Comments on: Antievolutionists Wrong About Darwin Yet Again

By: Wesley R. Elsberry

Wesley R. Elsberry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:50:55 +0000

Sheesh. Looking back over my article just now, I see S. “Applied Physiologist” H. fails to even manage to accurately identify my conclusion.

I can only conclude that antievolutionists in general have no concern for the truth nor for fact-checking even the simplest of their claims.

Maybe that’s because that conclusion is too obviously true.

And the further comments themselves bear that out.

By: Wesley R. Elsberry

Wesley R. Elsberry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:05:52 +0000

Let me fix your first sentence of your second comment:

I have now read your post.

I can look at your previous comment and see you arguing there that, yeah, Darwin had to think that a cell was simple on the inside.

The point is that when he proposed the development of a simple cell from the inorganic, he was unaware of the complexity that resided within that single cell.

Now you say that wasn’t your argument. You are not consistent. You, like many antievolutionists I’ve had the misfortune to argue against, cannot simply admit error when it is pointed out.

You now say that your accusation of a “straw man” referred to what you call my “conclusion”, that being my statement that antievolutionists shouldn’t be relied upon for policy and curricula. It’s funny that this is conspicuous by its absence in your original comment. It is a falsehood on your part that this was your argument all along. Again, you simply will not admit error. You instead compound it with intentional falsehood.

A strawman fallacy is a specific logical error, one in which a weaker argument is substituted for a stronger argument, and then the weaker argument is rebutted. I have attacked the actual argument of antievolutionists concerning what Darwin thought of the complexity within cells, and provided quotes showing exactly what their argument was. You now even stipulate the fact in question:

He did not view it as simple. He did indeed view it as complex.

If you mistakenly thought that my premises did not lead to my conclusion, that is not a “straw man”, that would be a “non sequitur”. You do not appear to have a firm grasp of the classification of logical errors. However, my premises do lead to my conclusion. When people insist on not only making erroneous claims but insist on promulgating them widely, they obviously cannot be trusted to help guide policy and form curricula. You should know stuff and have a record of reliability before you are allowed to write curricula. On both of those points the antievolutionists fail.

Your further analogy fails to be analogous. In the case of Dawkins and Stein, Stein asked for speculation and got it. In the case of the various antievolutionists I quoted, the item at issue was something easily checked and with no uncertainty whatsoever.

Why should I have to present a workaround for something that is entirely imaginary? I think that you have misinterpreted your professor’s reaction to willful ignorance. As far as brittleness of evolved systems goes, the relevant starting point for discussion is H.J. Muller’s 1918 paper that discusses “interlocking complexity”.

By: AppliedPhysiologist

AppliedPhysiologist — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 03:08:28 +0000

I have read your post. The “straw man” I am referring to is not to whether or not Darwin in fact viewed the cell as simple, it is the conclusion you draw in your piece. He did not view it as simple. He did indeed view it as complex. Though, do you have any idea of the complexity currently realized even within a “simple cell”? You posit a rather strong conclusion “Trusting antievolutionists to help guide policy and form curricula for public schools would be malfeasance, plain and simple” based on quotes about what Darwin believed about cell structure. Here is your straw man (personally I prefer Pat Robertson on stupid quotes). It’s like an ID proponent throwing in that fantastic quote from Dawkins with Ben Stein on panspermia and saying that all evolutionary biologists should not be allowed to help form curricula because they obviously have midnight encounters in the trailer park with DNA dropping aliens. In all seriousness, I would be interested to read your work-around for non-functional intermediate states of cellular structures. This one has made natural selection seem almost indefensible to me (my grad school biology professor about cried when one of the students asked about it) as it would seem to leave the organism in a state at which it will not be the fittest.

By: Wesley R. Elsberry

Wesley R. Elsberry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:30:54 +0000

It might help if one reads the post before claiming it uses a strawman argument. I demonstrated that Darwin did not assume that cells were simple. The premise you (and the laundry list of other antievolutionists in the post) assumed was true is nothing of the sort.

As for the rest, may I suggest opening up a textbook on psychology and looking up “projection”?

By: AppliedPhysiologist

AppliedPhysiologist — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:57:19 +0000

It seems to me that you are ignoring the point of the argument by throwing up the same sort of “straw man” atheists (and some ID proponents) love beating on. The point is typically–but not always–not to discredit Darwin as a scientist (his seeking a naturalistic answer rather than just saying “God just did it” was and is critical to the advancement of all science). The point is that when he proposed the development of a simple cell from the inorganic, he was unaware of the complexity that resided within that single cell. Darwin’s natural selection seems much more realistic in a day when the cell seemed much MORE simple though not simple. I would have been compelled, with their level of understanding, to believe–if we can all just be honest it is belief either way–in a Darwinian model. The problem I see in my study is how the jumps are made to develop systems that are complex and cannot gradually form without severe disability to the organism in the intermediate stages. Also, the understanding of genetic information and the scarcity, to say the least, of positive mutation was significantly underestimated. What he was seeing was changes within the species. When his finches were further studied, their beak size was a cyclical adaptation to weather patterns. His finches never became non-finches. A true understanding of what is required to produce genetic mutations on the level of multiple nitrogen bases was far beyond his reach, and, unfortunately, beyond the reach of many of my esteemed scientific colleagues. The idea is not that Darwin was not a scientist (one who logically seeks to determine the cause of an effect); the idea is that when he posited his framework his observations were limited to his observable world. Even he said that there may be such problems. What is important is to follow where the data leads us without throwing out possibilities because they do not fit within our daily experience or worldview preference–Dr. Dawkins has become very rich but has looked the fool in debate by doing this. To posit an intelligent agent is not “stupid”; however, to discount either possibility without PROOF does not follow our beloved scientific method and may be, frankly, ignorant.

Preconceived views>confrontation with data>views contradicted>data must be wrong?

By: Daylight Atheism > The Case for a Creator: Complexity Is Scary!

Daylight Atheism > The Case for a Creator: Complexity Is Scary! — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:36:39 +0000

[...] complexity" implied by what he could see of cells' organization and behavior. For details, see this post by Wesley Elsberry, which also catalogues the sloppy anti-evolutionists repeating this [...]

By: Christopher Wing

Christopher Wing — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:30:41 +0000

Why do creationists need the rest of us to believe them? Why must stupidity publicly out itself in this manner? Can’t people who would have functioned better in the 1600′s just keep their damaging ideas to themselves?

Ugh!

By: Austringer

Austringer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:56:09 +0000

It isn’t simple disagreement that will get anyone booted. That appears in any number of comments that I have approved here. Disagreeable-ness, as it were, is what will cause your comment to get scrubbed just as surely as clean-up will happen if you walk into my living room and spit on the floor.

This isn’t all that difficult a concept, I wouldn’t think, except to the incorrigibly disagreeable.

BTW, if you were going to disagree, the topic is the historical claim made by clueless antievolutionists that Darwin didn’t appreciate that sub-cellular organization implied complexity.

By: Viorelas

Viorelas — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:31:24 +0000

“Comment Policy
I consider this weblog an extension of my living room in cyberspace. If you enter a comment that I wouldn’t find acceptable in my living room, I’m likely to boot both you and your comment. Fair warning, OK?”

Well, very interesting discussion site. If I find your comment acceptable, i.e. as I understand, contrary to my belief, I’ll delete it. Very interesting…

By: Christian Stiehl

Christian Stiehl — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:47:45 +0000

I’d also point out that treating a cell as a “black box”, when you don’t really know what’s inside it or what its internal mechanisms are, is entirely proper. It’s fine to say that the cell does X, Y, and Z, and it simply does them *somehow*, with the implicit understanding that, as science advances, we’ll be able to get to those as-yet unknown mechanisms. By analogy, you don’t have to know that a proton is made up of quarks to be able to study how protons interact with the atomic nucleus.

A further error is to mischaracterize the concept of the black box itself. To say that you’re treating an object or process as a black box is to say nothing about the complexity within the box. The guts of the box may be fundamentally simple or fantastically complex. For the purposes of the current discussion, you’re simply ignoring all that and focusing on what goes in, and what comes out.

If, in fact, Darwin were to treat the cell as a black box, it does not follow that he therefore thinks it’s simple protoplasm. Nor does it follow that, by treating it as a black box, he’d have missed crucial evidence that invalidated this evolutionary theory. While this could have been the case, the opposite has been shown to be true: the molecular evidence revealed by prying open that black box is some of the most convincing confirmation of common descent and variation.