A RESPONSE TO GOAT.....
THEMAYAN wrote:
Quote:
Many??? When asked, many of those biologists where surprised that the institute that gave them that list to sign thought 'evolution' was in crisis. I see you didn't bother to read the discussion with several of them.. they totally accepted the fact of evolution, they were just disagreeing that we perfectly know all the mechanisms. ... in other words, the Discovery institute was deceptive in their intentions and motivations.
I am not sure why the DI should be accused of being deceptive for merely choosing their words carefully.
"Choosing their words carefully' ?? Is that another phrase as 'misrepresenting my motivations to people to get them to sign something they otherwise would not?"?
Goat the List is entitled. A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. How much more clear can that get? Look at there website. They make this clear.
Well, the list was to promote a lie. There are extremely few biologists in that list, and at least a few of them were surprised to learn that the D.I. was using that list to say 'Evolution was in crisis'. Most of those people are mathematicians, engineers, pharmacists, etc etc that have nothing to do with the study of Biology.
I have already responded to this statement. See previous thread.
First.. from the statement being misleading
Other criticisms
Critics have also noted that the wording and advertising of the original statement was, and remains, misleading,[11] and that a review of the signatories suggested many doubt evolution due to religious, rather than scientific beliefs.[12] Robert T. Pennock notes that rather than being a "broad dissent", the statement's wording is "very narrow, omitting any mention of the evolutionary thesis of common descent, human evolution or any of the elements of evolutionary theory except for the Darwinian mechanism, and even that was mentioned in a very limited and rather vague manner." He concludes that it is not in fact a "radical statement".[39]
All you have done is provide criticism, and the kicker is that the same people who have implied that these poor scholars were duped, are the same people who are trying to marginalize the signatories by (suggesting) and without any evidence that these signatories were religiously motivated.
From same Wikipedia article....
"The National Center for Science Education interviewed a sample of the signatories, and found that some were less critical of "Darwinism" than the advertisement claimed.[11][48] It wrote to all of them asking whether they thought living things shared common ancestors and whether humans and apes shared common ancestors. According to Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, a few of the signatories replied saying that they did accept these principles but did not think that natural selection could explain the origins of life. However, the replies ceased when, according to Scott, the Discovery Institute found out and advised signatories not to respond. She concluded from this that "at least some of the more knowledgeable scientists did not interpret this statement the way that it was intended [by the Discovery Institute] to be interpreted by the general public"
Eugenie Scott has been caught lying before and was actually sued and forced to retract statements made of others. Furthermore just like DonExodus she offers no names. She also offer no proof that the DI ever told people to stay quiet. Furthermore it makes no sense that people who were duped would listen to the same people who supposedly duped them.
Let me show you something concerning deceptive cleverly written phrases. E.g below and again from same Wikipedia article..
"For example, Stanley N. Salthe, a visiting scientist at Binghamton University, State University of New York, who signed but describes himself as an atheist, said that when he endorsed a petition he had no idea what the Discovery Institute was. Salthe stated, "I signed it in irritation", and said that evolutionary biologists were being unfair in suppressing competing ideas. He said that "They deserve to be prodded, as it were. It was my way of thumbing my nose at them", but was unconvinced by intelligent design and concluded "From my point of view, it's a plague on both your houses"
Again the list was not an endorsement of ID and was never labeled as such. It a scientific dissent from Darwin among its signatories.
Furthermore, notice how he said that said back then that "evolutionary biologists were being unfair in suppressing competing ideas. He said that "They deserve to be prodded, as it were. It was my way of thumbing my nose at them"
Even now knowing who the DI is, he still has not asked for his name to be taken off the list.
From article
"The claims made for the importance of the list have also been called intellectually dishonest because it represents only a small fraction of the scientific community, and includes an even smaller number of relevant experts.[40] The Discovery Institute has responded to some of these criticisms.[41][42]"
As I said before the list was not meant to be a spiting contest to put it nicely. Science is not, and has never been a respecter of democracy or majority rule.
Wiki
"At least one signatory of A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism has abandoned the list, saying he felt misled. Robert C. Davidson, a Christian, scientist, doctor, and retired nephrology professor at the University of Washington medical school said after having signed he was shocked when he discovered that the Discovery Institute was calling evolution a "theory in crisis". "It's laughable"
Goat said..
So, it seems your statement is from someone who is misrepresenting things.
No it seems you have actually confirmed what I said in that only one person has asked that is name be taken off the list. If Robert C. David (who by the way is a Christian) finds it laughable, then he is entitled to his opinion and more power to him.
I find it amusing that you bring up that conference as trying to 'refute' evolution. All the attendees of that conference accept the notion of a common ancestry They just wanted to come up with a different mechanism other than neo-darwinism
(unsuccessfully I might add)..
This is not true, and in fact common ancestry is one of the assumptions that they want to relax and I can provide the keynoted taken at the meeting. In fact, even the out spoken Massimo Pigliucci has never been married to idea of universal common descent, however I do agree with you on one point, it really is based on a notion or assertion, and not on any empirical phylogenetic tree.
I am not really sure why you think there is something wrong or deceptive in bringing up the Altenberg meeting. I mentioned that they were all evolutionist but that at least some like Stuart Newman were honest enough to admit that some of his own evolutionary colleagues have tried to get the general public to believe things that are not true. He is also critical of the Neo Darwinian synthesis and is trying to extend the evolutionary synthesis. The reason being is that it is not the smoking gun that everyone has been told it was.
He's skeptical of neo Darwinism and openly questions natural selection, random mutation and especially gradualism and gene centrism as being a major role. He even criticizes the Dover trial and says that it gives people the wrong impression that neo Darwinism is the way evolution actually works, but he doesn't believe that neo Darwinism can explain life as we know it. Again I make the point that this is the theory that we were taught and assured that neo Darwinian synthesis was sound and had the explanatory powers needed.
I never tried to be dishonest or portray the members of the Altenberg 16 summit as creationist or ID'ers. Again, if you read carefully, I said that these men and women were evolutionist who are publicly challenging the modern synthesis. My point is that based on modern 21 century data, the theory is now known to be non cohesive and limited in its explanatory powers by many, and especially in the field of evolutionary development biology/evo devo. Some are just more honest and vocal about it than others. Ill say it again. You can still believe in macro evolution and of course many do, but without a cohesive theory, all you have is a bunch of ideas.[/quote]
No... but it appears that the ID and the Creationist camps misrepresent what happened in that conference. Here is a little overview from P.Z. Myers
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008 ... s_over.php
hat's a little soft — there are no grand reformulations of the neo-Darwinian synthesis in there, nor is anyone proposing to overturn our understanding of evolution — but that's what I expected. It's saying that there are a lot of exciting ideas and new observations that increase our understanding of the power of evolution, and promise to lead research in interesting new directions.
Unfortunately, one reporter has produced an abominably muddled, utterly worthless and uninformed account of the Altenberg meeting that has been picked up by many crackpots to suggest that evolution is in trouble. This not only ignores a fundamental property of science — that it is always pushing off in new directions — but embarrassingly overinflates the importance of this one meeting. This was a gathering of established scientists with some new proposals. It was not a meeting of the central directorate of the Darwinist cabal to formulate new dogma.
Where one ignorant kook dares to assert her inanity, you know the Discovery Institute will stampede after her. Both Paul Nelson and now Casey Luskin have cited her lunatic distortions favorably. Luskin's account is egregiously incompetent, as we've come to expect — he even thinks Stuart Pivar was an attendee. Pivar is an eccentric New York art collector, heir to a septic tank fortune, who has no training in science and whose "theory" is a nonsensical bit of guesswork that is contradicted by observations anyone can make in a basic developmental biology lab. He was not at the meeting. No one in their right mind would even consider inviting him to such a serious event. Maybe if it was a birthday party and they needed someone to make balloon animals, he'd be a good man to have on hand.
Now we can move beyond the garbled hype of the creationists. Pigliucci lists several concepts up there that have promise for further research, and that may help us understand evolution better. That's the productive result of the meeting, and the only part that counts. Those concepts are also going to be discussed by many other scientists at many other meetings — even I talked about some of them recently — but don't let the liars on the creationist side confuse you into thinking that the fact that scientists are talking about new ideas is a sign that evolution is in crisis. Talking about new ideas is normal science.
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That is the problem with religion: you beat your way past the clerics, fight your way through the demons, stand before the holy of holies, and when you rip away the veil, there is nothing there but a mirror�
Owen Rowley
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When Caesar shakes hands with Peter, human blood flows. When the Church and the Empire embrace, the star of a martyr is lit." Giosue Carucci, 1836-1907.
PZ Myers is very nasty guy. He responded to one of my threads on his site and made some very bold claims. When I asked if he had any evidence to support those claims he told me to....let me see, how can I put this mildly? Lets just say it concerned performing a sexual act on myself. Which by the way I declined. I cant speak for anyone else's claim. I can only speak for myself. If you want to know more about what I meant about what these people of Altenberg said and meant concerning relaxing many of the assumptions of the modern synthesis, then just ask and I will provide the citations. The bottom line is that if the neo Darwinian synthesis was so sound as has been taught for decades, then there would be no need to reformulate or extend the neo Darwinian synthesis/modern synthesis. Thats not very hard to understand. PZ Myers also contradicts himself by admitting that evo devo is more devo than evo. I.e its more development than having to do with evolution, and on this one instance, I do agree with PZ Myers. In fact the extended synthesis only raises more unknowns, but that is where we are at in evolutionary biology, like it or not. Neo Darwinism reminds me of A Weekend at Bernies where we are propping up a dead corps of a theory and using voodoo science to make it sing and dance.
