Bertvan@aol.com writes
in message <9a.8479d4d.26c42be5@aol.com>:
>
[...]
> When two people understand each others position, and still
> disagree, how do you determine which is "closed minded"? If
> each sees the same evidence and comes to different conclusions,
> how do you determine which have reached their conclusions
> "irrationally"?
I would never agree that people understand each other or have
seen or understood the same evidence in the vast majority of
disagreements. (I've responded to many of your posts,
Bertvan, but we've hardly ever gotten into a discussion of *details
and evidence* for or against ID. We talk mainly about feelings
and motives and emotion, all kinds of subjective topics, but
rarely objective evidence. Quit honestly, I don't think
you've seen the same evidence I have at all.)
Take the current thread:
http://www.eppc.org/library/conversations/04-evolutioncurriculum.html
Philip Johnson says this:
"What the source of [ information content in a bacterial genome ]
is, whether natural selection or mutation is really an information-creation
mechanism, seems to be a very intelligent question that, at least
for official purposes, the scientific establishment ignores."
The scientific establishment ignores the second implied question
because its already been answered. Natural selection and mutation
can be observed to add to the information content of a genome.
A handy example I've used before is "Reducing antibiotic
resistance." Schra, Nature Vol 381 9 May 1996, where it was
shown that bacteria with mutations that allowed them to survive
in the presence of streptomycin later incurred second-site
compensatory mutations that allowed them to compete and survive
right along with natural strains, even in the absence of
antiobiotics. (Thus, when someone argues that antiobiotic
resistance is really a loss of information due to the decrease
in ability to compete with the natural strain in the absence of
an antibiotic, this example refutes that handily.) If a little
bit of information can be added to a genome over a little bit of
time, why not a lot of information over a lot of time? Johnson
simply doesn't get this.
(I should add that I've *seen* creationists and ID'ers
argue that information can't be added, but their arguments
have always been flawed and there's nothing anyone can really
point to that suggests that scientists should take such an
argument seriously.)
The first question -- whether or not NSRM *did* provide the
information content of the genome -- is then less interesting
because once you've demonstrated that something could happen
and there's no objective reason (as opposed to subjective reasons)
to think otherwise, that becomes the best support for the
hypothesis that it did happen.
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