Commentary on the so-called Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design Debate and Right-Wing nuttery in general - and please ignore the typos (I make lots!)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Do I really need to do this? No, but I just can't let it go...

Warren Bergerson (Lifeengineer) is really on a tear over at that den of droolers, the ARN discussion forum.

I reproduce below parts of thee posts in this thread - a claim by Bergerson, a question related to the claim, and Bergerson's follow-up:

Bergerson:
Clearly experimental evidence shows that RM is not a valid or useful concept. However, in soft science or dogmatic science, contradictory or falsifying evidence is not a sufficient criteria for rejection of a theory.



'secondclass':
What experiments are you referring to?




Bergerson:
Which evidence are you currently ignoring. The evidence that random variations are harmful, the evidence that removing random mutations would be highly destructive, or the evidence that observed variations are not random.



Here is Bergerson's entire post, quote above in italics:

RM is still a central and essential tenent of modern evolutionary theory or dogma. It is important to distinguish between theory or dogma on the one hand and experimental evidence on the other hand.
Clearly experimental evidence shows that RM is not a valid or useful concept. However, in soft science or dogmatic science, contradictory or falsifying evidence is not a sufficient criteria for rejection of a theory. RM is maintained as a central
tenent of modern evolutionary theory because it is a fundamental requirement for
rejecting teleology.

If modern academic science was forced to recognize that the variation involved in evolution was not genetic and not random (as suggested by the evidence), then biologists would be forced to recognize that evolution was a goal-directed or teleological process. Biologists would, apparently, rather abandon logical compatibility with the evidence than concede evolution is teleological. Therefore, despite overwhelming contradictory evidence, RM remains a central tenent in modern evolutionary theory.


Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I do not see ANY evidence whatsoever in that post, just a bunch of unsupported, inflammatory,condescending - and quite wrong - opinion. Read that whokle thread, if you can stomach it - you will find, as I did, that Bergerson presents no evidence anywhere. Read through as many of his posts at that forum as you can take. In none of them will you ever find any sort of independant reference to support anything he says. Having trudged though probably a thousand of Bergerson's posts over the years, I can only recall 2 instances in which he ever linked to anything to supposedly support a claim, and in each case, someone demonstrated thathe had misinterpreted or misrepresented the source.

This is Bergerson's usual antic - make a bunch of assertions, when asked to support the assertions, declare anyone that doesn't agree with him is ignorant, incompetent, or deceptive, then later claim to have already provided the evidence.

Apparently, in the odd world of the egomaniac troll, simply asserting something IS evidence...

Folks like Bergerson need to be exposed so that those even less informed than he is will not make the mistake of actually believing that Bergerson's lies, foolish claims, and hyperbole have any relevance or merit.

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