Should BioLogos produce science textbooks for college use?

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

[quote=“Eddie, post:131, topic:3653”]
You want the discussion to be on issues rather than people.[/quote]
Yes. Maybe I need to define those terms for you? Let me know and I will.

Well, in Mazur’s book, there are thousands of words in which professional evolutionary biologists deal with issues rather than people, but I don’t see that you or beaglelady have read the statements by those biologists in Mazur’s book.

That’s because we don’t share your strange obsession with people (bolded above) and books over issues and facts. Why don’t you pick an issue and present it yourself without even mentioning any people?

[quote]Instead, what I hear is about people – that Mazur is a journalist, a nut job, unqualified, biased, etc. How do the views of the biologists she interviews become wrong because she is the one who interviews them? How do their views become not worth listening to because they are found in her book?[/quote]I’ve written nothing about Mazur. Eddie, you are obsessed with people to the exclusion of issues.

And how is it fair to set aside a book-length argument by Shapiro when one has not read the book, i.e., has not read Shapiro’s treatment of the issues, by objecting that Shapiro has not published an article lately?

Because there’s no need to filter issues through people and books as per your obsession. No one has claimed that Shapiro has not published an article lately. In fact, Shapiro has published many articles since he stopped being an active researcher. How many of them have you read? How many include treatments of the same issues covered in the book?

Why is a biographical fact about a person (that he has not published an article lately) proof that the arguments in his book are wrong? Why is his book not being responded to by benkirk and beagle lady?

Why has Eddie not presented a single one of the intellectually significant facts he claims are included in the book? Remember that you wrote,

@Eddie

There are more detailed facts about the nitty-gritty of molecular and genetic transformations in Shapiro’s book alone than have been presented in all the columns of BioLogos since its inception.

So pick one, Eddie. Provide the details. Remove all the people. Stick to the issues.

If his arguments are wrong or bad, if his facts are wrong, show us all where. Stick to the issues, not how many articles a person has published or when he published them, and not whether a person teaches in a molecular biology department rather than an evolutionary biology department – which is irrelevant when the research presented is obviously research into evolutionary mechanisms.

Yet you didn’t even notice that people posting here do precisely what Shapiro doesn’t do (active research in evolution)! That’s the problem with your focus on people and books instead of ideas and facts.

So yes, let’s stop arguing about who has what degrees, teaches in what department, has published how many papers, etc. Let’s just deal with the issues.

Then stop with the names, Eddie. Tell us which specific mechanisms are included and excluded when you write “neo-Darwinism.” Better yet, eliminate all names from your writing here (Darwin is a name, BTW).

Let’s compare the view of evolution set forth in, say, Ken Miller’s book, Finding Darwin’s God, and Shapiro’s book, Evolution. Let’s discuss which of those two books better captures the latest thought on evolutionary mechanisms.

Books are not issues. Let’s discuss mechanisms themselves. There’s no need to divide people.

And let’s compare the view of Joao that “random mutations” are relatively unimportant in evolution, that evolution would proceed almost as fast without any mutations at all, based solely on existing variation (and yes, Joao did say that here, only under the name melanogaster), with the view of Applegate and Louis here, i.e., that randomness is a very important factor in evolution. Let’s talk not about people, but about the issues. I agree. Let’s do that. I’ll open this issue discussion with: Do you think that Applegate and Louis and others here misunderstand modern evolutionary theory when they place so much emphasis on randomness? Joao’s view implies that they are wrong to do so. What is benkirk’s view?

Unbelievable!

You’re not discussing the issues when you continue to be obsessed with attributing everything, literally everything, to people in what appears to be a deliberate effort to be divisive.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@Eddie

It’s actually enjoyable to read his criticism, because he teaches with gentleness.

But you don’t respond to him on the issues either. You fling names and books back in response.

You still haven’t responded to this criticism:

@glipsnort

Given your apparent definition of neo-Darwinism (e.g., it excludes genetic drift), it is under question in the same sense that the Roman Empire is under attack: it’s ancient history at this point. The borders were breached, the walls came down, the lands were conquered, and it was destroyed. The war is over and the empire is gone.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@glipsnort

One difficulty with your neat dichotomy between die-hard supporters of neo-Darwinism and the new thinkers who are attacking it, by the way, can be seen in someone like Michael Lynch. He is one of the strongest proponents of the importance of non-adaptive forces in evolution, but he’s also a population geneticist and one of the most scathing critics of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis folks; he’s also sharply critical of the tendency of some developmental biologists to assume adaptive explanations.

From http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v28n2/evolution.shtml

[quote]Nor has his [Lynch’s] research been ignored by the intelligent design (ID) community. “I push this idea of what we call non-Darwinian processes–drift and mutation,” says Lynch. “But people in the ID community always take it out of context. They hear ‘non-Darwinian,’ and they read that as non-evolution, because they equate evolution with natural selection. So they love to quote me.”

It’s a subtle but significant point. Natural selection, sometimes called “Darwinian selection,” is only one of several mechanisms by which evolution proceeds. Even Charles Darwin himself argued that natural selection was not the only agent of evolution. Lynch agrees, emphasizing the role of chance events in genome evolution.[/quote]

Just sayin’…

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@Eddie

I can agree with many of your remarks here, and it is clear that you have read about and thought about this subject.

It is probably worth noting that evolutionary theory of the sort we’re talking about here has almost nothing to do with my professional work. In that work, I’m interested in whether alleles are under purifying selection, in what alleles have been driven by positive selection, in what traits they might be related to, in what neutral variation can tell us about population history. Questions about the origin of animal body plans or about the genomic prerequisites for multicellularity is not the kind of thing most biologists deal with.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

On Denton’s book. . . For me, Denton has a major hurdle to overcome, which is that I read his first book about evolution. Everyone makes mistakes, but to completely misunderstand the core of the subject you’re writing an entire book about, well, it doesn’t invite repeat customers.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@Eddie

Denton’s first book was widely perceived as being against evolution itself. He actually never argued against evolution, but because the first book did not resolve the problems it discussed, he left the impression he was anti-evolutionary

It had nothing to do with being pro- or anti-evolution. It was that he didn’t understand basic expectations of evolution. He thought that genetic divergence data contradicted common descent, when in fact the data he presented were entirely in line with what we would expect to see.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@glipsnort

It was that he didn’t understand basic expectations of evolution. He thought that genetic divergence data contradicted common descent, when in fact the data he presented were entirely in line with what we would expect to see.

And Denton’s error is obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of evolutionary theory.

Denton himself even admitted it on his own web site, but described his error as “some of the arguments are out of date,” which isn’t really true. Denton’s “molecular equidistance” error has always been simply wrong. Steve’s “Completely misunderstand the core of the subject you’re writing an entire book about” is not an exaggeration, it is a very accurate characterization of the magnitude of this blunder.

It’s worth noting that the wider ID community still embraces the error as truth, as can be seen in the graph at the bottom of gpuccio’s UD post:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/homologies-differences-and-information-jumps/

Note that gpuccio has put modern organisms on the X axis, while representing the X axis as time in the discussion. There are other major errors, too, but that’s the Dentonian one. None of the ID proponents seem to have noticed.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

“Michael Denton is by far, the most knowledgeable [ID proponent] when it comes to understanding evolution and molecular biology.”

In the Wikipedia article, we find this statement and footnotes:

“Denton describes himself as an agnostic.[3][4]”

[Footnote 3: Stephen C. Meyer. Signature in the Cell. Harper Collins. Retrieved 13 November 2010. Michael Denton, an agnostic, argues for intelligent design in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 326–43.]

Page 557:

Footnote #4:
"Michael Denton, an agnostic, argues for intelligent
design in EVOLUTION: A THEORY IN CRISIS, 326-343. Antony
Flew, a longtime champion of atheism, recently announced
his abandonment of atheism based on the evidence of
intelligent design, but emphasized that his religion was far from
conventional (much less sectarian): "I’m thinking of a
God very different from the God of the Christian and
far and away from the God of Islam, because both are
depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam
Husseins" (“Famous Atheist Now Believes in God,”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/WireStory?id=315976 ).
See also Flew, “There is a God.”

[Footnote 4: Tom Frame. Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design. Retrieved 13 November 2010. Michael Denton, Darwin and Intelligent Design In contrast to the other would-be pioneers of intelligent design, Denton describes himself as an agnostic, and his book was released by a secular publishing house.]

@Eddie, looks like I have to change my claim against Denton!

He doesn’t claim the God of Abraham is the Designer - - but he does claim A GOD! (“Im thinking of a God very different from the [Biblical] God”) . . . probably more like the “God of the Unitarian Universalists.”

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

(1) that Stephen Meyer is normally going to be a much better source than the mendacious Wikipedia for anything to do with ID

@Eddie

I think you deserve to be rescued from your sarcasm. The Wiki reference cited two books. And the Wiki reference correctly cited them… because the quote I am relying on is from one of the books. So criticizing the quote I’m using because of Wiki is like criticizing the report of LIncoln’s death because it was mentioned by someone’s crazy aunt.

I was fooled by the use of the term “agnostic” … Denton doesn’t seem to be one. So unless Denton endorses the PROMETHEUS scenario for the beginning of life on Earth, his views are classic “God is the Designer” of the Universe - - just not the BIBLICAL notion of God.

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

If you would tell me the exact page numbers in works of Denton where he calls himself “agnostic” I will gladly look them up.

Don’t know which editions you might have …

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
By Stephen C. Meyer
Page 556

FN 4

Signature in the Cell

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Evolution in the Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia
By Tom Frame

Page 291

Evolution in the Antipodes

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

I’m asking you where Denton says he is agnostic. If you don’t have any passages, just say you are relying on the opinions of others, and then we can put off the discussion until you have some passages.

@Eddie,

This is what we have now. You had less.

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

On the other hand, his conclusions – at least in his second book – sound at least Deistic and possibly theistic.

I concur. Denton doesn’t seem like an agnostic to me.

[UPDATE: And yet his latest book now being discussed here (as of Feb 9, 2016) … sure doesn’t sound very religious at all …]

[Henry (Henry Stoddard)]

I must agree. BioLogos should not have to be Calvinistic or Arminian anymore than it has to be Anti-Chiliast or Chiliast. These are issues unrelated to science and its relationship to theology. The Apostles’ Creed does not mention these things; therefore, why should BioLogos. Baptists call themselves moderate Calvinist or Arminians. As a Southern Baptist, I am a two point Calvinist and a two point Arminian. Let this foundation stay away from that.

Charles