Melbourne-based, Sydney affiliated historian and philosopher of science, especially biology. Apple tragic. Pratchett fan. Curmudgeon. Punster. Fatso.
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It doesn’t get any better than this. You run a great blog here Johnny.
First and only warning for tone. You are pissing on the carpet now (see comments policy).
Hey look! There’s posters who have less ability to present coherent thoughts than I! Group hug!
I’m waiting for Davidson to make an argument so we can see if it’s a good one. Hint: “John, you ignorant slut…” isn’t an argument.
John Harshman whoever that is. I never heard of him.
The evidence for my thesis is overwhelming and most of it has been published in peer reviewed journals. Since I am no longer welcome to either the “Fundamentalista” or the “Darwinista”, both of which “groupthinks” I have rejected, I now present our science on my weblog – “Proceedings of the Natural History Society of South Burlington Vermont.” a journal of which I am the Editor. It is modeled after the journal in which Gregor Mendel published his 1868 paper which marked the birth of Genetics. Mendel too knew that his work would not be accepted by the contemporary botanical journals of his day, so he did what I have now done and for the same reason. His journal – “Proceedings of The Natural History Society of Brunn (Austria),” of which he was an Editor, permitted him to present findings that would otherwise be unavailable to the scientific commmunity. I am doing exactly the same thing and for the same reason. All the derogation, insulting, deletion, banishment and pseudonymous cowardice that characterizes this blog and so many others, proves only what we have long known to be true.
“A doctrine which is unable to maintain itself in clear light, but only in the dark will of necessity lose its effect on mankind with uncalculable harm to human progress .”
Albert Einstein
I dare John Wilkins to allow this message to appear.
P.S. This message will be presented on my weblog whether Wilkins has banished me or not. I’m betting he won’t let it appear here.
You lose.
If you play the Galileo-Gambit you lose! As Bob correctly pointed out you just lost!
““Proceedings of the Natural History Society of South Burlington Vermont.” ”
That is priceless.
John Harshman: we know who he is. We have eaten pizza with John Harshman. You are no John Harshman.
The only responses so far are denigrations. Obviously neodarwinian posters miraculously “adhere to the not-pissing rules” whatever they write. Everyone can check that it were them who started denigration, not professor John Davison.
Professor John Davison proposed that evolution is finished. His conclusion is based on the observation of prominent paleontologists or even darwinists.
There is no need to ridicule this opinion – or better fact – unless you proposed some arguments. Preliminary we only see the most peculiar argument in science – that of “lack of imagination” and awkward mockery which “adhere to the not-pissing rules”.
As I’m neither a Darwinist nor a neo-Darwinist perhaps you would be so kind as to explain what these labels mean and to whom exactly they apply?
Didn’t I just say that “John, you ignorant slut…” isn’t an argument?
“His conclusion is based on the observation of prominent paleontologists or even darwinists.”
Being a peeping tom is no way to overthrow evolutionary theory.
Well, for those who request arguments, the “limited imagination” hypothesis has actually been borne out when put to the test. As just one example that should be familiar, those who insisted that a bacterial flagellum could not have evolved in a step-wise fashion were shown to be insufficiently imaginative, at least within the constraints of biological thinking. I added that qualifier because some of the same people have demonstrated quite remarkable powers of unconstrained imagination.
One should perhaps observe in real science “limited imagination”. I remeber reading fantastic stories about origin of mimicry by professor Richard Dawkins – predators in the dawn in forests culdn’t tell apart imperfect mimimcs etc…
Nowadays it is well established fact that mimicry patterns on butterfiles wings aroused at once to be effective (see some latest papers by Frederick Nijhout). Of course darwinists are afraid of the concept of saltationism, so they use in the case of mimicry orwelian newspeak : “mutation with great phenotypic effect”.
There were many articles in pre-war scientific journals proving uneffectiveness of butterflies mimicry. Even in the 50thies they can be found in peer-reviewed. As by miracle such articles have disappeared since 1980 .
As in the case of imperfect mimics – in the case of butterflies I haven’t heard about persuasive ones – I doubt there are organisms having something like half-flagellum. I expect them existing only in darwinian “imagination”.
Omg, such deep intellectual barter here.
No wonder.
Hubris, diatribe and idiocy underlie all Darwinism and are ubiquitous whenever Darwhiners are to be found horded together.
One comment that I find might be worth looking at and that is so materialist typical:
This is bad reasoning based on either ignorance or incredulity, or possibly badly phrased thoughts.
The 1st phrase implies that Newton, Pascal, Maxwell, and several 100s of other scientists that founded so-called “modern” science, could not have founded modern science!
They were virtually ALL staunch creationists who clearly believed the “originated as a supernatural event” view of life and the universe.
So, how utterly ridiculous is any statement that implies they were in fact unscientific??!!
But this is the new atheist propaganda, ubiquitous in the halls of academia these days and taken as an a priori qualification of all science!!
But even Einstein was, at the very least, a deist!
Furthermore: the origin of any phenomenon can be conceived of and therefore examined in some way -no matter what the perceived nature of that origin.
To say it cannot be is simply to claim that we do not have the right tools -yet, or worse, that we’re already assuming no such tools will ever exist.
Thus it assumes both too much and too little; Too much of whatever “super-nature” really means and too little of how such could eventually be studied.
It lacks both imagination and realism.
“Outside the purview of science”?
What is that? Methodological Naturalism?
If so one can only laugh or cry that “science” has been defined in such a way as to deliberately interdict anything we don’t really understand yet!
What is the purview of science, really?
Let’s put it this way:
Suppose life really was designed by a or many intelligent being(s)?
Q: Could you, under your definition of science, detect this?
A: If it cannot (as you claim) then it is lame, inefficient, insufficient and can never lead to the facts!
If “life, the universe and everything” really was planned, designed and created, and your definition of science prohibits all but matter and energy then your science can never discover the truth.
Thus your science is indefensibly and indeed irrationally exclusionary.
If your idea of science thus a priori excludes all possibility of any extra-, hyper- or super- “natural” (as we understand natural) existences, then you’re applying an non rational limitation to your ability to understand the origin of the universe – i.e. you’ve already shot yourself in the head.
In your case, you think you’ve shot your opponents in the head but in fact you’ve merely debilitated your own lame, prejudiced view of “science” irrationally, while it is your opponents that gave it right! Not limiting the abilities of research to nothing but matter and energy.
GHitch – Yes, to claim that a research program which employs only non-teleological hypotheses entails the non-existence of teleological processess is to embrace a basic logical error. And, yes, there are many working scientists who make this mistake. They are in need of remedial education in basic logic. But those who wish to introduce the design hypothesis need to provide a method for reliably distinguishing between products of design and products of a process of natural selection. Without such a method, their hypothesis is empirically empty. They, too, are in need of remedial education in basic logic.
Now, what was it you said about hubris?
Thank you Gary Hitch and Martin Cadra for introducing a modicum of rationality on this Darwinian dog and pony show. It is refreshing to find others capable of offering constructive and deeply challenging commentary on the Darwinian fairy tale. Our reward will be banishment if we persist so I say let’s get on with it. Let Wilkins do what Myers, Dawkins Elsberry and others did long ago. Let him also banish the critics of the Darwinian hoax. I am extremely proud to have been banished from more weblogs than any other real scientist in the history of the internet. I’ve even been banished three or four times (I can’t remember for sure) from Dembski’s Uncommon Descent. To be banished here will be just one more merit badge to pin on my white laboratory coat as the most effective critic of the Darwinian horror story presently still alive which at 83 will probably be not for much longer!
It doesn’t get any better than this.
Oh damn – just catching up on my blog reading, and find I’ve missed Fluppy the Wonder Whelk’s latest appearance.
I copied that one on my weblog too. Johnny, if you keep letting us hold forth, we will make you the most famous Darwinian in the history of the internet, one oblivious to reality, dedicated to his own demise as a reputable figure in the world in which he finds himself.
Bob O’H:
You are one lame-brained twit of Darwinian dupe if ever there was one – as we’ve often witnessed over at UD.
Get a brain huh.
Oh wonderful. Another Darwimp has arrived in the person of Robert O’Hara, perennial resident of Scientopia and After The Bar Closes, two more Alamos of Darwinian damn foolishness. This is even better than I could have imagined. I attract devout worshippers of the Great God Chance like meat attracts flies. They follow me around anxious to add their insults to the others I invariably evoke. Thank you Bob O’H. Incidentally, I dedicated an essay “An Essay on Insults” to Bob along with Mark Chiu-Carroll and Paul Zachary Myers two of the most disgusting character assassins I have ever encountered. You can find it on the “new essays” button on the top of my web page. Be sure to enjoy it along with all the other material you will find there.
Who is next? Don’t stop. Where is Alan Fox? He is usually first in line to ridicule me, usually by referring to my age. Pile on folks. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.
Don’t tell me there is no God. He has delivered you into my hands!
bob koepp said:
Well I must admit this is possibly the 1st time any Darwinist fessed up to lame Methodological Naturalism’s most glaring flaw.
Nevertheless, to pretend that the ID community has never presented such a method is indeed hubris and most likely mere denial.
That methodology is well known in any forensic science.
Denying its use in biology is yet another a priori mark of Darwinian materialism’s irrationality. That method is detection of intelligent input through the presence of algorithmic informational structures.
Nothing is more obvious in the genome than profoundly organized, prescriptive and indeed “formal” informational structures.
That’s why even the Nobel org called DNA a “book of instructions”.
Instructions cannot arise without intelligence.
Given that we already know that such information cannot arise by any stochastic process, the design inference is not only warranted but necessary.
You and all materialists are in dire need of reading, and hopefully understanding, the work of David Abel et al. over at http://lifeorigin.info/
There is simply no such thing as encoded instructional (algorithmic) information without intelligence. The very definition of “encoded information” prohibits it.
As Abel states:
The depth and level of coding and indeed structural engineering genius displayed in the genome is more than enough to convince any unbiased mind that a level of genius unimaginable to man was at work in its design.
To go on pretending that the genome displays no design is not only mere denial but patent lunacy.
Why in the world did Dawkins have to invent -out of thin air as usual- designoids?!
Obviously it is precisely because the impression of true design is so clear and intuitive to any unbiased mind.
Being the unspeakable reprobate that he is it obliged him to come up with yet another of his fallaciously conceived pseudo-explanations to protect his insecurities on the existence of a supreme being.
Once again, Abel states,
Thus Dr. Davison and so many others are right about Darwinists and also about claims that whatever evolution that actually occurred was necessarily programmed in from the start and has nothing to do with the imaginary unguided Darwinian RM + NS.
Get over it.
I think you are confusing our analogies and metaphors for describing the genome with how it actually works. It is not a “code”, a “cookbook” or “instruction manual”. It is chemistry. The template dependence is the basis of copying and therefore evolution, but the whole thing is a complicated little test-tube reaction. There is a lot of complex chemistry in the universe that does not beg a designing force. The genome and it’s expression are no exception.
Ummm…. judgments about what is “clear and intuitive” don’t make the grade as a “reliable method” in the 21st century, any more than judgments about what ideas are “clear and distinct” did in the 17th century. Operationalize your criteria for distinguishing between products of selection and products of design… then we might have something to talk about. But handwaving I can get at any parade, and from pretty girls!
bob koepp:
But those who wish to introduce the design hypothesis need to provide a method for reliably distinguishing between products of design and products of a process of natural selection.
I am afraid that “natural selection” is entirely based on darwinian “imagination”. It is a conservative force which just removes extremities. It has nothing common with evolutionary sequences.
Darwin recommended not to speculate much about “natural selection”, because it is too various to be understand. So nowadays wee see that profesor Dawkins is ranting against “group selection” which is according to profesor EOWilson “established fact”.
No wonder – both professors have obviously a bit different “imagination”.
So here’s a problem. One seems to attract more, and they all post interminable stream-of-consciousness screeds that say nothing of interest, thus making your blog hard to search for real content. How does that work? How did they find you in the first place? Figuring that out might at least be interesting.
And I retract my request to keep them. Regular creationists can be cute, but these guys are just boring.
John Harshman said:
I love this “response”.
We all know that in any on line debate when the materialist starts claiming that his opponent is posting “screed”, “nothing of interest”, is “boring” and most especially when they start calling you “cute”, they’re feeling cornered and they know not what to answer.
Instead of admitting their confusion, and inability to refute, they then use the standard atheist “evade and run tactic” as Harshman just did.
Not one of you has a clue about biosemiotics, algorithmic information theory, statistical mechanics or even just good old honesty.
Darwin based the notion of ‘natural selection’ on a direct analogy to the process of artificial selection. So your fear that it’s “entirely based on darwinian ‘imagination’” is unfounded. Please back up your assertion about Darwin’s recommendation “not to speculate much about ‘natural selection,’ because it is too various to be understand.” As someone trained in the History of Science, I require chapter and verse citations for such claims. I await your instruction…