Collin B., yet again....

Collin the photographer had posted a reply (presented below in toto) to an exchange we had earlier (our initial exchanges on this blog are here).

I took a bit of a blogging break, and actually forgot about his histrionics, but now have gotten around ot this stuff.

My replies interspersed with Collin's claims:

***************************************************************************

Questions
on Evolutionary Theory, part II
In the first part I raised a question. In the follow-up I tried to clarify the question. In both instances the question was open to correction.

Well, not quite. Yes, you posed a 'question', but the question was exceptionally wrong-headed. When I pointed this out, you asked MORE wrong-headed questions, then got indignant. Open to correction? Hardly.

But so far no intelligent responses have been gleaned from the posts. It's sad because Doppelganger claims to be a PhD in the field yet remains anonymous to the world.

Yes, it is just a 'claim.' Must be. I remain semi-anonymous so I don't have mouth-breathing lunatics harrass my colleagues and superiors, like what happens to folks like PZ Myers.
Of course, the fact is that I corrected your misconceptions and answered you as was warranted. You didn't like the answers, so you insult me and ignore them. That is what creatinists do.

I think there is cause to question this in light of unanswered questions. I
don't mind being wrong. In fact, if I am wrong, I want to be shown precisely how
I am wrong.

No you don't. I showed you how and why you were wrong. You just kept rambling on with the same erroneous tripe. One can follow the links to see the exchanges, but I will offer but 1 example from our exchanges after my May 10 blog post. You had initially written that you felt there were millions of 'trait changes' between humans and chimps. I asked you to name 1000 of these millions. Your response was to claim that you thought there were more than 1000 trait changes!
You apparently cannot even understand the words written in response to your claims, how do you expect to be able to understand technical responses?

One would hope for civility, but alas Doppelganger would rather insult the
questioner than construct a meaningful and substantive response.

Ah yes, it is always the 'civility' issue. If only I were so civil, Collin would have admitted that his claims and 'questions' were bogus and accepted the informaiton I gave him.

So let's revisit the second post and change the question to something more
precise:
Give me the genetic changes in reverse that would take humans back
to the rodent stage, per the current model? (re: To the Yucatan impact of 65mya
fromhumans today.)It's a simple enough question -- what precisely happened? Not
what might have happened or what could have happened (which, when you read the
posts that came before, is all I got -- possibility, but neither probability nor
historical fact.) Don't give me a model. I've read that stuff. Give me the
detail? Is it there or not? Or is your "proof" a workable model but not a
working history?

Details? Details on all of the genetic changes that occurred between modern humans and the 'rodent' stage - and this is supposed to be a rational, reasonable 'question'?
Imagine - I was actually providinng tentative answers! How horrible! I guess Collin is more used to absolutist proclamations that the standard tentative nature of a scientific answer was interpreted as ignorance. Poor Collin, so confused and out of his league...
Of course, what Collin the creationist has done is set up a perfect little win-win scenario - he pretends to have produced a reasonable, rational 'question'. If I try to answer it, he will reject the answer by asking more. If I don't answer it, he will claim victory. Of course, none of this negates the fact that his request is silly - we do not and cannot know what the genome of the 'rodent stage' was.

The best we can do is compare a modern human with a modern rodent. That would produce an approximation of the changes that have occurred in BOTH lineages since they last shared a common ancestor. But since that woul dnot specifically address Collin's 'question', he will reject it.

As a commenter on Collin's blog prsented, he asked for the impossible, and I add, that he doesn't even know why it is impossible.

But I have to wonder - if I produce a pairwise DNA sequence alignment for a mouse gene and it's human homologue, point out the differences, and deduce what the 'original' sequence might have been, would Collin accept that?

HILARIOUS creationist projection

Over at ARN, I read with curiosity a thread started by Albert deRoos. The thread title - so typical of the hyperbolic nonsense that one finds in creationist/IDist rantings sets the tone and gives those of us who have followed the IDcreationism public relations scam for any length of time a preview of the tone one can expect upon reading it:

The endosymbiotic origin for mitochondria a hoax?

A hoax. A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. A hoax? It is certaily possible that the endosymbiotic hypothesis is wrong, but a hoax? This is the usual creationist/IDist loaded word usage that they are so fond of employing. I will not recount all of deRoos silly line of argumentation here, but to sum up, it goes like this:

-mitochondria don't look exactly like bacteria (and he provides some pictures to prove it!)
- using some types of visualization techniques, mitochondria look like they are part of the reticular system of cells
- therefore, he thinks they ARE just specializations of the reticular system, and that they are not endosymbionts, and those promoting ther notion they are are perpetrating, well, a hoax

To bolster his claim, he links to some typical graphical representations of mitochondria in textbooks and the like (that is, drawings) , then links to some electron micrographs and immunofluorescent photos and such and essentially says'Gee - the real pictures don't look like the drawings, and neither really looks like present day bacteria, so they must have derived in another way.'

It is pointed out by some commenters there that his 'theory' does not explain the presence of bacteria-like DNA in mitochondria, does not address the fact that mitochondria can divide and make their own ribosomes and proteins, etc. It is also pointed out that some of the photographs he links to are computer graphics images*, that some appear to be immunofluorescence pictures which targeted protein fibers and such, etc.

And de Roos response to these and other criticisms?

...The proponents of the endosymbiotic theory have not even started to make mechanistic scenarios because every high school student understands that it will take 100s of mutations in complex systems before that will happen. Natural selection of those intermediate forms will be difficult because tinkering with them generally decreases fitness. Failure to address these things before declaring the theory to be true means bad science. I would be happy if consensus would be 'we can't rule out other scenario's and we don't have much evidence, we still believe that mitochondria were endosymbionts but we're open to alternatives.

Now, they don;t have a coherent theory, but are not open to
alternatives. Bad, bad science.

Note what I bolded... Recall, he labelled endosymbiotic theory 'a hoax'...
The hubris and arrogance these people exude is beyond reason.



*If such things are not explicitly pointed out in the threrad, they are alluded to, and they are certainly very good points that de Roos ignores

And on it goes - an underinformed yet overconfident computer technician and a retired actuary use insult and diversion to try to 'win' a non-argument

Ilion and LifeEngineer - what a wonderful pair, what a pair of wonderful ambassadors for Intelligent Design... what a couple of cranks...

Make an argument that you just "know" is right but actual evidence shows is wrong? Why, just insult those explaining your error! Make up silly monikers to use when referring to them! Write the same things over and over, because there is no need to modify a claim you KNOW is right!

That is what a combination of supreme arrogance and monumental incompetence - sprinkled with a dose of religious fervor - does to people...

Pseudo-mathematician David Berlinski on whale evolution

In 1999, Justin Kruger and David Dunning published a paper titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments" (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. ] 121-1134). Among their interesting conclusions was this:

We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

David Berlinski is a Philosopher specializing in mathematics (at least this is concluded by judging his actual published work - I am unable to find any actual peer-reviewed mathematical contributuions - or any other for that matter) and bashing science, who probably became best known for writing verbose, pompous articles for conservative magazines. One of his targets is evolution, which, of course, he calls "Darwinism," and as a 'senior fellow' with the anti-evolution Discovery Institute, he occasionally takes the time to bloviate about how evolution cannot be.

Of late, he has beein in a video in which he 'concludes' that whales could not have evolved from cows, and his primary argument is that he counted - yes, counted - the supposed differences between whales and cows and they are, darn it, just too many! He claims to have stopped at 50,000. As was pointed out by a commenter at Pharygula, counting 1 characteristic per second would have required 14 hours, and it is unlikely that Berlinski actually sat around contemplating the supposed differences between cows and whales for 14 hours. And I don't think it is necessary to actually point out that nobody actually claims that whales evolved from cows. Nor that Berlinski doesn't actually provide a list of his 50,000 differences, but he does display his ignroance of basic biology (expressing disbelief due to the fact that many of these changes would have to be "coordinated" with other changes and so on) and his ability to set up silly and dishonest strawman arguments to prop up his fantasies (among which seems to be his importance in world affairs).

But, that 'truth-seeking' organization, the Discovery Institute, saw no problem hosting such a ludicrous, supercilious, deceptive/dishonest video. And why would they? It is anti-evolution, and none of its target audience will bother to see if any of the implicict claims are accurate or menaingful.

A philosopher prattling on about evolution.

Kruger-Dunning data point.

======
update:
And if Berlinski actually took a whole 10 seconds to ponder and write down the 50,000 differences he dreamed up, it would have taken him 5 days... nonstop.... 24 hours each day...
What a liar...
Biochemist Larry Moran takes Berlinski to task also...

What happens when matter and anti-matter collide?

Or, in this case, what happens when two of the most clueless yet supremely arrogant and bombastically overconfident anti-'darwinists' on the Internet turn on each other?


Comedy ensues, starting in this thread!

A klassic klaim from that klown 'Ilion' (Troy D. Hailey):

"(*) Though, not every thing he says is inherently silly, any more than is everything you 'modern evolutionary theorists' say. LE's silliness arises from the same source as yours (plural): a prior committment to scientism rather than to logical reasoning."

So, Troy really thinks that HE engages in logical reasoning???? Anyone who has read more than a few of his posts will realize how utterly preposterous such a notion is...

Troy D. Hailey - another labeling creationist!

Poor old Troy D. Hailey. We remember him - the internet creationist computer programmer that thinks he is smarter than everyone else...

Seems he found out I posted about him, and he's labeled me a stalker.

Not just any kind of stalker - but a psychopathic virtual one! Pretty cool!

Because, afterall, viewing the 'source' of a photograph that HE posted and following the trail is 'stalking'. Which is odd, since he is a super-smart computer programmer and all, you'd think that he would at least try to cover his tracks, if he was so concerned about it. Surley, he knows how? Creationists like to label people. Weird...

But old Troy is right about one thing - he is, most certainly, a "no one."

Or is he? Look at this amazing proclamation:

This attitude explains why ID is eating your (plural) lunch ... I mean, even aside from the painfully obvious fact that at no time going back to 1859 did you 'modern evolutionary theorists' ever have a real scientific theory in the first place. You people seem actually to imagine that you can use governmental force to silence criticism of your anti-rational pretend theory.

WoW! He got us! No scientific theory according to an internet creationist computer programmer! Who else would we ever go to to hear such truths? And the bit about 'governmental force' - gut punch! Because the government should allow religion to be presented as science, that is for sure!

And this lunch-eating... He must be referring to the fact that ID's own journal is chock full of irrefutable science supportive of creationism/ID!
Old Troy, what a card...


And I am so flattered - I am Troy's favorite psychopath!

Do you actually imagine that I am somehow intimidated because you're apparently in contact with my favorite "Darwinist"

LOL!

What a fella...

*update*

It seems that ARN is preventing direct links (or something), so try this:

http://www.arn.org/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=30332343&page=0&fpart=6&vc=1

**UPDATE 7/25**

It seems that Troy "Ilion" Hailey just can't help himself... [scroll about 1/4 way down page 1, also on the second page]

What a great ambassador for Christ, he is...

More (pseudo)elitism from Bill "Ted Haggard of Information Theory" Dembski

This guy is too much...

Bill Dembski, PhD. PhD., apparently doesn't think people lacking PhD.'s in specific areas or having lesser degrees than he has have no business commenting on things outside of or above their field or level of supposed understanding.

See how he denigrates Richard Wein, after Wein devastates one of Dembski's supposed mathematical arguments, because he has but a B. S. in statistics, while he, Dembski, has a PhD.:

"A word about credentials seems worth bringing up. Richard Wein holds a bachelor's degree in statistics -- that's it. Now, his lack of academic credentials by itself does not undercut his critique -- any work must ultimately stand on its own merits. Yet his lack of formal training should raise a suspicion about his contempt for my knowledge of statistics and probability. I do have the requisite credentials in this field, having a Ph.D. from a good school and having published in this area (my CV is available at
www.baylor.edu/~William_Dembski). NFL was thoroughly vetted by experts spanning a range of disciplines. Moreover, the endorsements appearing with the book are glowing and come from experts in computer science, machine learning,
mathematics, statistics, engineering, biology, biochemistry, physics, and
philosophy (see http://www3.baylor.edu/ ~William_Dembski/docs_books/nfl.htm).
All of the endorsers are more eminent in their respective fields than Wein. How can they think NFL is the best thing since sliced bread and Wein think it is the worst thing since the Lisbon earthquake? One has to wonder if more isn't at stake than just the merit of the ideas."

But watch out if someone dares mention reality - that Dembski has no relevent degrees in many of the things he pontificates on - you get the hero-worship treatment. (via moonman62)

"Please review his CV again. He is a mathematician---the metalanguage of all the sciences---who has a special competence in the Philosophy of Science. Are you saying that some Ph.D. biologist shuffling around in a dusty lab somewhere is a "scientist" and the extraordinary polymath Dembski is not? This is credentialism of the worst sort. I guarantee he can talk polypeptides, or some other biological esoterica, with any biologist living or dead, and write a peer reviewable paper on the subject as well."

Sure - and he can use the simplistic 'DNA is just like the english language anaology' with the best of them... Apparently, polymathery does not include actually being competent in the areas you can 'talk' in.


But I digress...

King Hypocrite is at it again:

"Chu-Carroll names his bog GOOD MATH, BAD MATH: FINDING THE FUN IN GOOD MATH, SQUASHING BAD MATH AND THE FOOLS THAT PROMOTE IT. Perhaps I’m missing something, but Chu-Carroll’s expertise is in computer programming, where he has a Ph.D. How much math does he actually know?"

Clearly not as much as Dr.Dr. Bill 'polymath and mathematical supergenius' Dembski...

It seems that hypocrisy has a face, and that face is the Intelligent Design Religio-Political Movement's Bill Dembski's.