Monday, December 14, 2009

Dr. David Berlinski



Mathematics and Evolution



What does it take to evolve?



On random mutations.



On copying genetic material.

13 comments:

Jeffery Keown said...

What?

This is your idea of an expert on... anything? Berlinski?

". . . The content of David Berlinski's article does not differ from more traditional creation-science material, though his tone is more genteel and his writing a lot more literate. . . . But true to the creation-science genre, his approach consists of constructing strawmen, then knocking them down with misinterpreted, faulty, or nonexistent data as well as carefully selected quotations from evolutionary scientists. . . ."
Eugenie Scott, NCSE

You two seem good company.

Jeffery Keown said...

No evidence that mutation is the engine of change?

Of course not. Mutation is the fuel, Natural Selection is the engine.

I was right, you guys should do lunch.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

LOL.

An ad hominem fallacy in your first sentence no less.

You didn't waste any time ignoring the logical arguments and quoted the dumbest woman on planet Earth.

LOL again.

Jeffery Keown said...

Eugenie's comment is not ad hominem. Read it again. She's talking about his methodolgy, his sources and efforts.

Ad Hominem would be if she said "David Berlinski is wrong because he's a poopy-head."

He might be a brilliant man, some certainly think so, but this is the guy that schooled Ann Coulter in evolution. He's a mathemetician, not a biologist.

His mischaracterizations are legion and dishonest. He knowingly distorts the facts to advance the Christian agenda of Intelligent Design.

He should stick to fiction, or mathematics, when it comes to biology, he's just an all-too-common liar.

Jeffery Keown said...

You didn't waste any time ignoring the logical arguments and quoted the dumbest woman on planet Earth.


Logic? Look at his discussion of whale development. He has completely mis-represented the entire concept because he knows that his target audience (those that do not understand evolution) will not go to the effort of learning about it. Like you and other cdesign proponentists.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

Berlinski is not Christian and he's not a fundamentalist.

Eugenie Scott on the other hand is an atheist and she is a fundamentalist and she's also a liar.

Now that we have that settled if there is any logic you'd like to discuss I'm all ears.

Jeffery Keown said...

Berlinski is not Christian and he's not a fundamentalist.

Perhaps not, but he's certainly doing their work for them. The fact remains that he presents a twisted parody of evolution and passes it off as science.

Sound familiar? You pull this same stunt on a weekly basis. I shouldn't be surprised that you'd defend him.

Quantum_Flux said...

Hahaha, seacows don't even eat grass.

OilIsMastery said...

Exactly.

So how many morphological changes would it require for a seacow to evolve?

Jeffery Keown said...

So how many morphological changes would it require for a seacow to evolve?

This is the same nonsense that Berlinski perpetrated.

He stopped counting at 50,000. Right.

ID is unsupported by research, every ID paper is philosophical in nature, lacking any science at all. Even the wild guesses of the Ancients were more scientific.

Fungus the Photo! said...

I am unexcited with the same arguments on both sides.

We are told that the planets orbit the sun. But that is not the full truth: the Sun is allso moving around the galactic centre and at the distance from that centre it is really sucking diesel!
So the planets and out own little aqua or earth to the herd, is actually pulling a spiral in space. It is hurtling alongside the Sun. What keeps the earth from falling behind? Is it lokical to assume that after billions of years supposedly, the influence of a near vacuum, will slow all bodies but the smaller ones more as the have less momentum/mass than the large ones. Thus the attractive force will tug them along in the wake of the Sun?

What keeps the planets on the ecliptic?

Jeffery Keown said...

What he said:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/i_get_email_51.php

Jeffery Keown said...

Fungus:

What keeps the planets on the ecliptic?

The word you are looking for is gravity.