I didn’t see anything to suggest that Christy views anything of the sort as a problem. I think that’s just more narcissism on your part.
Eddie was referring to a different conversation. I do think it is a problem.
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Well, in an ideal world that might be nice. But it would be a challenge finding all these qualified people who have the time and desire to invest hours and hours preparing material and hanging out on the internet, and doing it basically as a favor for the few inquiring minds who want to know. Normally, if you want that level of interaction with “scholars” you have to pay tuition or minimally conference fees, and the scholars get something out of it financially or professionally.
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Fair enough.
[quote=“Eddie, post:84, topic:3653”]
I never denied that Collins was a good scientist, or that he knew a great deal about genetics and other parts of science. But he isn’t an evolutionary theorist. [/quote]
None of those are the claims I am challenging. Let’s review:
This is false. According to his CV, Shapiro stopped being an active researcher in 1999. According to his CV, his research has been no more evolutionary than Collins’s and he even describes himself as a “bacterial geneticist.”
This is not “just a fact” because you can’t possibly see inside their heads to quantitate their knowledge. Reviewing blog posts won’t do it. Shapiro and Collins are bacterial and human geneticists respectively. Collins, whose work you clearly haven’t bothered to familiarize yourself with, is still an active researcher today, 16 years after Shapiro quit being an active researcher.
You clearly haven’t read any of Collins’s papers, yet you claim to see inside his head and you know how well he understands evolution? How can any rational person not judge that as arrogance?
How is your claiming to know how much knowledge is in others’ heads, particularly about a subject in which you have no expertise, not arrogant?
Is there any way we could pit Shapiro against Francis Collins? Perhaps in “Dancing with the Stars”? A cage fight? Would make a great BioLogos Video!
I think @OldTimer’s belief that “evolutionary biologists” can discover things that would improve Orthodox Christianity is on pretty solid footing!
If Evolution is true, and if the Young Earther’s are wrong about the earth being less than 6000 years old, then this would RADICALLY influence the philosophical underpinnings of Christianity. How could it not?
Instead of a grumpy old wrinkly guy walking around Eden … God, the source of all creation, becomes that much more mysterious … and how God reveals his thoughts or his plans to humanity a much less obvious thing.
The great religious people of the world can feel less suspicious of human knowledge and investigation … and a new set of expectations for the Universe can begin afresh.
George
This reply has to be humorous - by comparing one wrong theological view with another wrong one, you suggest Orthodox Christianity is improved.
The understanding of God created the heavens and earth is discussed at a level appropriate for theological discussions by a number of people, such as for example Heller. These rely on both historically based understanding of science and the latest physics, along with discussions from theologians such as Aquinas. No-one of any standing in science or Orthodox theology would take your response seriously. It is here that people may find serious discussions on causality, probabilities (and the erroneous views put forward on this site on the uncertainty in QM), “before time or time-space”, and other matters needed for a serious science - faith discussion.
It is always difficult to distinguish poetry from authentic metaphysics … on THIS side of Eternity …
The example I gave, Heller, does not write poetry.
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[quote=“Eddie, post:90, topic:3653”]
Yes, it is quite possible that Francis Collins knows a vast amount of evolutionary theory that he has never put into print.[/quote]
Hello Eddie,
Even more likely:
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Francis Collins knows a vast amount of evolutionary biology that he HAS put into print, but you can’t be bothered to read any of it before arrogantly pretending to know what is in his mind and in his publications. Shapiro isn’t even close to being a peer of Collins.
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Collins has actively managed a massive worldwide project with a massive evolutionary component that you refuse to even acknowledge.
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You clearly don’t understand enough evolutionary biology (theory or praxis) to make any quantitative assessments about the two men’s minds or their publications, even if you had bothered to examine the evidence.
Your new assertion is only marginally less silly and unsupportable than your previous one. You clearly haven’t read Collins’s scientific publications, so you have no basis for asserting anything of the sort as an explicit fact. Even if you had, it is still false simply because it would merely be an opinion.
I did. Neither the nature of that material nor the maintenance of a web site, even begin to merit the label “active research.” It would be wise for you to read some of Collins’s 534 journal publications before making quantitative claims about their evolutionary relevance.
Nothing I’ve challenged you on has anything to do with my view of Shapiro’s views (which amount to trivial relabeling). It has to do with challenging sweeping, false ad hominem claims. It has to do with your obsession with labels and opinions to the exclusion of logic and evidence. You keep touting Carl Woese’s statement that Shapiro’s book is a “game-changer” as some sort of evidence, when Woese has been dead and Shapiro’s book hasn’t changed anything for years.
Shapiro has been pushing his relabeling since 2002, 3 years since he stopped doing active research (based on the cv on his web site). He is just as washed-up as Larry Moran and both are much less washed-up than PZ Myers, whose independent career utterly failed. Collins, on the other hand, is extremely active, yet you somehow claim to know that he knows less than the all-but-retired scientist you are trying to tout. Shapiro is reduced to blogging at the Huffington Post, man. He is fading away. Those are all objective assessments based on real evidence. Can you at least admit that blogging only rarely represents active science?
This says nothing of substance. What new data, specifically? Are you capable of constructing an actual argument in evolutionary biology and supporting it with actual evidence? Your assertion is empty because evolution has ALWAYS been understood to be under enormous constraints, which is precisely why ID of details by an omnipotent designer makes no sense. I’ve seen no evidence from your writing here or as Timaeus at UD that you understand this concept. If you disagree, let’s discuss the “immense body of new data” directly, not what anyone else writes about it!
No, you don’t go there, you seem to be afraid to!
Flinging names and labels around doesn’t substitute for thought, logic and evidence. You have, however, made a patently false claim that BL hasn’t addressed evo-devo.
That’s obvious! What, specifically, do you propose instead? Should every paper published in evolutionary biology be reproduced here?
[quote]The discussions of evolutionary biologists are helpful in filling in what is missing, and balancing the picture. Some commenters here appear to be against balancing the picture.
[/quote]Again, Shapiro doesn’t even describe himself as an evolutionary biologist. He describes himself as a bacterial geneticist. He’s on the fringe at best. So to which actual evolutionary biologists are you referring?
An obsession with labeling fields and people, particularly given the massive consilience in modern biology, necessarily leads to very sloppy thinking and argumentation. Do you have ANYTHING other than relabeling to offer?
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[quote=“Eddie, post:73, topic:3653”]
None of the BioLogos people are evolutionary biologists by graduate training or by research field.[/quote]
This claim, like your claim about evo-devo, is false. Just one example:
Genomic taxonomy of Vibrios.
Thompson CC, Vicente AC, Souza RC, Vasconcelos AT, Vesth T, Alves N Jr, Ussery DW, Iida T, Thompson FL.
BMC EVOLUTIONARY Biol. 2009 Oct 27;9:258. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-9-258.
On the origins of a Vibrio species.
Vesth T, Wassenaar TM, Hallin PF, Snipen L, Lagesen K, Ussery DW.
Microb Ecol. 2010 Jan;59(1):1-13. doi: 10.1007/s00248-009-9596-7.
A classification of possible routes of Darwinian evolution.
Thornhill RH, Ussery DW.
J THEORETICAL Biol. 2000 Mar 21;203(2):111-6.
Oh, but it is. It’s a claim that evolutionary biologist David Ussery is not an evolutionary biologist.
[quote] it’s no different from saying that someone isn’t a cosmologist just because he has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. The Ph.D. in nuclear physics will be able to follow some points in the discussions of cosmologists, but won’t be an expert on current models in cosmology unless his special area of nuclear physics is the nuclear physics of the early universe and he reads up regularly on the current debates. Similarly, someone with a Ph.D. in genetics or cell biology will know the basics of evolutionary theory and will be able to follow some of the things evolutionary theorists talk about, but will not, merely by having a Ph.D. in genetics or cell biology, be a researcher in evolutionary theory or current with the debates in that field.
[/quote]Eddie, this rant is so far removed from the reality and the consilience BOTH WITHIN AND BETWEEN biology and physics that it’s hilarious. I have NEVER heard any scientist in any field assess the opinion or work of another scientist by saying anything like, “He has a PhD in X,” or “She doesn’t have a PhD in field X, her PhD is in field Y.” Jack Horner is probably the most famous dinosaur paleontologist in the world. In what subject did he earn his PhD?
Any working scientist who said or wrote anything resembling what you’ve written would become a laughingstock. The reality is that fields in both physics and biology are orders of magnitude more fluid than they are in your representation.
I do not believe that any of this has to do with the original topic. It is good that I stayed away from this. 
Should I change the title of this blog? It seems that it has gone in another direction. If it should be changed, give me a title that you would like.
It happens. It’s fine the way it is.
See how easy it is to promote discord and a collapse of agreement?
Other than the Atheists lurking about, Eddie and almost all those who promote or endorse BioLogos perspectives should be IN AGREEMENT that the Neo-Darwinism mechanism is INSUFFICIENT!
If it was sufficient, we would not need God.
We all acknowledge God’s direction in the evolution of life on this planet …
George