Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

luc said:
There you go:
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And this:

The reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: “The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts—and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ’struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed—and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults.”

– Charles Robert Darwin, The Descent of Man, Great Minds Edition, 123
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Chu said:
And this:
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The crazy thing is that these people, including Darwin of course, don't see the fallacy in their reasoning: either Darwinism is true, and then the "fittest" WILL survive, no matter what, or it ain't. But you cannot proclaim Darwinism to be true and at the same time complain that it somehow doesn't work because people are too soft!! (David Stove made that argument brilliantly, see this post for a summary.)
 
One of the best arguments for the validity of ID is the idea that DNA is coded information. How can you have a code without a programmer?? The following short video (part of a new series called Science Uprising) does a great job of bringing that point home. The series itself makes creative use of the 'V for Vendetta' idea towards a revolutionary change in the understanding of science and life, and though it does have an SJW vibe to it, I think that it's a mostly successful effort at getting the word out in a very accessible and fairly entertaining way.

 
That is really interesting! Especially given our recent efforts to bring light to this very issue. In some ways we've been living in the dark ages. What will future generations think of our times mainstream acceptance of neo-Darwinism, of even the standard dietary guidelines?! It's mind boggling. There be cracks in the dam. Just a matter of time before the levy breaks.
 
genero81 said:
That is really interesting! Especially given our recent efforts to bring light to this very issue. In some ways we've been living in the dark ages. What will future generations think of our times mainstream acceptance of neo-Darwinism, of even the standard dietary guidelines?! It's mind boggling. There be cracks in the dam. Just a matter of time before the levy breaks.
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Yes indeed, very interesting video - I really enjoyed it. In such a short time, they did a great job of explaining how the digital codes of life are way, way too complex for chance. Thanks for posting Ennio, this one is well worth watching.

I can only imagine what future generations will think of our times, likely along the lines of "these people could NOT think!"
 
Thanks for that luc! Egnor's explanations are wonderfully clear and easy to grasp. I loved his explanation of the "free won't" as a modern interpretation of original sin (being constantly bombarded with unconscious impulses) and free will. It takes the religious baggage off the concept.
 
About videos two more in a similar vein:

And a book that I haven't read yet, but for those who might be more or less interested:
Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion

Unbelievable
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reveals:
  • Why the “Dark Ages” never happened
  • Why we didn’t need Christopher Columbus to prove the earth was round
  • Why Copernicus would be shocked to learn that he supposedly demoted humans from the center of the universe
  • What everyone gets wrong about Galileo’s clash with the Church, and why it matters today
  • Why the vastness of the universe does not deal a blow to religious belief in human significance
  • How the popular account of Giordano Bruno as a “martyr for science” ignores the fact that he was executed for theological reasons, not scientific ones
  • How a new myth is being positioned to replace religion—a futuristic myth that sounds scientific but isn’t
  • In debunking these myths, Keas shows that the real history is much more interesting than the common narrative of religion at war with science.
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My third article is up: Evolution - A Modern Fairy Tale -- Sott.net

I've added links to all three on my profile page here on the forum, and I'll be adding more as they come, so you can find the links there if you need. I have three more written and more to come, probably.

The absurdity of evolution is more obvious to me every day. I can now understand why the Cs said "There is no evolution as you are thinking." Evolution and what mutations really do are two different things, on a completely different level. It's like mechanical tweaking versus magic. There really is no evolution at all. Nothing evolves into something else. Each species just adapts to its own environment, and if there's a "change in species", it's only because somebody arbitrarily decided to call the adapted form a new species, but there are no new genes, just variations in sizes and colours.

Behe said the cutoff for what mutations can do was at the level of family, but since this demarcation is rather arbitrary and even he himself found exceptions, it's probably not the best way to think about it. My theory is that the cutoff is simply at new genes. I'm not aware of any examples of new genes arising by random mutation, and I don't think it's possible, so I think the "edge of evolution" is there. It's also a clear, simple, and logical line. Mutating existing genes - yes; making new ones - no.


I finished The Bone Peddlers a while ago. The first half shows how just about every fossil of supposed human predecessors, from Lucy to Neanderthals, is controversial at best.
The second half is what's really interesting, though. He talks about Ingo Swan and remote viewing, Rupert Sheldrake and his theories, and all kinds of metaphysical stuff and how materialism just doesn't work and what it means for evolution. What I really liked was the part where he suggests that the consciousness of incarnated souls could change the genetics of the body, and maybe in only a few generations. The whole book was really interesting, and especially the second half. It can be read on archive.org.

I also finished Foresight by Marcos Eberlin. It's an easy read, listing all kinds of interesting examples of things in nature that seem to require foresight and can't be explained by step-by-step random processes, from the cell membrane to protein folding to planthoppers' gears.

Here's a bit of his summary at the end:
1. We see many examples of apparent foresight in the natural world—of problems being anticipated before they arose, and ingeniously solved with on-time delivery of multiple, essential, and well-orchestrated parts.
2. We know from our uniform experience that the ability to anticipate and solve such problems is a characteristic of intelligent minds.
3. There are no demonstrated examples of unguided, mindless processes anticipating and solving problems that require a sophisticated orchestration of fine-tuned parts, all brought together on the ground floor of an origin event. Hand-waving references to cases that are assumed rather than demonstrated do not count. Neither do arguments based on question-begging logic—e.g., "Common features must mean common descent" and "Common descent must mean blind evolution."
4. Therefore, our uniform experience provides us with only one type of cause with the demonstrated capacity to anticipate and solve such problems—intelligent design.
5. Intelligent design thus represents the best and, indeed, the only causally adequate explanation for the many examples of apparent foresight in the natural world, of situations where problems are ingeniously solved with on-time delivery of multiple, essential, and well-orchestrated parts. The foresight is not merely apparent, but real.

Let the dogmas and suppression tactics retreat. We have two primary theories for our origins. Let the contenders stand up; let the evidence be presented; and let's deliberate and debate in a spirit of good will and fair play. May the theory that best explains the evidence win.
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It's rather ironic that what's at the core of this EvolutionIsTrue™ propaganda is basically a "religious" view - the materialist religion. They ignore science in the name of dogmaterialism, which is basically what they accuse ID of. It's all so stupid that it's really bizarre how it could have survived for 160 years.
 
Mandatory Intellectomy said:
My third article is up: Evolution - A Modern Fairy Tale -- Sott.net

I've added links to all three on my profile page here on the forum, and I'll be adding more as they come, so you can find the links there if you need. I have three more written and more to come, probably.

The absurdity of evolution is more obvious to me every day. I can now understand why the Cs said "There is no evolution as you are thinking." Evolution and what mutations really do are two different things, on a completely different level. It's like mechanical tweaking versus magic. There really is no evolution at all. Nothing evolves into something else. Each species just adapts to its own environment, and if there's a "change in species", it's only because somebody arbitrarily decided to call the adapted form a new species, but there are no new genes, just variations in sizes and colours.

Behe said the cutoff for what mutations can do was at the level of family, but since this demarcation is rather arbitrary and even he himself found exceptions, it's probably not the best way to think about it. My theory is that the cutoff is simply at new genes. I'm not aware of any examples of new genes arising by random mutation, and I don't think it's possible, so I think the "edge of evolution" is there. It's also a clear, simple, and logical line. Mutating existing genes - yes; making new ones - no.


I finished The Bone Peddlers a while ago. The first half shows how just about every fossil of supposed human predecessors, from Lucy to Neanderthals, is controversial at best.
The second half is what's really interesting, though. He talks about Ingo Swan and remote viewing, Rupert Sheldrake and his theories, and all kinds of metaphysical stuff and how materialism just doesn't work and what it means for evolution. What I really liked was the part where he suggests that the consciousness of incarnated souls could change the genetics of the body, and maybe in only a few generations. The whole book was really interesting, and especially the second half. It can be read on archive.org.

I also finished Foresight by Marcos Eberlin. It's an easy read, listing all kinds of interesting examples of things in nature that seem to require foresight and can't be explained by step-by-step random processes, from the cell membrane to protein folding to planthoppers' gears.

Here's a bit of his summary at the end:


It's rather ironic that what's at the core of this EvolutionIsTrue™ propaganda is basically a "religious" view - the materialist religion. They ignore science in the name of dogmaterialism, which is basically what they accuse ID of. It's all so stupid that it's really bizarre how it could have survived for 160 years.
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Do you have more planned? Looks to me like you are well on your way to having a complete book. Just sayin'.
 
Laura said:
Do you have more planned? Looks to me like you are well on your way to having a complete book. Just sayin'.
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Yeah, like I said, "I have three more written and more to come, probably."

I've only read 10 books on this so far, and my Evolution folder now has about 50 books, and it's all pretty fascinating, so I'm sure I can go on for a while. At some point I can expand into other things, like materialism in general and wherever it takes me. But I think I can make fun of Darwinism for a long time. After all, there's so much to make fun of. I kind of declared war on Darwinism with my first post here, so I intend to follow through with it. Thanks for the opportunity to post on Sott. I think there should be like 3-4 weeks between the articles at least, so I should be able to produce enough for the rest of the year and keep people aware (and upset, in some cases, lol).

I don't really see much point in a book. I'm not writing anything that hasn't been written before (maybe aside from my highly sarcastic style, especially in this current article), and there have been many books written by people with actual credentials, like biologists. It's all out there. People just need to read it.

In fact, I'm amazed at how much has been written. What regularly happens to me is that I figure something out on my own, write it down, and inevitably sooner or later I read the very same idea in a book that's 10-30 years old. Signature in the Cell is my favourite, along with Behe (though I haven't even finished it yet). Meyer is really good at explaining stuff in great detail and with precision, and he's probably the best talker of all these ID guys. I had to laugh when I read this in his book:
Imagine you have traveled to Easter Island to view the famous Moai statues. A child beside you asks no one in particular, "Who carved these statues?" A man standing next to the kid looks over the top of his glasses and asks, "Why do you assume they're sculpted?" Dumbfounded by the question, the kid has no reply, so you rush to his aid. "The carvings manifest a pattern that conforms to the shape of a human face. The match in the patterns is too close and the figures are too intricate, for it to be mere coincidence." The man scoffs. "Don't tell me you've been reading intelligent-design propaganda, all of that rubbish about specified complexity? Let me ask you this: Who sculpted the sculptor? Who designed the designer? Do you see the problem? Your reasoning leads to an infinite regress. Who designed the designer's designer's designer's designer's..." The child, appropriately unimpressed by this display of erudition, rolls his eyes and mutters under his breath, "Yeah. But I know someone carved these." And, indeed, someone did.
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He's dismantling exactly the kind of dumb arguments that GCarlin was spouting on Sott a few weeks ago, and with such elegance. And he wrote that 10 years ago.

I've been checking out some of the videos on the Discovery Science youtube channel, and there's plenty of great stuff there too. The V for Vendetta ones are really awesome for spreading among people, especially the one about the code, that was posted here.

I watched this one today: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7Lww-sBPg

It's about the origin of life, which is an area where the Darwinists don't stand a chance whatsoever. The notion of self-assembly of a living cell is possibly the stupidest idea I've ever heard. This presentation is not only very informative, but also very entertaining. The problems with the OoL are so huge that the materialists don't even scratch the surface with whatever dumb ideas they have. And this guy shows how they all follow the same failed pattern with their theories. It's funny how in all those explanations there's always that crucial moment where the real magic is supposed to happen, the really unbelievable stuff, and they either brush over it like it's a piece of cake or admit that "we don't really know all the details of how this happens", which is exactly the thing they were supposed to explain.

In a way, it's fun to watch this evolution train wreck, but when you talk to friends who believe it, without really understanding it properly, it's kinda sad to see how much the propaganda can program even people you know are smart otherwise. Evolution is special in that it accepts things that would be laughed at in any other area. There's a total disconnect here. Things that nobody would take seriously anywhere else are accepted as normal when it comes to evolution, and people don't even realise this double standard they have.

This is an area I've been thinking about - how to break this down to friends who aren't on board. These are people who may believe in evolution quite strongly, but only because of the propaganda. And I think the established habit is to just not talk about it at all, to avoid confrontations. But if they're your friends, they probably will make some effort to hear you out. Presumably, they know you're not an idiot. So maybe we should talk about it. If things are to change, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. So the question is, how?

My starting question for these people is, "You believe bacteria evolved into humans by errors in DNA transcription?!" Because that really is what evolution says, and if you put it like that, it already sounds ridiculous. If they say yes, just ask "How?" Most of them won't have a clue, but they think the scientists know. Which is where I would make the point that nobody really has a clue, and they all just pretend like it makes sense. At any rate, if you ask people to explain how bacteria evolved into humans by means of transcription errors, nobody will be able to explain it. And if they make some serious attempts, then it's just "How would random mutations create new genes?", and there's just no answer for that. The only thing they can say is "Well I believe they can.", but this is just a belief as opposed to science. Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate this.

So part of the reason for my writing is outlining different strategies for explaining the absurdity of evolution for those who've been indoctrinated but are still somewhat receptive to logical arguments. The Fairy Tale approach can be effective for some people. The funny thing is that all I did was basically just lay out what the official story really is. I just didn't ignore the details that are usually ignored.
 
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