Your immediate statement of false claims makes it clear that you have some deep, internal dislike of me. Am correct?

Hi Casey,

On another thread Nick said that he wont be back fo ra week so you may need to rattle his chain when he gets back.

Come on Nick, why do we have to use invectives here? We can be friendly and just use arguments."

Good question. Although I used to post over at ARN I sort of took a sabbatical of intenet posting for about a year and decided to take a look at Mikes site. Here at teic thoughts I have had the opportunity for the first time to observe posts from Nick. Frankly I expected more and was dissapointed to find that Nick makes a living by denigrating anyone who has sympathy for the ID position. You would think we could have a civil discussion alas that does not seem to be in the cards.

Your an ID person so you are ignorant , stupid, dishonest, have ulterior motives, you want to usher in a theocracy, blah , blah blah. Now that type of rhetoric is reserved for the run of the mill ID sympathiser. However I take it your a little more high profile in the ID world so you get special attention. Besides being ignorant etc your positions also have to be demonized and fabricated as well even when you try to put the record straight. You see anything you say to Nick is nothing but a subterfuge. You say NDE poses no threat to your faith but to Nick that is nothing more than spin in order to cloak your real objective which is to institute a tyrannical theocracy on others.

I would also say Casey that you need to take the blinders off. You think you can reason with these people so you try and the you are dissapointed because these people are supposed to be all about reason and rationality then you try again likeyou are doing this time. Dont waste your breath Nick cares less about accurately portraying you nor is he interested in any reasonable discussion. To engage in reasonable discussion with an ID person is to give the the credibility they do not deserve. Remember no ammunition allowed to anyone who does not agree with Darwinian dogmatism.

No I suspect Nick does not like you but dont take it personal..thats his problem not yours.

Vivid

Nick wrote: "Luskin's objections to the evidence for the common ancestry of apes and humans are consistently pitiful." I'll repeat something for the group I wrote to Nick in an e-mail a while back:

"Come on Nick, why do we have to use invectives here? We can be friendly and just use arguments."

It's saddening that Nick has to behave like this, as Nick then wrote: "he clearly believes in the separate ancestry of humans because his reading of the Bible tells him so in Genesis"

Actually, the truth is that in 2005, Nick made similar false claims when he purported to represent my viewpoint, and I responded to them on the IDEA Center website at http://www.ideacenter.org/cont.... In this response to Nick, I wrote:

"I don't believe that it is impossible for one to believe in Neo-Darwinism and be a Christian"

and

"Nick seems to be operating under the assumption that scientific theories which operate under naturalistic assumptions pose a threat to my Christian belief system. He seems to assume that neo-Darwinism, if true, poses a threat to my Christian faith. This is another completely wrong assumption on the part of Nick. Neo-Darwinian evolution poses no threat to me being a Christian whatsoever. God could have created however He wanted to do so, and could have used Neo-Darwinian evolution if that's what He wanted to do."

You should all read that page if you have time–it's very revealing to show how Nick purports to represent what people believe, and then fails to retract it even when he knows it is false.

Yes, I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that Genesis disbars the possibility that humans share might common ancestry with other species. Genesis is not relevant to this discussion, because I think that the data give me no compelling reason to accept human common ancestry with apes. I base my views upon the fossil evidence, and the lack of conclusive and compelling arguments from the molecular data.

Nick, why do you treat me like this and misrepresent my position? I argue using evidence and you respond by claiming that I'm wedded to some particular interpretation of Genesis where humans cannot share common ancestry with apes. Your immediate statement of false claims makes it clear that you have some deep, internal dislike of me. Am I correct?

Go read Cavalier-Smith if you want to get vaguely serious about real models for the origin of life.

No one claims that there are no models for the OOL. A simple search in PubMed returns more than 1000 results in related fields. The problem is that the bottom-up approach still can not tell how a S/R can evolve to a point that we can call it a minimum life cell. Considering the fact that minimal genome that is needed for maintaining life can not be less than 400 genes. One may object that minimum genes needed in a prebiotic environment need not to be 400 and a we can have life(?) with even fewer number of genes, but where is the proof? Having it published on PubMed doesn't make a hypothetical model empirically approved. Many hypotheses for Origin of Life have been proposed through years, which are never entirely abandoned or accepted, but merely go in and out of fashion.

"¦and why his "tornado in a junkyard" metaphor is naive?

Please show us a scientific research that exposes naiveness of his metaphor. Unless you can show a fully naturalistic pathway from raw organic materials to a living cell, his famous metaphor will remain unchallenged.

We don't even know all the details on how actual tornados form — shall we invoke a supernatural intelligence there, also?

The problem with Hoyle's tornado metaphor is that it applies only to all-at-once assembly by-complete-blind-luck, which is nothing like any actual evolutionary model.

Go read Cavalier-Smith if you want to get vaguely serious about real models for the origin of life.

The DI only matters because it promotes the creationist agenda; you only matter to the extent you help provide, wittingly or not, pseudo-scientific camoflauge for the DI's ID Creationism (its not creationism; MikeGene accepts common descent and an old earth!). I hope you're not starting to take your hobby too seriously, Mike!

This takes me back to the old ARN days. Anyone that is sympathetic towards ID is supporting the evil creationists. Remember those discusiions Mike?

Vivid

Look at his naive "tornado in a junkyard" metaphor.

…and why his "tornado in a junkyard" metaphor is naive?

Please show us a scientific research that exposes naiveness of his metaphor. Unless you can show a fully naturalistic pathway from raw organic materials to a living cell, his famous metaphor will remain unchallenged.

If you acknowledge that Hoyle is a crank, then why get so exercised when Nick labels him as such?

Nick Matzke can speak for himself.

Needless to say, Hoyle is one of the most respected theoretical physicists of the 20th century due to his (and his collaborators) many, original, and significant contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe.

Rock,

For Nick to label Hoyle a "crank" is not to deny Hoyle's significant contributions to science. But Hoyle meets the definition of crank many times over. Look at his stubborn adherence to the Steady State theory, long after the evidence for the Big Bang had become overwhelming. Look at his belief that Archaeopteryx was a hoax. Look at his naive "tornado in a junkyard" metaphor. Or his belief that human nostrils point down, rather than up, so that they will not collect the influenza viruses raining down from space.

Hoyle, Pauling, Shockley, Penrose — great scientists all, but we don't take Hoyle seriously on creation, Pauling on vitamin C, Shockley on race, or Penrose on consciousness.

Obviously, if I were to summarily (i.e., stupidly) dismiss scientists work because of their "crank" ideas, then I might as well dismiss all science, because scientists are like everyone else, they all have "crank" theories, oddball ideas, and strange beliefs.

Nick Matzke? Friend and defender of science, gatekeeper of public education? Or "crank"? Does anyone (other than Mike Gene) take Nick Matzke seriously?

(I'm picturing Nick Matzke sulking in the back row of one of theose creationst filled remedial education classes.)