----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell Maatman" <rmaat@mtcnet.net>
> Steve Meyer--"...standing there trying to avoid answering by saying his
> argument was restricted to the origin of life...."
>
> Michael Behe--"not answering [a particular] question seriously...."
>
> William Dembski--"...the deer in the headlight look on Dembski's face..."
>
> Really. You make it sound like these three leaders in the ID movement
acted
> like dummies. If they were that bad, they have certainly changed since I
> saw them in action.
>
> Glenn, if you refer to those who disagree with you in this way and keep
> saying it, we'll have another Bishop Wilberforce myth to debunk.
I don't recall you being there at Baylor to know one way or the other. Thus,
your comment means that you simply don't want to believe what I say. Why
don't you simply say, "I don't believe you" rather than taking this very
circuitous route to the same end? You will never know if I am correct or not
because you weren't there! I was there; I spoke to the people who attended
getting the feel for what they saw. And I know that Bob DeHaan felt
similarly as I did
about Schaeffer, because we had dinner after that session. (Bob, you can
confirm or deny it if you want). Tom Pearson was there at that talk, in
fact, he came up to me because I had given my name at the start of my
quesiton to Steve. Both of them can chime in with their comments but I have
a transcript.
Now so you will know what I say is true, I have transcribed part of Behe's
Q&A and much of the Q&A after Steve spoke and will append it to the end in
transcript form. You didn't want a new Wilberforce myth but you may now have
caused one with the publication of this transcript.
And I do take offense at your implication that I am merely saying this
because I disagree with them. Unlike you in the above, I treated friend and
foe the same. I am friends with Steve Meyer and Paul Nelson. That doesn't
mean I have to give them compliments every time I write about them or kiss
up
to them in order to maintain our mutual respect and friendship. I notice in
the above that you played favorites. You criticise me for what I said about
Meyer, Behe and Dembski (people with whom you find commonality) and you
failed to criticize me for what I said about Shermer, Weinberg, Ptashne and
Arnhart. Are you being one sided here rooting for special treatment for
those with whom you agree? God forbid that we do that as a habit. Since you
weren't there, you have no right to make such a charge that I am wrong and
no basis upon which to build it. Your comment shows what I consider to be a
big problem in Christianity, the 'root for our side syndrome' which engages
in religious/righteous rooting regardless of how bad we are! And this
encourages less than accurate research. I said things about other
non-christian participants that they won't like either. Look at what
I said about Michael Shermer, an atheist and avid antiChristian! I wrote:
"Michael Shermer, (looking MAAARVELOUS--however Billy Crystal used to say it
on Saturday Night Live) grandstanded to the cameras [smile included] "
Of Weinberg, I said that he did little but insult people: "In my opinion, he
did little to help convert people or even give them too much data to
influence them to change from their non-evolutionary positions. When you
insult someone (intentionally or not) they quit listening. In order to
change YECs they must listen to you."
And I will add, Weinberg was arrogant as all get out.
I called Toole's speech the weakest of the night. Here is what I said: "This
was the weakest paper of the night. It was too quick a survey of arguments
for God with little detail being given out. There were too many ellipses in
the arguments. "
And I simply castigated Judson for boring people to death--both in the
session he moderated and during Friday's banquet. I gave what I believed
was a fair representation of the talks. If you don't want to believe my
observations, that is fine, but unless you were there in some out-of-body
experience, you don't know diddly about this.
One note about the transcript. People don't speak in gramatical sentences. I
didn't always punctuate the way the speaker would have. They spoke words
like we all do which are then hard to punctuate. These are the words on the
tape as best as I could transcribe them. Here are the transcripts of Behe
and Meyer when questioned about experimental predictions:
[Note that Behe didn't answer the question.--grm]
Behe: One can't falsify the claim that sometime in the future we will
discover a process unknown to us now, that will explain what we now take to
be design. But what I would advocate as an advocate of intelligent design
is that the future can take care of itself. Science should work with the
data it has in hand. And just to give a little example. 70 years ago most
scientists thought that the universe was eternal and unchanging and then the
motion of the galaxies away from the earth and away from each other was
noticed. And that led to the big bang theory. Now a lot of people thought
that the big bang theory had theological implications. And a number of
people didn't like them and the scientists of that day who didn't like those
implications said lets wait lets not too hastily grab onto the theory of the
big bang with its overtones of creation and so on. Maybe in a hundred years
a new theory will come along that will explain the apparent motion of the
galaxies without recourse to the theologically charged event and if that had
happened physics would have lost out on a lot of progress in the last
century . So my point is that science has to follow the data wherever it
leads no matter what the theological implications and let the future take
care of itself.
Ptashne: I just, you know.thank you. What is it that you want scientists to
do? Science is now making discoveries at a rate in this field, I mean if you
had asked me five years ago if this was possible, I would have said no-this
is not possible, unbelievable. Now what is it you want us to do? What
difference would it make. If Behe were in charge of the funding. What would
you have us to do? [laughter] I mean someone suggested a very
straightforward test of one specific idea What is it you are going on
about?
Behe: If I were in charge of the funding I would keep most of it for myself.
[laughter]
What I would do and like to do is for somebody like you to go into your
lab. Now Prof. Ptashne has written some very interesting things on gene
regulation and of course the [garble] system which we are very interested in
these days are difficult to handle. But he has written on phage lambda In
fact he wrote the book on phage lambda. And he showed that by putting
probably most people didn't get the chance to see it in detail. On how a
switch system might have evolved in phage lambda and starting with a simpler
one where one binding site, the repressor binding site. that he constructed
a scenario where that might be built up. Now I don't have time to go into
it. But I know that that looked interesting but I noticed a number of
stumbling blocks. I would be real happy if someone like Prof. Ptashne with
his large lab went back and constructed, constructed the starting point.
One can I think rather easily manipulate lambda so that lambda only has a
repressor site put in place where you think it started initially. Where
there is no core protein and so on. Take that artificial construction, grow
it in the lab for a large number of generations for a large number of cells
, see what happens. Does anything happen similar to what you might expect in
your scenario. If it does, that's great and that's evidence for your point
of view. If it doesn't, like in Barry Hall's case, then maybe its not
evidence for your point of view and it might make you more suspicious that I
might be right.
{Note, that Behe didn't give a single specific prediction of what would
positively support his concept. He gave a situation in which a failure to
verify Ptashne's view becomes a reason for suspicion that Behe might be
right. That is pure, unadulterated God of the Gaps.-grm]
*******Steve Meyer Q&A*************
I was the first with my hand up at the Q&A. Here is part of what went on. In
my terribly slow speech and a panic attack on top of that, and with an Okie
accent[Note Russ, I am not above criticising myself either--grm], I said:
Morton: "My name is Glenn Morton, this is for Steve. Steve I really want to
protest I guess the use of specificity-two things. The use of specificity in
your paper and the statement that -let me catch my breath[a huge panic
attack came over me. My heart was racing, my breath was short and I wished I
could sit down-grm] -that only intelligent beings can increase information.
To the second point first, Even Lee Spetner, who is a young-earth
creationist, published in Nature in 1964 that natural selection acts as a
pump of information from the environment into the genome. Now I think he
vastly underestimated the rate. But it is an unintelligent process to pump
information and increase information in the genome. The second thing is
specificity. You gave the nonsense sequence of random characters and then
the sequence "Time and tides wait for no man." Spy codes are precisely
designed to encode a meaningful specified sentence into a apparent
meaningless sequence of symbols. So a meaningless sequence of symbols or
what appears to be, can be a specified sequence.[a nearby guy tried to help
me talk and said 'Once you own the code] Yeah once you own the code. So in
that sense I don't see how your entire use of information really plays out.
Could you comment on that."
Judson. Once you own the code it is a specificity problem.
Meyer: Can I just respond first to [Morton: Sure.] Judson. This sets up one
of the special issues Sarkar and I differ on. This is why I tried to define
information as something other than when we are talking about biological
information... [he talked for about 3 minutes]
[He never returned to my question. I was sitting in front of Art Chadwick
and Art leaned up to me after Meyer finished and said "He didn't answer your
question" and it is on tape where I said "yeah". And I would say that Walter
Bradley, unsolicited said the same thing to me during the break a few
minutes later. This type of answer avoidance continued.
De Duve quizzed Steve about his marking chance out of the picture. Maybe
some day I will transcribe it..-grm]
Later Steve was asked:
Ptashne: Steve, Can I just ask you, a question from an outsider if I may
call myself that [garble] I guess ideas Because Everybody has a different
idea so its not clear I get the feeling that had I started out my talk by
saying That I'm Christian I believe in God the Father and given the same
talk everything would be fine. But now in your case and I , I, really. An I
also noticed that the guys who are trying, the so called straight scientists
have sort of an idea of trying to figure out how it works. Now you say for
example, you took [garble] Then you present this thing that the sequence
does not follow that someone didn't follow from principle or properties?
What exactly is your idea? Do you think that some outside agent, for example
to compare a geese with a Drosophila half the genes the same half the genes
different. Let's say. So where the genes are different did God come down and
line up the nucleotides? Or were they just similar? Is there an idea or just
vague unease and therefore you want people to think you actually have an
idea about what this agent did or didn't do . [one sentence garbled-Ptashne
refused to speak into the microphone he was holding-grm] What's the point
about arguing about the mouse DNA other than to say well I don't know.
Meyer: Well the juxt errr, the jist of the argument is very simple. That We'
re looking for causal. A causally adequate explanation for the information.
Ptashne: OK then you say you need a cause every time you make a new DNA
molecule.
Meyer: No I am confining this argument to the question of the origin of the
first information
Ptashne: You just said that the DNA had no intrinsic information and that it
's a big mystery
Meyer: Right!
Ptashne: Ok so then every time you get a new DNA molecule that didn't exist
before is it your idea that some agent came down and made that DNA molecule?
Meyer: No not necessarily. Ahhhhh I ahhhhh if you get to biological if you
get chemical evolution to biological evolution you have.
[note: Not necessarily???? What exactly does this mean? Maybe God did and
maybe God didn't? It certainly is a squishy statement--grm]
Ptashne: no no that's chemistry. Those DNA molecules have never been seen
before. You see every one of you guys has a different way you think the
agent comes in.[comment: he is probably referring to Behe who stated at the
conference that God input information throughout history-grm] Where the new
gene appears that has not been seen before it comes from the
primal-apparently you believe in evolution-I don't know. Sure. But anyway
whether you do or not. [garble I think he said something about the
nucleotides in the context of what follows--grm] apparently they are not
chemically determined and you are very impressed by that. So is it your idea
that the intelligent agent came and designed each one of those genes?
Meyer: I think an intelligent agent was necessary to explain the origin of
the information necessary to build the first living cell. It is a separate
argument to have about whether or not the Neo-Darwinian process was
sufficient to build new enzymes. For example you were talking about in vivo
I don't think that every time you get a there are all kinds of biological
processes in replicating this DNA so obviously I don't believe that every
time you have a new gene being built that that's evidence for this direct
action of agency.
Ptashne: Its just that your.. This part I can understand. So your idea is
that the outside agent was there [garble- to tinker out? --grm] the
eukaryotic cell. Is that the idea?
Meyer: No I am confining the argument to the origin of life. And there I am
saying that the best explanation for the origin of information is
intelligence.
Ptashne: Well can you see why what we need to know is what would count as
life? Yeah what is life, I mean are you talking about the first replicating
molecule so then everything subsequently follows? Or are you talking about.
Meyer: I' m talking about getting the information out of chemistry brute
chemistry. And there's no evidence that that can happen. And that's the
point.
Ptashne: ok so all those..
Meyer: vis a vis but the object of explanatory interest is the cell, you
gotta get to that Right? That exists now that's the target for origin of
life theories.
Ptashne. Most biologists, we think the cell was probably quite a ways
[something about the cell being down the line quite a ways.]
Meyer: They're presupposing. That's theory driven language. And your
presupposing that you know that some kind of chemical evolution came about.
Judson broke in at this moment to take a question from the Sarkar.
Judson: I just wonder if we had this discussion with each panel [garble-grm]
Sarkar: Can you make one experimental prediction from your model?
Meyer: One of the other areas I, I'd just like to get a chance to chat since
you got here. But ah One of the other areas. I think that design has been
quite heuristically truthful. You see that in the past even if people aren't
operating on an explicitly design model there is a lot of reverse
engineering that has gone on in the history of molecular biology. And one
thing to say about that is that you have the Darwinian approach in the
broadest sense where you see organisms manifesting the appearance of design
and you have a design theoretical approach where people think there are
things that they are designed they look designed because they really were
designed. Ah you might have of course a lot of experimental problems in
exactly the same way because both groups of theorists would be thinking that
there . ah
[note: Steve didn't give a single experiment that could be performed to
support his view. This avoidance occurred over and over. And believe me,
even the Christians in the audience noticed it.-grm]
Sarkar: Come on lets talk about your individual response to Mark
[Ptashne-grm]
Meyer: yeah
Sarkar: Its salient that in your point of view, in fact, there is nothing
useful. I think I think What we are saying is, the point is that every time
we talk about Drosophila or hypercycles or something like that we can make
predictions. Most of the predictions are announced before so you write
about it and its really hard to get the hypercycles going and things of the
sort. But what I am asking about is So there is a specific model a class of
specific models about the origin of information and life we know how to do
experiments on them So the particularly one you are proposing, what is the
analogous claim? For example with the hypercycle one of the early claims
that you got from the cycle itself was the [garble] that there was a whole
worry of whether you can get from fifty nucleotides to a hundred nucleotides
without the presence of catalysts. But we think it would be the correct
catalysts. That's the level we operate at. What's the corresponding level of
analysis in your model?
Meyer: For example when Dembski couldn't quite pin you down a few minutes
ago he said he was vaguely uneasy and he made a prediction He said that ah
he said you were missing information. We think that starting from purely
chemical and physical antecedents you 're not going to generate continuous
increases in information content where we can specify this information.
Secondly if you assume something like for example, Behe's notion of
irreducible complexity that's going to pose coupling that with say
constraint principles in engineering that's going to suggest that there are
some limits to variability. So there are some design theorists like Victor
Cherre[sic?-grm], who are interested in mapping out how wide the envelopes
of variability are and what levels they might occur in the phylogenetic
hierarchy. We have a developmental guy, Jonathan Wells, who like many other
developmental biologists is well aware that there are a number of important
developmental processes which are responsible for body plans or that are
not captured in an strictly Darwinian view. if you have to shuffle DNA to
generate new biological form if that's your model, then you are going to be
less likely to look at things in the developmental world that suggest that
there are limits to what DNA shuffling can accomplish. And so he is pursuing
research on topics that have been excluded because the Darwinian model has
dominated the theoretical landscape and so I think that is the level
different perspectives function heuristically to open up different problems.
[note that he didn't give a single SPECIFIC experimentally verifiable
prediction. And this is what is wrong with ID-grm]
Judson: I would add to my list of cautions about the way we use language.
The Darwinian model is certainly many many things There are lots of things
in Darwin that are not in the Darwinian model. The Darwinian model has lots
of things that are not explicitly or even implicitly about the origin of
life issue. I have time for one more question. And I will impose a
preliminary rule a [garble] rule in response to Mark's comment. Are there
any women who would like to ask a question? Yes all right.
Questioner: I can probably yell. I'm just, I'm trying to understand the
connection between the designer as Dr. Meyer has defined specificity and low
probability. And I was thinking like a simple thing like you cut open a
tree trunk there are a number of rings to be found which give you specific
information with a low probability that it would occur just by chance. But
you know we know how to explain this simply by a chemical processes. That's
the kind of information we can take as specific and low probable? Or is this
not your position?
Meyer: That is a biological content and I confine the argument to chemical
evolution.
[avoiding answering the question-just confining his argument to safe
territory.-grm]
Questioner: But you draw analogy.
Meyer: Specifically it is a biological process.
Questioner, But then I don't know why you use an example of a computer chimp
as what you say is the existence of a designer. Well we have something that
is low probability and specific. If you are saying I am only talking in
terms of biological processes in the origin of life.. You keep giving us
examples from all these other fields about why we should make this
inference. About why [garble] there is a designer. And I can think of many
examples of information as you defined it, that we understand perfectly well
with just referring to biochemical processes.
Meyer: [Meyer away from the mike and unintelligible on tape. My memory was
that he said again that he was confining his argument to the origin of
life.-grm]
Questioner: The number of rings. If you cut open a trunk and count the
number of rings.
Meyer: [garbled] "that is generated by the biological process."
Judson said that they were talking at cross purposes and ended the session.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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