The extraordinary story of why fewer and fewer scientists are atheists

[billiefan2000]

http://www.conservativebookclub.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=C6168&sour_cd=CAE011501

[hgc]

From the bullet points of how "Larry Witham reveals how scientists have begun realizing that God exists:"

Zoologist Richard Dawkins: why he considered the atheism of media darlings such as Stephen Jay Gould to be naïve and poorly thought out
Pretty funny. Dawkins may have thought Gould naïve in some of his beliefs, but just who is the athiest in this equation?

Oh, billiefan, don't you bother answering. I was putting this question out to anyone who knows something about things.

[Dancing David]

Well in reading the review a few things stand out.

'sending chills up the spine' of darwinists, Yeah more like a chuckle, intelligent designs is so fraught with self contradictions that biologists don't have to refuite it, it fall on it's own.

THEN IN THE FIANL BULLET IS CLAIMS THAT HAWKING IS AN ATHEIST! This is the man who made me squirm with his discussion of god and the ultimate cause, I doubt very much that hawkings is an atheist, at least from my reading of his writing.

I thought that SJ Gould was a believer in god as well.
Oh well, more fairy tales, citing the same sources if not thier own work to prove points that aren't true.

OOOOH, the thery of evolution is not true because it's a theory.

Sorry Billie, you are smart and all but I won't buy the book except for entertainment value.

Peace

[TylerD]

I'd reccomend that you read "Has Science Found God" by the particle physicist Victor J Stenger. In it he clearly demonstrates that nothing in our universe requires a supernatural explanation. It's a good counter to all the theistic propaganda out there these days.

[CapelDodger]

Also try "God and the New Physics" by Paul Davies.
Somewhere there's a web-site listing large numbers of scientists called Stephen/Steve/Stefan etc who do believe in evolution, set up in honour of Stephen J Gould (who had his irritating side but hey ...)

[Dymanic]

What? No reference to Darwin's famous deathbed conversion?

Zoologist Richard Dawkins: why he considered the atheism of media darlings such as Stephen Jay Gould to be naïve and poorly thought out
Maybe he's a little confused. Sounds like Dawkins talking about Gould's Punctuated Equilibria. A few passages taken out of context might well be used to create that impression, but of course that would be quite dishonest.

[Darwin]

Just like any good creation site,this one also wants you to know-starts by assuming that;
-Science is insufficient to explain X
-Number X of scientists entertain creationism (minority?)
-So and so many less scientists are atheist (I think it was documented otherwise)
-Evolution is insufficient (will equals knowledge)
-Darwinian view can´t explain... - (Lend yourself credibility by clinging to old)
-Sciences of physics,biochemistry,X&Z contain evidence that life could only appear by design (as soon as proven so)
examples of above;-
"Blood clotting and other molecular processes that are simply too fine-tuned to be explained by routine Darwinian schemas

Bruce Chapman's Discovery Institute: the remarkable story of this plucky foundation that dared to criticize orthodox Darwinism"

Someone must have been reading "The origin of Species" (which I might dare to doubt) and notice how a book published at 19th century does not stand up to modern light in all terms.

And again;
"How biochemist Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box) has shown the insufficiency of Darwinism to explain the workings of the universe"

"How Pope Pius XII sparked an international debate by declaring that "true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree"
And what did the Pope say about evolution...
Listening to Pope is scientifically (emphasis on science) comparable to debating an Alzheimer´s patient.
With all the respect possible to pope(s)

"The strict British evolutionist who stated it plainly: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms""
Part of the argument?
Sounds like one of those quotes happily taken out of context.

"Charles Darwin: how even he expressed doubt over how a mind produced by natural selection could be trusted"
I express doubt over how this relates to the argument.Also take time to refer to "deathbed tale".

"Why the new design theorists avoid the metaphors used by theists of the past and have instead adopted naturalistic terminology"
I´ll tell why-.To hide under the cloak of science.

"Key discoveries that shook the Darwinian scientific establishment to its foundations"
Which are?

"How some of Darwin's most basic ideas, although taken for granted by scientists worldwide, actually remain unproven"
Which include?

Also to be seen.
"Project Steve"
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp

[stamenflicker]

I'm not a big ID fan, mostly because I don't like science with an agenda. Then again, I suppose all science conducted by human beings has an agenda.

I did read Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box" out of sheer curiosity. It makes a pretty good case against the plausibility of evolution at the biochemical level, of particular interest was the chapter on blood clotting. I wasn't entirely convinced, but then again, who can be convinced about a theory?

I don't think a person's science or lack of science has much to do about their belief in God. That's just my opinion though.

Peace out,

Flick

[Bentspoon]

1) Billiefan draws attention to stuff

2) Many people respond intelligently to stuff

3) Billiefan is nowhere in sight

Isn't there a counter response?

Bentspoon

[the_ignored]

Intelligent Design! Have a look at these on the Talk Reason (http://www.talkreason.org/index.cfm?category=0) site!


Has Science Found God? (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/found.cfm)

Unintelligent Design (http://www.talkreason.org/index.cfm?category=0)

There's some more interesting articles on that site:
Irreducible Complexity Demystified (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dunk.cfm)

This article offers a detailed critique, from a bilogical standpoint, of the Irreducible Complexity concept, introduced by Michael Behe and vigorously promoted by Intelligent Design advocates. Using vivid examples from the biosphere, Pete Dunkelberg demonstrates the lack of substantiation for Behe's notions.


The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth? (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/honesty.cfm)
_
A review of the sources used in Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial which finds that almost every scientific source cited by Johnson has been misused or distorted in ways ranging from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to the construction of what appears to be outright fiction.

A Militant Dilettante in Judgment of Science (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/johnson.cfm)
_
This article offers a critical review of several books and papers by Phillip E. Johnson, a lawyer who, as he has himself asserted, "assumed the leading role" in the "intelligent design theory". As this review demonstrates, Johnson is a dilettante in many questions he endeavored to discuss, including biology and especially information theory. His literary production does not seem to deserve the attention it has attracted.

[INRM]

Originally posted by TylerD
I'd reccomend that you read "Has Science Found God" by the particle physicist Victor J Stenger. In it he clearly demonstrates that nothing in our universe requires a supernatural explanation. It's a good counter to all the theistic propaganda out there these days.

Can it explain NDE's?

Can it explain other phenomenon such as that? Like how a woman was able to have an NDE without any brain-activity?

-INRM

[ImpyTimpy]

Can you show me a link to a story about a woman who had a NDE while her brain was dead? I'll be happy to debate it as soon as I can see it actually happened.

Originally posted by INRM


Can it explain NDE's?

Can it explain other phenomenon such as that? Like how a woman was able to have an NDE without any brain-activity?

-INRM

[Hand Bent Spoon]

^How about:

Woman goes unconcious

Woman's brain goes through NDE 1 second before sessation of brain activity

It is noted by docotors woman has no brain activity

Woman recovers and recounts the last thing she remembered: the NDE

Since doctors have no way of knowing exactly when the NDE occured (and neither does the woman) it would appear to the outisde observer that she had a NDE while there was no brain activity.

That should just about cover it.

[Tony]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon
^How about:

Woman goes unconcious

Woman's brain goes through NDE 1 second before sessation of brain activity

It is noted by docotors woman has no brain activity

Woman recovers and recounts the last thing she remembered: the NDE

Since doctors have no way of knowing exactly when the NDE occured (and neither does the woman) it would appear to the outisde observer that she had a NDE while there was no brain activity.

That should just about cover it.


So much for scientific discovery. :rolleyes:

[KelvinG]

"the intelligent design movement, which has sent chills up the spines of the Darwinian ideologues in the scientific and public education establishments by successfully reviving a natural theology of design"


The only thing chilling about the idea of intelligent design is that this trumped up form of creationism is actually being taken seriously by some incredibly uneducated and misinformed public officials.

ID is junk science and is resoundingly dismissed by the legitimate scientific community.

[Hand Bent Spoon]

Originally posted by Tony

So much for scientific discovery. :rolleyes:

Note that I'm not taking the position NDEs are a soul being carried away to an after life. I'm pointing out a logical flaw, specifically we don't know when the woman experienced the NDE, therefore it didn't necessarily happen when her brain was inactive, therefore it could be a perfectly natural phenomenon caused by a distressed brain.

Perhaps I should've been more clear on that.

[stamenflicker]

Intelligent Design! Have a look at these on the Talk Reason site!

Ignored,

I admit I only read the first link in your post. I'm not sure if the others were focused on Behe's book as well. The author of the first article seems to make just as many jumps in logic as Behe. I'd say they both have an agenda.

First of all, one of Behe's more convincing claims comes from the suspected age of the universe and the amount of time it would take for 30,000 combinations of amino acids to assemble themselves in a protein string. The example of blood clotting was well discussed in Behe, but scarcely a paragraph devoted to it in the rebuttal. Basically as I read Behe, the four proteins must all occur in the complex system for a variety of reasons. That means four separate strings of ammino acids-- and not a hit a miss either, a dead up amino acid chain that would fits the bill-- the first time up to bat. I understand the counter agrument surrounding pressure changes, but still find it hauntingly vacant when pressed with the need for all four proteins to be a) constructed from thousands of different possible combinations; b) for the old protien to remain for the sole purpose of setting up it's own cascade.

Second, Behe argues that radical biochemical changes are usually only seen at the expense of wiping out millions of a species. For example, we see different bacteria strains develop resistances primarly because we've wiped out millions and millions of others which were unable to adapt to our antibiotics. Now if we are to assume that millions and millions of every type of species were wiped out every time there is a significant biochemical creation (which BTW is seriously more complex than a bacteria's resistance), then that just seems to wreak of illogic. Besides the fact that the fossil record doesn't support it.

Again, I'm no ID fan. But I remain equally unconvinced by the counter claims.

Flick

[Trollbane]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
The example of blood clotting was well discussed in Behe, but scarcely a paragraph devoted to it in the rebuttal.


Hmmm.. I dont find blood clotting to be too hard to come by or lose for that matter. It is quite probably just a pretty small mutation, considering the Royal family illness thing.

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Second, Behe argues that radical biochemical changes are usually only seen at the expense of wiping out millions of a species. For example, we see different bacteria strains develop resistances primarly because we've wiped out millions and millions of others which were unable to adapt to our antibiotics. Now if we are to assume that millions and millions of every type of species were wiped out every time there is a significant biochemical creation (which BTW is seriously more complex than a bacteria's resistance), then that just seems to wreak of illogic. Besides the fact that the fossil record doesn't support it.


In Behe´s example the biochemical changes dont wipe out anything, antibiotics do. The way that is worded I´m surprised I havent dropped dead when someone in the other side of the world is born with six fingers.

edited for code

[the_ignored]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Intelligent Design! Have a look at these on the Talk Reason site!

Ignored,

I admit I only read the first link in your post. I'm not sure if the others were focused on Behe's book as well. The author of the first article seems to make just as many jumps in logic as Behe. I'd say they both have an agenda.

First of all, one of Behe's more convincing claims comes from the suspected age of the universe and the amount of time it would take for 30,000 combinations of amino acids to assemble themselves in a protein string. The example of blood clotting was well discussed in Behe, but scarcely a paragraph devoted to it in the rebuttal. Basically as I read Behe, the four proteins must all occur in the complex system for a variety of reasons. That means four separate strings of ammino acids-- and not a hit a miss either, a dead up amino acid chain that would fits the bill-- the first time up to bat. I understand the counter agrument surrounding pressure changes, but still find it hauntingly vacant when pressed with the need for all four proteins to be a) constructed from thousands of different possible combinations; b) for the old protien to remain for the sole purpose of setting up it's own cascade.


Perhaps some more reading is in order:

The site I linked to above (that I think is the one you mentioned)? Had a little bit more to say about blood clots than "scarcely a paragraph":
8. The Blood Clotting System: is it IC?

Blood clotting is an example of what biochemists call a cascade: one protein does something, which starts another protein doing something, which starts another.... Cascades, and the clotting cascade in particular, are among the favorite examples of ID proponents. Yet giving a precise specification of system, parts, and function so that the specified system is IC turns out to be difficult. Hard to specify or not, it is still one of Behe's favorite examples. He devotes his entire fourth chapter to it. After explaining how it works, he indicates that scientists know almost nothing about how it evolved. His main evidence for this is a nontechnical lecture given by Russell Doolittle. But of course that talk, using analogies to Yin and Yang, was not meant to convey a technical understanding. After several people commented on this, Behe responded with an online essay "In Defense of the Irreducibility of the Clotting Cascade" [9]. The defense comes down to saying that evolution of this system would require too many 'unselected steps'. But this is not true, as pointed out by Ken Miller in Finding Darwin's God [10] and in his online article [11] where he gives more details than the publisher wanted in the book.

The clotting cascade is a member of a family of cascades with a long pedigree. Our immune system includes a related cascade which Behe considers to be IC, but see Matt Inlay's article "Evolving Immunity" [12]. A recent paper by Krem and Di Cera (13) pursues the evolution of cascades farther down the evolutionary tree. They discuss biochemically similar cascades in horseshoe crabs, fruit flies, and ourselves. They find that "Extensive similarities suggest that these cascades were built by adding enzymes from the bottom of the cascade up and from similar macromolecular building blocks." Behe argues that this type of evolution would not happen because there would be unselected steps. But he thinks in terms of precursor systems with missing parts, not in terms of ancestor organisms in different environments with different problems to solve. This may reflect a difference between thinking like a chemist and thinking like a biologist. Early forms of the cascade occurred in animals without a high pressure circulatory system like ours. In horseshoe crabs, for instance, a simpler form of the clotting cascade serves to entangle invading bacteria. There is no reason to presume unselected steps (other than gene duplication, which may be neutral at first) if the organism and its way of living and its environment are changing.

But have you noticed something missing from our discussion of the clotting cascade? We haven't proven that it is IC. The way to do this, as Behe tells us on page 42, would be to take the parts one by one and show that each is required for clotting. Or point to published research that does this. Surely Behe took care of this detail in the fourth chapter of his book? No. He 'proved' it rhetorically, but not systematically. Well then, when he published a web page several years later entitled "In Defense of the Irreducibility of the Blood Clotting Cascade" [9] he must have filled in the details? No again. He advanced his argument against the evolvability of the clotting cascade, but that has been answered [10, 11, 13, 14]. Meanwhile, the little matter of proving that it is IC has been overlooked. And there is evidence to the contrary: whales, mammals like us, lack a key part called Hageman factor but their blood clots anyway [15]. Under questioning at a recent meeting [16] Behe finally agreed that the cascade is not IC after all. Indeed, Acton gives reasons why he never should have thought so [14]. (As far as I know, Behe has not 'done his homework' on any of his examples except the mousetrap).


Kenneth Miller has given a somewhat more detailed examination of the blood clotting "problem". This is from
reference #11 (http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html) in the Behe rebuttal above.

Remember, we're not starting from nothing. We're starting about 600 million years ago in a small pre-vertebrate. with a low-volume low-pressure circulatory system. Just like any small inverterbate with a circulatory system, our ancestral organism would have had a full compliment of sticky white cells to help plug leaks. In addition, that ancestral system would have had something else. Most of the time, hemorrage starts with cell injury, meaning that cells are broken in the vicinity of a wound and their contents are dumped out. That means, among other things, that all of a cell's internal signalling molecules are suddenly spilled out into the damaged vascular system. Included among the contents are a whole slew of internal signalling molecules, including prominent ones like cyclic adenosine monophosphate (abbreviated: cAMP), all dumped into the tissue surrounding a wound.

Why would a sudden gusher of cAMP in a wound be significant? Well, it turns out that vertebrates use cAMP as a signalling molecule to control the contractions of smooth muscle cells, the very sort of muscle cells that surround blood vessels. Therefore, the release of internal cAMP from broken cells would automatically cause smooth muscles around a broken vessel to contract, limiting blood flow and making it more likely that the blood's own sticky white cells would be able to plug the leak. That means that we already have some ability to limit damage and plug leaks in a primitive, low-pressure system. Not a bad place to begin.

Our next step is to consider the nature of blood itself. For reasons relating to osmotic pressure, the tendency of water to move across cell membranes, blood plasma is a viscous, protein-laden solution. And it's also important to note that the extracellular environment of ordinary tissue is very different from blood. These spaces are laden with protein signals, insoluble matrix molecules, and extracellular proteases that cut and trim these molecules to their final shapes and sizes. In fact, such proteases constitute one of the major forms of extracellular signalling. So the tissues of our ancestral vertebrate would be laden with protein-cutting enzymes for reasons completely unrelated to clotting.

Keeping all of this in mind, what would happen when a blood vessel broke in such an organism?

Well, protein-rich plasma flows into an unfamiliar environment, and sticky white cells quickly "glom" up against the fibers of the extracellular matrix. Tissue proteases, quite accidentally, are now exposed to a new range of proteins, and they cut many of them to pieces. The solubility of these new fragments vary. Some are more soluble than the plasma proteins from which they were trimmed, but many are much less soluble. The result is that clumps of newly-insoluble protein fragments begin to assumulate at the tissue-plasma interface, helping to seal the break and forming a very primitive clot. (Could one object that this is too primitive and too nonspecific to work? That it wouldn't be sufficient to seal breaks? Well, it turns out that you can't make this objection for the very simple reason that this is pretty much the clotting mechanism used today by a large number of invertebrates. Works for them, and therefore there is no reason why it wouldn't have worked for the ancestors of today vertebrates, either!)

Now we get down to business. A mutation duplicates an existing gene for a serine protease, a digestive enzyme produced in the pancreas. Gene duplications happen all the time, and they are generally of such little importance that they are known as "neutral" mutations, having no effect on an organism's fittness. However, the original gene had a control region that switched it on only in the pancreas. During the duplication, the control region of the duplicate is damaged so that the new gene is switched on in both the pancreas and the liver. As a result, the inactive form of the enzyme, a zymogen, is relesased into the bloodstream.

This causes no problem for the organism - most pancreatic proteases are inactive until a small piece near their active sites can be cut away by another protease. However, when damage to a blood vessel allows plasma to seep into tissue, suddenly our previously inactive plasma serine protease is activated by tissue proteases, increasing the overall protein-cutting activity at the site of the hemorrage. Blood clotting is enhanced, so our duplicate gene (with the mistargeted protein) is now favored by natural selection.

That plasma protease gene is now subject to the same witches' brew of copying errors, rearrangements, and genetic reshuffling that affect the genes for every other cellular protein. Over time, bits and pieces of other genes are accidentally spliced into the plasma protease sequence. Because the selective value of the plasma protease is pretty low (it doesn't help clotting all that much), most of these changes make very little difference. But one day, through a well-understood process called "exon shuffling," a DNA sequence known as an "EGF domain" is spliced into one end of the protease gene. EGF stands for epidermal growth factor, a small protein used by cells throughout the body to signal other cells. EGF is so common that just about every tissue cell has "receptors" for it. These receptors are cell surface proteins shaped in such a way that they bind EGF tightly.

The fortuitious combination of a EGF sequence with the plasma protease changes everything.

In a flash, the tissue surrouding a broken blood vessel is now teeming with receptors that bind to the new EGF sequence on our serum protease. As a result, high concentrations of the circulating protease bind directly to the surfaces of cells near a wound. The proteases are activated in the same way, but now their proteolytic activities are highly localized. The production of a clot of insoluble protein fragments is now faster and more specific than ever. Organisms with the new EGF-protease can clot their blood much more quickly than before, and therefore are favored by natural selection. To emphasize its role in the clotting process, that cell surface protein with the EGF receptor is called Tissue Factor.

What happens next? Well, remember the case of the lobster in which a duplicate of a circulating protein (vitellogenin) became specialized to produce a clot-forming protein (lobster fibrinogen)? Once we have a situation in which every hemorrage activates a protease bound to tissue receptors, a gene duplicate of one of the major plasma proteins would then be under strong selective pressure to increase its ability to interact with the bound protease. Fibrinogen, the soluble protein that now is now the primary target of proteolysis in the clotting cascade, clearly arose in this way. Natural selection would favor each and every mutation or rearrangement that increased the sensitivity of fibrinogen to the plasma protease, dramatically enhancing the ability of the new protease to form specific clots of insoluble protein.

There is no doubt that these three steps, each one supported by classic Darwinian mechanisms, would have been sufficient to fashion a rudimentary clotting system. This would leave us with system in which circulating plasma contains both an inactive serine protease and its fibrinogen target. The protease would activated by contact with tissue factor, and the active protease, in turn, would cleave sensitive sites in fibrinogen to form a clot. This system wouldn't be nearly as quick, as responsive, or as sensitive as the current system of vertebrate clotting, but it would work a little better than the system that preceeded it, and that's all that evolution requires.


This is all before he even gets into how the "cascading reaction" of clotting could have evolved. You can read that at his site, but I will post some tests they put that theory to:

Mining the Biochemical Past

Can we know for sure that this is how blood clotting (or any other biochemical system) evolved? The strict answer, of course, is we cannot. The best we can hope from our vertebrate ancestors are fossils that preserve bits and pieces of their form and structure, and it might seem that their biochemistry would be lost forever. But that's not quite true. Today's organisms are the descendents of that biological (and biochemical) past, and they provide a perfect opportunity to test these ideas.

Even a general scheme, like the one I've just presented, leads to a number of very specific predictions, each of which can be tested. First, the scheme itself is based on the use of well-known biochemical clues. For example, most of the enzymes involved in clotting are serine proteases, protein-cutting enzymes so-named because of the presence of a highly reactive serine in their active sites, the business ends of the protein. Now, what organ produces lots of serine proteases? The pancreas, of course, which releases serine proteases to help digest food. The pancreas, as it turns out, shares a common embryonic origin with another organ: the liver. And, not surprisingly, all of the clotting proteases are made in the liver. So, to "get" a masked protease into the serum all we'd need is a gene duplication that is turned on in the pancreas' "sister" organ. Simple, reasonable, and supported by the evidence.

Next, if the clotting cascade really evolved the way I have suggested, the the clotting enzymes would have to be near-duplicates of a pancreatic enzyme and of each other. As it turns out, they are. Not only is thrombin homologous to trypsin, a pancreatic serine protease, but the 5 clotting proteases (prothrombin and Factors X, IX, XI, and VII) share extensive homology as well. This is consistent, of course, with the notion that they were formed by gene duplication, just as suggested. But there is more to it than that. We could take one organism, humans for example, and construct a branching "tree" based on the relative degrees of similarity and difference between each of the five clotting proteases. Now, if the gene duplications that produced the clotting cascade occurred long ago in an ancestral vertebrate, we should be able to take any other vertebrate and construct a similar tree in which the relationships between the five clotting proteases match the relationships between the human proteases. This is a powerful test for our little scheme because it requires that sequences still undiscovered should match a particular pattern. And, as anyone knows who has followed the work in Doolittle's lab over the years, it is also a test that evolution passes in one organism after another.

There are many other tests and predictions that can be imposed on the scheme as well, but one of the boldest was made by Doolittle himself more than a decade ago. If the modern fibrinogen gene really was recruited from a duplicated ancestral gene, one that had nothing to do with blood clotting, then we ought to be able to find a fibrinogen-like gene in an animal that does not possess the vertebrate clotting pathway. In other words, we ought to be able to find a non-clotting fibrinogen protein in an invertebrate. That's a mighty bold prediction, because if it could not be found, it would cast Doolittle's whole evolutionary scheme into doubt.

Not to worry. In 1990, Xun Yu and Doolittle won their own bet, finding a fibrinogen-like sequence in the sea cucumber, an echinoderm. The vertebrate fibrinogen gene, just like genes for the other proteins of the clotting sequence, was formed by the duplication and modification of pre-existing genes.

From a time when Miller asked Behe a question (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/7819_part_07_dr_michael_behe_dr_10_31_2002.asp):
MB:
Well, first of all let me express my condolences for the dolphins. Umm...[laughter]

KM:
You don't have to have to do condolences they do fine. That's my point. It's the theory of irreducible complexity that needs condolences at this point, [laughter/ applause] because that's what's happening.

MB:
Well, if you read my book a little more closely, you'll see that I talk about both the intrinsic and extrinsic pathway, I say that they can use both of them. And, uh, you'll see that when I talk about irreducible complexity I say, the details of the pathway, beyond uh christmas factor and so on, are rather vague, so let's uh, so I said I'll, we'll confine my argument to those. But nonetheless...

KM:
Yeah but your own words are up here and you point out Hageman factor, factor 12 and so forth, so they're part of that system.

MB:
Well, um, nonetheless, let me point out that if you do delete prothrombin if you delete tissue factor, you end up with this.

KM:
I'm asking you about Hageman factor. I'm not deleting those. My question is straightforward. You said you couldn't delete them, nature's done the experiment, it deleted them, doesn't that disprove the hypothesis?... and you're talking about deleting other ones?

MB:
You're right there are redundant components in the blood clotting system...

KM:
So it's not irreducibly complex?

MB:
In the same sense that a rattrap is not, that's correct.
I'd advise reading the whole thing.


NOTE: Kenneth Miller is a Catholic, just like GK Chesterton was. You can't accuse him of having an "agenda".

[Darwin]

"Can it explain other phenomenon such as that? Like how a woman was able to have an NDE without any brain-activity?"

There is nothing special about OBE/NDE.

Neuroscience has been quite succesful in explaining it.Also please note that while it may seem that the person WOULD appear to be brain dead,there still is some electrical activity left in many a case.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
I'm not a big ID fan, mostly because I don't like science with an agenda. Then again, I suppose all science conducted by human beings has an agenda.

I did read Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box" out of sheer curiosity. It makes a pretty good case against the plausibility of evolution at the biochemical level, of particular interest was the chapter on blood clotting. I wasn't entirely convinced, but then again, who can be convinced about a theory?

I don't think a person's science or lack of science has much to do about their belief in God. That's just my opinion though.

Peace out,

Flick
You don't think a person's science or lack thereof has much to do with their belief? And yet, oddly enough, the vast bulk of the scientific community met Behe's book with a big yawn, while you thought it made "a pretty good case".

Unlike bones, enzymes do not leave fossils in the geological record.

[stamenflicker]

Darwin,

What was most interesting about the second half of source 11 was:

Now we get down to business. A mutation duplicates an existing gene for a serine protease, a digestive enzyme produced in the pancreas. Gene duplications happen all the time, and they are generally of such little importance that they are known as "neutral" mutations, having no effect on an organism's fittness. However, the original gene had a control region that switched it on only in the pancreas. During the duplication, the control region of the duplicate is damaged so that the new gene is switched on in both the pancreas and the liver. As a result, the inactive form of the enzyme, a zymogen, is relesased into the bloodstream.

Besides the number of steps it took us to get here (i.e. 30,000+ random combinations per protein to form the "protein rich material" surrounding cell membrane bursts and composing the chance cAMP material to spill to contract muscles, ad nauseum), I find it interesting that a random mutation would switch control regions. Now not only does a mutation have to occur, it's got to be rather specific about the way it mutates.

This also fails to address how the species managed to survive long enough for this to take place. The latter half of the argument basically says "natural selection favored the clotting," but how is this so since natural selection didn't eliminate the oringinal non-clotting species?

Basically the argument goes something like this:

1) Species X can survive for millions of years without blood clotting.

2) Species X develops blood clotting, now known as species X(b).

3) Species X can no longer survive for millions of years without blood clotting because natural selection up and decided to favor X(b).

The only way this argument makes any sense is if X(b) somehow begins to prey off of X. If species X could survive long enough without clotting, I fail to see where X(b) would be favored, unless there are other benefits to the enzymes.

All this before we even get to the mechanism to shut off blood clotting to keep the species X from clotting all his blood simultaneously.

Do I think all this is possible through Darwinian principals? Sure. I'm just not ready to fork over two dimes and a penny for it. Even if its 100% the case, it still seems directional to me.

Flick

[stamenflicker]

You don't think a person's science or lack thereof has much to do with their belief? And yet, oddly enough, the vast bulk of the scientific community met Behe's book with a big yawn, while you thought it made "a pretty good case".

The scientific community listening to Behe would be like Helen Keller enjoying "The Matrix," other than the popcorn, she wouldn't really wouldn't appreciate the show.

And Behe is "showing." By that I mean a dog and pony show. I hardly think he's of the scientific fortitude of many others. What he does parade out there in the middle of the Helen Keller scientific community is a degree of "irreducible complexity" that science continues to have to go to great lengths to disprove through being dealt thousands of perfect bridge hands.

Obviously from the length of the rebuttals to Behe, some one took him serious enough to write a butt load of stuff. I'm sure there have been several who felt the need to take him on.

Flick

[Crossbow]

This sounds like the usual, 'Heads I win, Tails you lose' argument that I have come to expect from these sorts of people.

In this case, the 'Heads' argument goes like this:
Religion must be right since so many respectable scientists believe in religion, and there are just a few of the godless ones who do not.

Whereas the 'Tails' argument goes like this:
Religion must be right since the only people who do not like it are just a few godless scientists but there are more scientists who support religion than those who do not.

That is the great thing about religion, it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by stamenflicker

Basically the argument goes something like this:

1) Species X can survive for millions of years without blood clotting.

2) Species X develops blood clotting, now known as species X(b).

3) Species X can no longer survive for millions of years without blood clotting because natural selection up and decided to favor X(b).

The only way this argument makes any sense is if X(b) somehow begins to prey off of X. If species X could survive long enough without clotting, I fail to see where X(b) would be favored, unless there are other benefits to the enzymes.
Let's assume that the two are identical in all other respects. This means that they will be inhabiting the same range, and will be in constant competition for resources. If clotting confers even a very slight advantage, the clotters will consistently out-survive--and therefore out-reproduce--the non-clotters. Each year will find a greater ratio of clotters to non-clotters. The non-clotters might hang on for quite a while, but if both populations should suffer a crash as a result of some sudden environmental event, the non-clotters would be less likely to survive it.

[stamenflicker]

Let's assume that the two are identical in all other respects. This means that they will be inhabiting the same range, and will be in constant competition for resources. If clotting confers even a very slight advantage, the clotters will consistently out-survive--and therefore out-reproduce--the non-clotters. Each year will find a greater ratio of clotters to non-clotters. The non-clotters might hang on for quite a while, but if both populations should suffer a crash as a result of some sudden environmental event, the non-clotters would be less likely to survive it.

That is an acceptable answer. Especially if the non-clotters were able to breed with the clotters and the clotting gene was dominant. However, it does assume that the environement was gentle enough to non-clotters to allow them to live long enough to reproduce and recombine their amino acids and gene structure, but too hostile to allow them to live as well as the clotters. Then I suppose having that issue settled they could move on to one of the other million biochemical changes that would need similar cosy environments, but not too cosy :) because we have to favor the changes. 1 down... 999,999 to go.

Flick

[Dymanic]

Then I suppose having that issue settled they could move on to one of the other million biochemical changes that would need similar cosy environments...
It's probably worth noting that without a doubt, by far the vast majority of these evolutionary experiments did in fact end in failure. (Though the use of that convenient phraseology makes a dubious presupposition; that 'success' and 'failure' are meaningful terms in this context.)

[Dancing David]

I think that this is getting deterministic, we must assume that most genetic hanges have three possible outcomes

They are detrimental to reproductive sucsess,
They have no effect on reproductive sucsess
They are beneficial to reproductive sucsess

SJ Gould maintained that most changes will fall into the no particular effect until there is a change in the enviroment that it does matter.

The blood clotting example is a good one for something that has an immedeate effect on reproductive sucsess, if I skim read all that correctly. Sorry if I flubbed.

Peace

[hgc]

Originally posted by stamenflicker

...

Obviously from the length of the rebuttals to Behe, some one took him serious enough to write a butt load of stuff. I'm sure there have been several who felt the need to take him on.

Flick
This is not necessarily driven by the strength of Behe's work (in the eyes of his rebutters), but perhaps by the damaging impact it has in our society. Since a large portion of our society doubts or disbelieves evolution, and everywhere legislatures and school boards are assaulting science education with religeous content, AND Behe's arguments are used to give fortitude to these movements, then they are well worth scientific rebuttal, though they may be non-scientific in the extreme.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon


Note that I'm not taking the position NDEs are a soul being carried away to an after life. I'm pointing out a logical flaw, specifically we don't know when the woman experienced the NDE, therefore it didn't necessarily happen when her brain was inactive, therefore it could be a perfectly natural phenomenon caused by a distressed brain.

Perhaps I should've been more clear on that.

That hypothesis isn't consistent with deathbed apparitions.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by ImpyTimpy
Can you show me a link to a story about a woman who had a NDE while her brain was dead? I'll be happy to debate it as soon as I can see it actually happened.



http://www.newsun.com/greyson.html

http://www.ndeweb.com/wildcard/

[Trollbane]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
That is an acceptable answer. Especially if the non-clotters were able to breed with the clotters and the clotting gene was dominant.

The clotting gene is dominant and it is around in the X-chromosome.

Originally posted by stamenflicker
However, it does assume that the environement was gentle enough to non-clotters to allow them to live long enough to reproduce and recombine their amino acids and gene structure, but too hostile to allow them to live as well as the clotters.

The non-clotters still exist... As far as I recall Hemophilia, sometimes also called as the Roayl disease, is a pretty common genetic "illness". I guess the humans suffering from that arent the same species as the clotter humans (Actually in the case of prince Charles, eventhough he doesnt have the illness, this would make sense)

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Then I suppose having that issue settled they could move on to one of the other million biochemical changes that would need similar cosy environments, but not too cosy :) because we have to favor the changes. 1 down... 999,999 to go.


Ofcourse you could prove the premise that in the event of a biochemical change 1 million that dont have the gene would die off.. Come to think of it you were right the first time and the assumption is totally illogical:

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Now if we are to assume that millions and millions of every type of species were wiped out every time there is a significant biochemical creation (which BTW is seriously more complex than a bacteria's resistance), then that just seems to wreak of illogic.

[billiefan2000]

Originally posted by Dancing David
Well in reading the review a few things stand out.

'sending chills up the spine' of darwinists, Yeah more like a chuckle, intelligent designs is so fraught with self contradictions that biologists don't have to refuite it, it fall on it's own.

THEN IN THE FIANL BULLET IS CLAIMS THAT HAWKING IS AN ATHEIST! This is the man who made me squirm with his discussion of god and the ultimate cause, I doubt very much that hawkings is an atheist, at least from my reading of his writing.

I thought that SJ Gould was a believer in god as well.
Oh well, more fairy tales, citing the same sources if not thier own work to prove points that aren't true.

OOOOH, the thery of evolution is not true because it's a theory.

Sorry Billie, you are smart and all but I won't buy the book except for entertainment value.

Peace



Okay,but the book and the discussion should be talked about,cause it is true that many Doctors and Scientists are turning away from Atheism.

[headscratcher4]

It seems to me that the assumption Billy is making is that Scientist=athiest...so, that somehow showing that "scientists" believe in God = progress in Billy's rapture index sort of thinking.

Actually, what it shows is that Billy knows not only very little about science, what it shows, how it is conducted (properly), but also that Billy knows little about scientists. Many/most (?) "scientists" would never classify themselves as atheists. Indeed, I suspect there are many evolutionary biologists that don't classify themselves as Athiests, or even agnostics. However, I suspect also that they believe that you can believe in a god and don't find the contradiction that Billy thinks is crucial with creation.

In short, what really has Billy and his ilk fired up is the thought that scientists are not necessarilly coming around to "god", but coming around to "god" as Billy understands it -- the literalist god of the fundumentalist believer. And that, I think, is not occuring -- outside of the mythmaking by the fundamentalist crack-pots...Indeed, an example, from what I know (and my knowledge, unlike Billy's :rolleyes: is imperfect), Einstein likely believed in God...but I suspect that he didn't believe in the Christian god of the bible. So, Einstein wasn't an "atheist", by the same token, I suspect he bought much of evolutionary biology as it was understood at his time.

As I said, this is my gut reaction to this...Billy, as usual, from his dogmatism and ignorance, sees the world as black and white...and that incapacitates him from any rational discussion.

[Dymanic]

Okay,but the book and the discussion should be talked about,cause it is true that many Doctors and Scientists are turning away from Atheism.
Oh, doctors now too, eh?

Doctors and scientists may have any number of peculiar ideas about any number of things -- they are no more immune to this than are cab drivers. It is the ideas that are supported by evidence that are of primary interest. That is, unless you are content to turn your brain over to someone else and let them do your thinking for you. By selective sampling and creative interpretation of the data, it might be possible to support the idea that 'scientists are turning away from atheism' (though I doubt it), but this flimsy net is likely to trap only a few weak-minded individuals anyway. I'd move on.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by billiefan2000

Okay,but the book and the discussion should be talked about,cause it is true that many Doctors and Scientists are turning away from Atheism.
Evidence?

Here's something about the Steve project (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp) , an attempt to show how overwhelmingly practicing scientists support evolution. Note: this is about evolution vs. intelligent design, not atheism vs. theism. These are two distinct concepts, except in a narrow fundamentalist mind.

[headscratcher4]

Note: this is about evolution vs. intelligent design, not atheism vs. theism. These are two distinct concepts, except in a narrow fundamentalist mind.

Yeah! What he said...and in about 500 less words than did I!

[INRM]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon
^How about:

Woman goes unconcious

Woman's brain goes through NDE 1 second before sessation of brain activity

It is noted by docotors woman has no brain activity

Woman recovers and recounts the last thing she remembered: the NDE

Since doctors have no way of knowing exactly when the NDE occured (and neither does the woman) it would appear to the outisde observer that she had a NDE while there was no brain activity.

That should just about cover it.

The story was about a woman named Pam Reynolds...

I've tried to debate it every which way.

She saw the skull-cutter saw which was used on her, which wouldn't have been removed until she was completely anaesthetised (IIRC), and then she saw it and even heard a grinding noise... of course that's when everything went to light...

Can someone get me a copy of this story, I need detail. I'm otherwise going to make the mistake of giving out misinformation.

-INRM

[Lemastre]

Originally posted by INRM


Can it explain NDE's?

Can it explain other phenomenon such as that? Like how a woman was able to have an NDE without any brain-activity?

-INRM Brains are active in varying degrees. Obviously, the woman you refer to had some brain activity, or she would not have been able to recover and recount anything, including an NDE. The fact that her low brain activity was not seen means that the instruments being used were not sensitive enough to detect it. At any rate, "near-death experiences" are reported by people under stress but who are not dead; so it's questionable how accurately they indicate what happens to folks who are actually dead.

[Darwin]

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/obe.html
http://www.brainland.com/indiv_news.cfm?ID=375

[TylerD]

Originally posted by billiefan2000
Okay,but the book and the discussion should be talked about,cause it is true that many Doctors and Scientists are turning away from Atheism.

Got any stats to back that up?

[Supercharts]

Susan Blackmore has written a book titled:" Dying to Live - Near Death Experiences".
Basically she offers two hypothesis to consider calling them the "Afterlife Hypothesis" and the "Dying Brain Hypothesis" and her book is a close examination of both.
The "Dying Brain" wins hands down after a thorough review of the psychology, biology and medical data available plus interviews with NDE'ers and others in the field.
I cannot write a lengthy review of this book as it's beyond my skills or interest to do so but you may find the reviews on Amazon useful.

[synaesthesia]

Originally posted by Supercharts
Susan Blackmore has written a book titled:" Dying to Live - Near Death Experiences".
Basically she offers two hypothesis to consider calling them the "Afterlife Hypothesis" and the "Dying Brain Hypothesis"...I cannot write a lengthy review of this book as it's beyond my skills or interest to do so but you may find the reviews on Amazon useful.

There's a good doggie. Thanks for the reccomendation, here's a hunk of flesh.

[synaesthesia]

Originally posted by TylerD


Got any stats to back that up?

bump

[TylerD]

Originally posted by synaesthesia
bump

Huh?

[Darwin]

My best guess is "bumb" serves to indicate that data,at this point,goes "bumb"=ends/collapses/hits the wall so to speak.

[TylerD]

Originally posted by Darwin
My best guess is "bumb" serves to indicate that data,at this point,goes "bumb"=ends/collapses/hits the wall so to speak.

Well that's good (I think). I thought it meant something along the lines of "You're an idiot."

[Dymanic]

Welcome to the board, TylerD. (Maybe I should say, "Welcome to the internet"?)

I'll interpret:

billiefan2000:
...it is true that many Doctors and Scientists are turning away from Atheism.Here, billiefan is making a naked assertion. His inclusion of the phrase, 'It is true that' is intended to add weight.
TylerD:
Got any stats to back that up?TylerD's not buying it.
synaesthesia:
bumpHere, synaesthesia is saying, "Let's bring this thread back to the top of the board so billiefan will know he hasn't been let off the hook so easily; we're still waiting to see his proof.
TylerD:
Huh?Hehe. No big deal, don't feel bad.
Darwin:
My best guess is "bumb" serves to indicate that data,at this point,goes "bumb"=ends/collapses/hits the wall so to speakNow Darwin is either playing along (which I was tempted to do myself), or he really doesn't know what 'bump' means either. I honestly can't tell.
TylerD:
Well that's good (I think). I thought it meant something along the lines of "You're an idiot."It's the most amazing and beautiful thing; the way the human brain leaps into action to fill in the blanks in between known pieces of information -- with something...anything.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Supercharts
Susan Blackmore has written a book titled:" Dying to Live - Near Death Experiences".
Basically she offers two hypothesis to consider calling them the "Afterlife Hypothesis" and the "Dying Brain Hypothesis" and her book is a close examination of both.
The "Dying Brain" wins hands down after a thorough review of the psychology, biology and medical data available plus interviews with NDE'ers and others in the field.
I cannot write a lengthy review of this book as it's beyond my skills or interest to do so but you may find the reviews on Amazon useful.

Here (http://www.nderf.org/Dying%20To%20Live%20Critique.htm) is an excellent critique of that book.

[Upchurch]

Pardon the cross post, but I feel Yahzi's comment in this thread (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20310) is pertenant to this discussion as well.
Originally posted by Yahzi

Isn't it funny how the religious nuts spend so much time bashing science as a useless, incorrect way of obtaining information (aka evolution), but then turn around at a moment's notice and assert that their holy book is special because it conforms so well with science?
I have to wonder if billiefan's intent behind this thread is to discredit atheism somehow because there are fewer atheistic scientists (if it's true).

Regardless, just because a scientist is not an atheist does not mean that they automatically buy into Christian rationalizations like ID. Especially, if that scientist is in an unrelated field like Chemistry, for example.

[PixyMisa]

Connie Willis gives an interesting (fictional) account of NDE research in her book Passage. Her hypothesis (or at least, her hero's hypothesis) is that NDEs are the result of a survival mechanism in the brain, as it shuts down under conditions of extreme stress.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by PixyMisa
Connie Willis gives an interesting (fictional) account of NDE research in her book Passage. Her hypothesis (or at least, her hero's hypothesis) is that NDEs are the result of a survival mechanism in the brain, as it shuts down under conditions of extreme stress.

Hi, you haven't got a copy of that book on your hard drive or disc have you?

[Darwin]

The qritique did not convince me.
I have NOT read the book by Susan Blackmore but while she may be "dwelling" on some points,she (as neuroscience) seem to present well enough that one does not have to dig any more out of this subject than necessary.
The critique does not address neuroscientifical findings too much but prefers to ponder on philosophy,which has never advanced our understanding in terms of science as far as I know.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Darwin
The qritique did not convince me.
I have NOT read the book by Susan Blackmore but while she may be "dwelling" on some points,she (as neuroscience) seem to present well enough that one does not have to dig any more out of this subject than necessary.
The critique does not address neuroscientifical findings too much but prefers to ponder on philosophy,which has never advanced our understanding in terms of science as far as I know.

The question of "life after death" is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one. It cannot be a scientific one since science cannot in principle explain consciousness. If it cannot in principle explain consciousness, how can it say anything regarding a possible "life after death"?

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

It cannot be a scientific one since science cannot in principle explain consciousness.
I'll grant you that science doesn't have a complete explination for consciousness, but why can't it in principle have an explination? That seems like an unfounded stretch to me.

[Darwin]

"The question of "life after death" is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one. It cannot be a scientific one since science cannot in principle explain consciousness. If it cannot in principle explain consciousness, how can it say anything regarding a possible "life after death"?"
Whether science can explain conciousness is a question so broad that I prefer not to participate on that,there is some sort of a genuine study of it being done I think.
However,what neuroscience can explain is our concern in here and that´s where you basically go for when interested in this kind of issues.
Life after death was not what I was referring to,I managed to state that OBE experience does not need to carry around what I´d consider an unnecessary hypothesis (yes,reductionism can do) if we start spreading "spirits" around,we won´t grow.
I agree life after death in itself,which is a different question to me,can be philosophical depending what you make out of it.

[Yahzi]

Darwin
It cannot be a scientific one since science cannot in principle explain consciousness.
There is no reason whatsoever to assume this. Science has demonstrated its ability to explain virtually every other phenomona we have encountered, so it seems unwarranted to through in the towel now. Of course dome people will never accept the explanation of qualia, just like some people still believe in God. But that is not science's failing.

TylerD
"Bump" is a standard way of bring a thread to the top of the list without adding any more information. It is a way of signalling that you still want to continue a thread, but require other people's input to do so. Obviously Snyth felt there were some questions left unanswered that deserved answering.

[Nucular]

Interesting Ian wrote:If it cannot in principle explain consciousness, how can it say anything regarding a possible "life after death"? 1) Regardless of whether the 'in principle' bit is true, the scientific method can still be used to address any falsifiable claims (few as they are) from those who claim to have evidence of a possible LAD, including NDErs.

2) What Blackmore did - using current scientific findings to synthesise a possible account of the NDE without inventing unnecessary entities - doesn't require a full understanding of consciousness.

The philosophical interfaces with the scientific in these cases: the debate isn't so abstract that science can't say anything about it.