnerable -- of course so many of them had no expertise at all (eg, Kent Hovind), but some did have some expertise somewhere yet always pontificated far outside of it. They were and are so easy to refute.
This new breed is a bit of a tougher nut to crack. They have acquired some degree of expertise, often in a field that most people find to be esoteric, and they try to stay close to that field. While even the most basic knowledge of science allows you to refute a YEC, this new breed requires you to be conversant in information theory and higher math in order to refute them.
IOW, while they are still slinging basically the same old bullshit, their bullshit appears to be of a much finer quality (maybe at the peak of Mount Bandini instead of at its base). In all debates/encounters with creationists, we can immediately see that their claims are nonsense, but it's so much easier to show that a YEC's nonsense is nonsense than to show that for an IDiot's nonsense.
IOW, it's nothing more than they old college maxim (especially for essay exams that you hadn't properly prepared for): "If you can't blind them with your brilliance, then baffle them with your bullshit." Yes, that is directly related to doing a "snow job" (I have been in a North Dakota blizzard; no howling wind but rather a dead silence as tons of snow dropped down upon you).
Like the typical know-nothing creationist who only knows his script, LittleMan (auf deutsch heißt "little", "klein") keeps harping on the very small number of studies in his script,
even though their math models of asexual reproduction are far insufficient to apply to sexual reproduction (as has been pointed out to him over and over again for so many times). All he knows is his script, so he is incapable of dealing with anything that goes off-script for him ... such as
sexual reproduction.
That is why he cannot deal with Taq nor with anybody else who tries to take him
off-script.
He keeps bragging about being such a mathematical genius, but if so then why doesn't he realize that
mathematics are absolutely worthless unless applied properly.
I am a retired software engineer. In addition, I pursued gaming on the side -- entering into a military career (which I ended up continuing in the reserves) I looked to wargaming as a way to analyze military operations ("Amateurs study battles; professionals study organization and logistics.").
Almost every single program depends on a math model. There's some real-world situation or system that you need to represent and work with, which means that you need to create a math model of the situation or system. What are the input data, how to process them, and how to present the output? One approach I learned was to start with the output, figure out what inputs we needed, then figure out that middle ground of how to process the inputs to generate the outputs.
On an even lower level, the issue of
data representation would always come up (it was a much lower-level issue than Wikipedia would have it now). How do you represent all these factors in a computer program?
Whatever else you can say,
every single computer program depends on formulating a mathematical model.
In MultiMate/excel I've created spreadsheets for the schedule of mortgage payments (in that example, it wasn't until year 26 of a 30-year mortgage that you've paid off half of the balance -- sickening, isn't that?) and much more recently federal income tax estimates. So Littleman wants to apply the math models for
asexual reproduction to models for
sexual reproduction. That makes as much sense as applying my mortgage spreadsheet models as being essential to estimating my federal income tax.
Speaking as a retired software engineer with 36 years professional experience, I have that many years
plus another 5 years of schooling of experience in that programming practice of
modeling the data.
LittleMan's hyper-attention to the mathematics
at the expense of the math models they are supposed to support exposes a very serious vulnerability in his creationist bias.
Linguistically, math is a language. Much as algebra is also a language (which serves as a very good teaching tool if applied properly). In English you can say things that are very true and profound, but also things that are very foolish and idiotic. The language is the same while the underlying argument is totally bogus.
Similarly, math is dependent on the underlying math model. In formal logic, a logically valid argument is
valid, but it can only lead to true conclusions
if all its premises are true. Similarly, mathematics can only lead to true conclusions
if the math model itself is true.
So the proof is not so much in the math itself
as it is in the math model itself. Set up an utterly false math model and the mathematics based on that model will prove it out conclusively. But base those calculations on a truer math model and you will get very different results.
For example, the probability models that most creationists use for "evolution" are hopelessly hopeless.
Make every change happen all at once out of nowhere. This is known as "single-step selection". The probability of that is astronomically small such that to so produce the alphabet in alphabetical order with a million attempts every second, would require multiple
trillions of years to accomplish.
Yet using
cumulative selection in each generation in which the closest individual to the goal is selected to generate the next generation of attempts results in a solution in much under a minute of time. Such is the power of evolution (the cumulative selection model was patterned after how life itself and also evolution work).
I have personally seen creationist "evolution models" which were quite literally based on coin tosses: "Evolution requires ten coin tosses to come up heads", "
No it doesn't you idiot!"
Until someone comes up with a
proper math model for evolution, none of your BS applies,
LittleMan.
models
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