The lack of empirical evidence for the theory of evolution, according to Faith.

I'm reopening this topic, but I have the following caution: This message has been edited by Admin, 04-09-2005 09:41 AM

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This is exactly the point - your analysis is completely off the mark. Of course the ID people didn't come up with the junk DNA concept - they didn't come up with anything at all. Molecular biologists said "this DNA has no function we can detect, at present" and the ID people said "we'll take your word for it." And then the molcular biologists came back and said "we've detected functions of this DNA we weren't aware of previously" and the ID people said "we'll take your word for it."Of course the ID people didn't come up with "junk DNA", they never come up with anything. They're not capable of their own scientific progress. And to offer this as some kind of evidence of ID "science" overturning an "evolutionist" assumption is idiotic - this is evolutionist scientists overturning an assumption that was really, when you think about it, incoherent with evolution, and the ID "scientists" trying to ride on the coattails of the people who did the real work.If the ID guys are so much smarter, then why did they go along with the junk DNA model in the first place? Why did they do exactly what you say and they say they wouldn't have done?

Hi Faith,I am awaiting your response to post 37, dealing with the legitimacy of inferring past events from extant evidence.Thanks,Mark

---

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I've read Pink Sasquatch's link to the Idea Center article (Here is the Idea Center source.). I haven't read the Scientific American article (Here is the Scientific American article they base it upon.) because I read it a couple years ago when it first came out, and I think I have a pretty fair recollection of what it says.I found the Idea Center article fairly innocuous, and I found Pink Sasquatch's characterization of it as "lying" both unnecessary and a bit of a stretch. Without going back to Pink's posts to see what he found most egregious, I assume this (and passages similar to it) is what caught his attention: The facts make this perspective difficult to justify, but I suspect others have already provided detailed explanations, so I won't bore you further. The primary point of the Idea Center article is that ID theory assumes that junk DNA has a function, and that if evolutionary biologists had instead used ID theory as an interpretive framework they would have made the discovory that some junk DNA has a function years earlier. Excepting that laboratory and analysis techniques might not have been up to the task until recently, I think the Idea Center is correct. ID theory definitely leads more directly to the possibility that junk DNA has a function, and that's a win for ID theory.Functional junk DNA fits neatly within a traditional evolutionary framework, and in fact makes more sense than if somehow huge amounts of DNA with no function had somehow been passed down across thousands of generations of evolutionary history. This and the fact that it was evolutionary biologists and not IDists who made the discovery is why ID is being given no credit or credence for this. It will be much better for ID if the next advance in knowledge is discovered by IDists. This would be a first.But Pink's main point is that the Idea Center article misrepresented the Scientific American article. I disagree. The Scientific American article does a fair job of misrepresenting the case all by itself, especially where it quotes Mattick, once saying the non-coding sequences "were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk", and later saying, "The failure...may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology."This particular SciAm article is not by scientists but by a senior science writer, W. Wayt Gibbs. His flair makes for dramatic reading, but the conclusions it might lead one to reach about mistaken paths taken by evolutionary science are probably not widely shared within the field. Pink seems very familiar with the nuances of progress within evolutionary science, perhaps more so than Mr. Gibbs. Unfortunately, more and more main articles in SciAm are being written by non-scientists.--Percy

Believe it or not, Faith, I agree with you on this, though you may not like my reasoning. If the person truly believes something, then it is not a lie, because, at least to me, a lie implies intent. I'm positive that the subjects in this case would pass a lie detector test just as cleanly as Mother Teresa. The question becomes one of alternate realities and how has that person become addicted to a reality that is significantly different from the majority of society. So, our choices are either lying or delusion, and neither one is very attractive.

It's just that I gave my conclusion up front instead of at the end. It is true for many evos that they think the creationists lie a lot and it was the case in this particular example. It was a conclusion I drew from the evidence and there's plenty more where that came from. This is not about scientific methods. And you are right this is getting very tiresome indeed. I said absolutely nothing about scientific methods -- already you've committed a logical gaffe there. This is about is what the ID people said and what Pink Sasquatch said they said and if you can't follow that, oh brother, I'm going to have to give up on the whole lot of you here. Did you read PS's post? Did you read the links? Did you get the accusation of lying? Did you read Commike's post first? How is this about ID theory at all? It is not. It is simply about whether they lied or not. Good grief you are going to drive me to distraction. AGAIN, this is not about ID theory, this is about simple COMMUNICATION, what people MEAN when they SPEAK, and whether they LIED or not.We're back in Wonderland when you want to make this an issue of ID theory. I am not defending ID theory. I don't even agree with it. I simply read the material and understood what they were getting at and realized that they are not lying or being stupid as both PS and Crashfrog are claiming -- regardless of their scientific views.I don't suppose there's any point in asking you to reread 81 and 83 very carefully is there?

No, again, you have missed the point. It doesn't matter if they are right or not. I pointed out that this is their claim because it proves they were not lying. PS simply misunderstood what the ID people were saying about the Scientific American article. He apparently didn't realize they were referring to the formulation of the idea of junk DNA, which happened to be done by evolutionists). The ONLY point is whether they lied or not and THEY DIDN'T!!!!!!So the rest of your post is pointless as you are arguing about whether they were right or not instead of whether they were lying or not. I hope this simple fact may eventually sink in!!

quote:

---

Without going back to Pink's posts to see what he found most egregious, I assume this (and passages similar to it) is what caught his attention:

​

This article [the Scientific American article] clearly shows that junk-DNA is the product of evolutionary predictions that were wrong...This mistake was apparently caused by evolutionary assumptions.

​

The facts make this perspective difficult to justify, but I suspect others have already provided detailed explanations, so I won't bore you further. The primary point of the Idea Center article is that ID theory assumes that junk DNA has a function, and that if evolutionary biologists had instead used ID theory as an interpretive framework they would have made the discovory that some junk DNA has a function years earlier.

---

Yes, that is what they are saying. They may be right or wrong but they weren't lying. That was my only point.

quote:

---

Excepting that laboratory and analysis techniques might not have been up to the task until recently, I think the Idea Center is correct. ID theory definitely leads more directly to the possibility that junk DNA has a function, and that's a win for ID theory.

---

Yes. Score one for them and one for Commike.

quote:

---

Functional junk DNA fits neatly within a traditional evolutionary framework, and in fact makes more sense than if somehow huge amounts of DNA with no function had somehow been passed down across thousands of generations of evolutionary history.

---

That would be my assumption too. I can't see why evolution would have any use for useless DNA. This makes ID reasoning wrong. My only point is that they made their points honestly, however wrong they might be.

quote:

---

This and the fact that it was evolutionary biologists and not IDists who made the discovery is why ID is being given no credit or credence for this. It will be much better for ID if the next advance in knowledge is discovered by IDists. This would be a first.

---

Of course. But Commike's point has ONLY been that if ID theory can be right about something evolutionism is wrong about, the hegemony of evolutionism prevents this fact from being recognized.I'm not sure how creationists could come up with advances in knowledge. There aren't that many of them. I don't know about their financial situation, but I would doubt they have the facilities that are available to the evos.

quote:

---

But Pink's main point is that the Idea Center article misrepresented the Scientific American article. I disagree. The Scientific American article does a fair job of misrepresenting the case all by itself, especially where it quotes Mattick, once saying the non-coding sequences "were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk", and later saying, "The failure...may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology."

​

This particular SciAm article is not by scientists but by a senior science writer, W. Wayt Gibbs. His flair makes for dramatic reading, but the conclusions it might lead one to reach about mistaken paths taken by evolutionary science are probably not widely shared within the field. Pink seems very familiar with the nuances of progress within evolutionary science, perhaps more so than Mr. Gibbs. Unfortunately, more and more main articles in SciAm are being written by non-scientists.

---

Thanks for a very thorough analysis of the situation. I was about to lose my marbles again with so many others claiming the ID people had misrepresented the article.

Dear Mark,
Thank you for the reminder again. I'm very sorry for keeping you waiting so long but I don't want to just plunge into that thread again until I get this one out of my system as it were. And I'm keeping Jazz waiting on the Great Debate too. Some people here tell me there is no rush, others seem eager to push things along. In any case, as long as I'm still here -- which has not been a sure thing -- I'll eventually get back to it. Thank you, and again I'm sorry for keeping you waiting.
Faith

Essentially percy asked people to drop discussing lies and such so I'm going to drop it completely.I will just say that in addressing your post I was not trying to get into the debate you were having with PK, rather I was addressing the broad statement you made about evos which was untrue, and pointing out that yet again you managed to make statements about how science functions which are inaccurate.Thus I was showing that an old debate, which you have refused to take part in, was within a post on a different subject.I think I have said enough times on this site that I think ID theorists actually believe their theory is correct, and that methodology must change (that will be an improvement), and so are not patent liars. Nor do I believe they have evil intentions, even if I do not like the results of their position (that is I find them negative).Whether one article printed by some ID theorist contains a lie or not does not swing the debate of EvC or EvID one bit, at least not one significant bit. Therefore that part of this thread is not important to me.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

No, he asked people to stop ACCUSING people of lies, as that is a subjective judgment and unfair,{EDIT: Maybe he also wanted my objection to this accusation to be stopped and I misread his warning. However, I disagree: it is possible to prove that PS's accusation was simply wrong, that the ID site were not lying, by showing that PS misunderstood what they were referring to -- the ORIGIN of the concept of junk DNA -- so it isn't just a matter of unprovable opinion whether they were lying or not; clearly they weren't if you follow the whole sequence carefully.}and since I was in the middle of proving that those accused had not committed the offense, that remained the topic to you, which you failed miserably to address as did Crashfrog. I didn't make a single statement about how science functions and I'm sick of hearing this from you. And if you haven't noticed the accusations of creos of lying by evos at this very site you've had your head in a very dark place. I'm sick of being accused of everything under the sun here. What's my huge offense now? Man I'm sick of you guys and your constant irrelevant needling accusations out of context, and usually based on a misrepresentation if they can even be tracked down since you just sling this stuff without bothering to back it up. Thanks for that much but it would help if you would follow the reasoning I went to lengths to develop against the accusation that they are lying, and it would help if sometimes the evos here were called on such a big fat booboo as Mr. Pink's by others than myself. Fortunately Percy had the grace to recognize it or I'd be flaming you a lot worse than I am. Well, maybe your part of this thread isn't important to ME. How do you like them apples?This message has been edited by Faith, 04-09-2005 04:56 PM

Given that I never tried to address it, I fail to see where it is a criticism of anything I wrote. Your statements about science contain logical requirements for how it must work. You may be sick of hearing it, but it is true. It will not go away. As I have suggested, you should read Dembski, he is more creo than actual ID though that was his invention, and sets out quite clearly what I have been trying to tell you.If you don't want to accept these facts from an evo, read them from people on your own side. I have seen it, on all sides. But truth be told I think I've seen it more from you, and more unwarrantedly from you, than anyone else at this site.I am less interested in proving who is lying and who is not, than getting back to the real crux of the debate. That is facts and logic regarding science and how it impacts EvC. It's the same offense I "accused" you of in the beginning, in the middle, and just now. With the exception of the tangent on the splintering of educational standards, I have been stating the same issue repeatedly, pointing out where you make the same evident mistake. I didn't misrepresent your position and I did back it up pretty neatly and inoffensively. You have simply refused to acknowledge my point, at best saying "it isn't true". Since then I have just kept up pointing out where you show the same mistake. Yeah, remember that I said that very thing in the same thread where I was big time supporting your points and saying what a good writer you were? I do call evos on their "booboos".In this particular case I was not interested in the specific subject PK and C and you were addressing and so did not have enough research to call anyone on any booboos related to whether IC was lying or not. Notice I did not say either you or C were wrong with respect to what PK was discussing. To tell the truth its disappointing. Why waste time arguing about whether mr X lied about mr Y, or extend that into arguments of whether mr Z is right about whether mr X lied about mr Y?I am more interested in the topic of this thread (evidence as it relates to ToE), than the subthread about the Idea Center.If you find debate less interesting than bickering about personal foibles of authors... like I said, disappointing.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

At least you have the good sense to tell they weren't lying, and that's a big plus after the struggle to get this simple point across. I think your overall point is hopelessly muddled however, as their possibly being deluded has nothing whatever to do with whether or not they were lying. You are simply enjoying making that accusation since the other one has been shown to be false.I believe however that they are wrong about the idea of junk DNA's being in any way congenial with evolutionism and probably wrong about a lot of other things if they start from the premise that everything we see must show the work of an intelligent designer's perfect creation. They apparently discount the effect of the Fall which would explain all kinds of imperfect and malfunctioning elements of reality, and perhaps even explain junk DNA. The functioning that is now being observed doesn't sound too efficient to me, more like something that's misfiring, or like something half dead that still has some organs working -- with erratic results since the whole system is out of whack.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-09-2005 05:12 PM

As I recall you started this sequence by quoting me about the lying. If you didn't want to discuss that, that is NOT the place you should have started. I consider it important to defend people from such a hideous charge against them as PS's. If you aren't interested in it THEN STAY OUT OF IT!!. You are now also accusing me of accusing others of lying which is false. I'm not taking accusations very well lately. This seems to be the MO of most posters here and I'm disgusted and infuriated by it.If you want to discuss actual issues please rewrite your post to leave out all the references to my interest in the false accusation of lying, and your accusations of my supposed heinous offenses which are false, and address the actual point you claim to be interested in, because I'm not going to bother with the rest of this insulting post of yours.

I'll open this thread again on Monday in the hope that by then people will have calmed down and be able to tear themselves away from the "did not/did too" nonsense and be ready to discuss the thread's topic.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director