quote:It's name-calling, and it's out of bounds here.
Change the record. To repeat myself from the first page, your attempted defence of Mr. Card's actions has (once again) failed so you are once again back to the incivility issue.
And, FWIW, when I signed up I agreed not to be abusive. Abuse is a term that means different things in different places (to give one example, is smacking a child abuse? is paddling them abuse?). I therefore took Mr Card as the baseline as they are his forums. My apologies if this was wrong. I never signed up not to commit "name calling" - which may be the standard interpretation of abuse here but isn't universal (the other definition I use says that to be abusive, it must be unsupported or only weakly supported (rather than just extremely annoyed) - which my statement clearly was not). Especially when what you are calling "name calling" was simply the quickest, clearest, and most concise description of Card's actions available.
And seeing that you can't tell the difference between the definite and indefinite articles ("The" and "A"), and have repeatedly dropped words from my statements to make them easier to attack and don't appear able to see that a system that makes you dependent on specific external nutrients (rather than a range of them) is disadvantageous, I really don't see the point in further discussion with you.
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quote:I haven't convinced you that being able to synthesise Vitamin C has advantages? This is just so mind-blowingly obvious that I'm at a loss.
I didn't say it didn't have advantages. It might, however cause disadvantages.
quote:What possible disadvantage is there?
Quick off the head speculation, the need to seek vitamin C gives incentive to seek food that contains other, non-synthesizable nutrients that provide some advantage. There are so many possibilities that any scientist who says "this is an obvious disadvantage with no possibility of offsetting advantages" is not considering all the possible implications.
Sure, that's not proof of the underlying contention that everything was well-designed. But your simple examples all contain possible advantages that cannot be casually dismissed as offering no offsetting advantages.
quote:I also don't understand why you say it's not up to you to do anything. Obviously you don't have to discuss the subject further if you don't care to. If you do, though, I really don't feel it is incumbent on me to try to prove a negative. If you want to say that there could possibly be tradeoffs in vitamin production, I really do think you should give some possible examples. I'll argue with you, but I won't supply both sides of the conversation.
Because, as I have said, I don't buy the underlying premise you are arguing against. Further, you didn't ask me to list possible drawbacks that might exist. You said it was "up to [me] to show that the ability to synthesise Vitamin C has drawbacks." As if you had met any burden of production at all that vitamin C syntehsis was without drawbacks.
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quote:Please quote or explain whatever the hell it is you are talking about here.
Your misguided attempts on the second page to assert that "The Darwinist answer" was equivalent to "someone who can be called a Darwinist put that forth as an answer". (That would be the meaning of "A Darwinist answer" - very different).
And then you had the nerve to follow it up by saying that the opposing view could be held "By no rational method of interpretation". While criticising me for being impolite. Not only was that abusive, it was just plain wrong.
And given that from the right false premises you can produce a rational method of interpretation that leads to any given conclusion (see Bertrand Russell's proof that he was the pope given the premise that 1+1=1), there is no way your statement could have been correct. Therefore it was pure abuse without even a possibility that it could have been true.
I didn't bring this up then because I am not so worried about you are about personal attacks - but as noticing them seems to be almost the only thing you have brought to the thread (that hasn't been swiftly debunked), I suggest you get your own house in order before criticising others.
No further replies will be made to Dagonee.
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quote:Your misguided attempts on the second page to assert that "The Darwinist answer" was equivalent to "someone who can be called a Darwinist put that forth as an answer". (That would be the meaning of "A Darwinist answer" - very different).
And then you had the nerve to follow it up by saying that the opposing view could be held "By no rational method of interpretation". While criticising me for being impolite. Not only was that abusive, it was just plain wrong.
You really don't understand that claims that X happened are not claims that X is all that happened, do you?
Nor do you seem to understand the difference between calling someone an idiot (useful or not) and saying that a particular interpretation made by someone is not rational.
No wonder you are having so much trouble being civil.
quote:that hasn't been swiftly debunked
You can say you've debunked what I said over and over again. It doesn't make it true.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Quick off the head speculation, the need to seek vitamin C gives incentive to seek food that contains other, non-synthesizable nutrients that provide some advantage.
Um, no. Recall that primates used to have the ability to produce Vitamin C; the gene was broken by a mutation. Unless you're going to postulate a simultaneous mutation causing our ancestors to seek out vitamin-C-rich foods that also happened to have your hypothetical other nutrient, I fear your argument doesn't hold water. Further, if we're going to have seek-out-this-kind-of-food mutations, why not go directly to the source and look for the hypothetical nutrient?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Um, no. Recall that primates used to have the ability to produce Vitamin C; the gene was broken by a mutation. Unless you're going to postulate a simultaneous mutation causing our ancestors to seek out vitamin-C-rich foods that also happened to have your hypothetical other nutrient, I fear your argument doesn't hold water.
The context of this line of discussion is whether or not there are possible advantages from not being able to synthesize vitamin C in an attempt to demonstrate that the disadvantages demonstrate a lack of design. If we're going to bring in other evidence of non-design, then the line of discussion is even more nonsensical than it was before.
I don't buy the "this is as good as it could have been" defense of intelligent design. But the counterpart as an attack on intelligent design is just as nonsensical as the defense.
quote:why not go directly to the source and look for the hypothetical nutrient?
Perhaps because they're microclusters and thus undetectable? Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Geez Francis, are you really Bill Clinton in disguise? All this hair-splitting on articles just cracks me up. There are too many pompous blowhards on this forum as it is (heck, I can be one of them), and it's sad to see another drawn into the ranks.
Sigh. Back to the issue at hand––
I want to address criteria. By what standard are we basing what is considered "better"? And must something be "perfect" or "better" to be the product of ID? What if imperfection was, by nature, intentional? There are some creeds that believe this imperfect mortal state is the whole point––that humanity obtains development through dealing with and overcoming challenges.
Besides, a chimp might never choke and never have back problems, but I can still spank him at "Halo" and he'll never manage to solve a Rubik's Cube. (Well, neither can I, but that's beside the point.) Posts: 325 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Ah, ok - you are looking at the 'needs help' bit rahter than the 'looks good'. In that case, the counterargument is that there are perfectly good evolutionary pathways for everything the ID-ers have suggested, from the eye to blood clotting. Judge Jones mentioned some of them in the Dover judgement, which I linked to in that other thread. But in any case, I was actually arguing with Oobie, who seems to agree with me that there can be an objective better and that it is a useful standard, since he said
quote:noone has shown another system of life, biological or otherwise, which is empirically better, even from the standpoints you cite.
I think you'll agree that this has been shown to be false, yes?
Can't deny it, and won't try. And thank you for pointing it all out.
But it raises other philosophical questions which an ID supporter, or any religionist for that matter, could ask, rhetorically or otherwise, to continue to refute "natural selection as sufficient." The rhetoric merely has to bend itself in a circle, positing that human beings have flawed bodies for reasons important to God. Then appropriate holy books are cited for descriptions of the vale of tears, etc.
Or, there are contexts in which the assertion that this or that feature is "better without cost" could be challenged, if our knowledge of the biological systems involved is incomplete. Has anyone tried installing an octopus eye in an air breathing organism? Or exploring the sorts of voice boxes or head/brain sizes possible with a chimp's throat arrangment?
See, I've done engineering myself, though with electronics instead of bio systems. It is virtually always a balancing act, acheiving desired features by accepting a flaw elsewhere. Those sorts of questions arise easily in a mind like mine. Saying the octopus eye is "better" doesn't completely resolve the question. Octopus eyes live in salt water and the lighting conditions of an ocean. Human eyes do not.
(I'll allow, of course, that those questions have been answered satisfactorily, and I'm just ignorant of the answers. In which case, I'm happy to be enlightened, but it's beside the point; I'm citing counterpoint examples.)
The point is that every point has a counterpoint, some way to refine the argument which keeps the exchange firmly in the realm of philosophy, and not science.
But that was one of OSC's points, wasn't it? ID ain't science. Neither is Darwinist atheism. Keep 'em both out of schools and *poof*, end of controversy.
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quote:Quick off the head speculation, the need to seek vitamin C gives incentive to seek food that contains other, non-synthesizable nutrients that provide some advantage.
Um, no. Recall that primates used to have the ability to produce Vitamin C; the gene was broken by a mutation. Unless you're going to postulate a simultaneous mutation causing our ancestors to seek out vitamin-C-rich foods that also happened to have your hypothetical other nutrient, I fear your argument doesn't hold water. Further, if we're going to have seek-out-this-kind-of-food mutations, why not go directly to the source and look for the hypothetical nutrient?
I seem to recall learning that natural selection doesn't depend on descendants seeking something out. Disease like scurvy would simply have consumed all the runts before they could reproduce.
But, that raises the question of where all the primates are who *can* produce Vitamin C, because it seems to me that such a mutation would favor the unmutated population, by giving it a much wider range for its habitat.
Someone is bound to call me ignorant, at this point. :-)
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quote:Originally posted by Francis D: Dagonee, you might get further in understanding my comments if you look up "Useful Idiot". It is not name-calling (although it is a slight perjorative), [...]
"You are a 'Useful Idiot'" is namecalling. The fact that it isn't the same as "You are an idiot" doesn't change that.
And the fact that it is pejorative is still rhetorically problematic, especially as a first post. Not everyone has read Mona Charon's book; some were bound to take it the wrong way, and I can't escape the notion that you meant to inflame passions more than a bit.
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You strike me as an educated person capable of rational thought, so I'll ask you this: who, exactly, are you trying to persuade? By premiering with "useful idiot" and "tool", surely someone capable of rational thought must realize, "Hey! The people I am capable of persauding-the ones who agree with Card, but have some doubts-are going to be really turned off by my calling him names. Maybe if I want to persuade them, I shouldn't do it."
Are you capable of that level of reasoning? Or does, as is almost certain after reading what you've written here, your ego and your sense of self-righteousness far outweigh whatever interest you may have on actually changing people's minds?
To dumb it down a bit, you're basically calling Card a jackass, and apparently trying to persuade people to agree that his jackass-ish tactics of slinging ill-founded mud are idiotic. Maybe fighting fire with gasoline doesn't actually help people think or reason any better.
To dumb it down even further, don't be such an annoying, pedantic prick and maybe the people who agree with you wouldn't be talking against you in this thread, to say nothing of people who disagreed with you from the start.
Please resume the urination-contest.
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quote:Geez Francis, are you really Bill Clinton in disguise? All this hair-splitting on articles just cracks me up.
I assume that you are referring to his notorious question about just what the definition of "is" is. The amusing thing about using this as your example of hairsplitting is that Clinton was asked "Is there a relationship with Monica Lewinsky?" - when a truthful answer would have been "No, there is not a relationship with Monica Lewinsky" - on the grounds that there hadn't been one for many months. Instead he chose to ask exactly what was meant when taking the question he was given would have been easier.
That's not hair-splitting, that's precision.
And if you think that pointing out the difference between "The" and "A" (a difference I was clear on when I was 6) is hair-splitting when someone appears to believe (and later explicitely stated) that no reasonable person could believe differently from him, we effectively speak different languages.
quote:Not everyone has read Mona Charon's book; some were bound to take it the wrong way, and I can't escape the notion that you meant to inflame passions more than a bit.
I haven't read Mona Charon's book. The phrase I used is far, far older than that (and fairly well know).
And I have yet to understand the viewpoint that passions have no place in politics or discussions. To be more accurate, I see absolutely no point in discussions (as opposed to gossip or banter) without passion, without information being presented and without well-reasoned arguments. (Any one of the preceeding is sufficient for a discussion). If you have none of the above, all you are doing is effectively chewing over the fat.
Without passion, you won't get anything done. Without information you won't learn anything new. Without well-reasoned arguments (something that requires precision of thought), you won't reach new understandings. I therefore do not think of inflaming passions as a bad thing.
quote:You strike me as an educated person capable of rational thought, so I'll ask you this: who, exactly, are you trying to persuade? By premiering with "useful idiot" and "tool", surely someone capable of rational thought must realize, "Hey! The people I am capable of persauding-the ones who agree with Card, but have some doubts-are going to be really turned off by my calling him names. Maybe if I want to persuade them, I shouldn't do it."
Cold argument had already been tried. Card had, in his partial retraction, shown himself to be almost beyond it. My goal was therefore not to persuade so much as burn his fingers badly enough that he would actually do some research before writing a column (rather than relying on an 8 year old and thoroughly debunked book and an entire collection of propoganda). With luck that would mean that he wouldn't look like quite so much of a tool the next time he considers writing a column that will provide propoganda for a group that has a goal of overthrowing secular society (which I have already demonstrated is not hyperbole).
I may have been wrong to assume that anyone with as much bombast as he uses in his columns has a thick enough skin to take statements that are less hectoring than his columns. If so, then my fault was one of giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is not a bully. I may also have been wrong to assume that people in this forum would have the open mindedness to read links and arguments (all of which have been both strongly supported and accurate) rather than simply say "Oh no! You weren't a model of politeness!" - particularly when these are Card's forums and he demonstrates levels of bombast I have yet to come close to.
If I was wrong about both the above then I apologise for expecting open-mindedness on behalf of the forum and a lack of hypocricy on behalf of Card. I am doing more harm than good in that case and shall return to my more normal haunts on the internet. Evidence to date does appear to indicate that I chose the wrong approach, and for this I apologise.
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quote:Instead he chose to ask exactly what was meant when taking the question he was given would have been easier.
That's not hair-splitting, that's precision.
I think people find fault with that episode because there is a general sense that an honest and forthright man would have answered both questions, rather than splitting a hair to avoid answering the one the would get him into trouble.
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quote:I think people find fault with that episode because there is a general sense that an honest and forthright man would have answered both questions, rather than splitting a hair to avoid answering the one the would get him into trouble.
And someone who valued precision and getting things right over forthrightness would have done exactly what Clinton did (although Clinton's phrasing was unfortunate) and asked what was actually meant. Clinton's question was more likely to get him into trouble than answering what was asked.
I'm afraid that I see precision of thought (which spills over into precision with language) as a good thing. Forthrightness without precision is easily going to slip over into forthwrongness
I would also say that forthrightness would appear to be almost impossible for a politician (as opposed to a campaigner) because they need to keep a disparate electorate happy (unless completely gerrymandered or unelected) and probably also keep their campaign donors and party happy, the interests of whom do not coincide with either their party or the electorate.
Could someone therefore explain to me why an overt lack of forthrightness in a politician is seriously objected to please? (A lack of honesty is another matter, but I digress).
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quote:If I was wrong about both the above then I apologise for expecting open-mindedness on behalf of the forum and a lack of hypocricy on behalf of Card. I am doing more harm than good in that case and shall return to my more normal haunts on the internet. Evidence to date does appear to indicate that I chose the wrong approach, and for this I apologise.
Dude, people here are not so stupid so as not to recognize such an insulting, sarcastic, and BS "apology" both to card while also being the same to the forum. You're using a lot of five-dollar words to achieve the same level of sarcasm teenagers use.
Well-done! Geepers, that approach is revolutionary! It'll be a sensation! I suggest you should spread this revolution elsewhere on the Internet-it'll surely catch on. But as you've already sowed the seeds of your ground-breaking new technique here, please, consider your work done.
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And I have yet to understand the viewpoint that passions have no place in politics or discussions. To be more accurate, I see absolutely no point in discussions (as opposed to gossip or banter) without passion, without information being presented and without well-reasoned arguments. (Any one of the preceeding is sufficient for a discussion). If you have none of the above, all you are doing is effectively chewing over the fat.
Without passion, you won't get anything done. Without information you won't learn anything new. Without well-reasoned arguments (something that requires precision of thought), you won't reach new understandings. I therefore do not think of inflaming passions as a bad thing.
And yet, another notion I cant escape is that you've failed to sway anyone, least of all the people closest to Card (you've been corresponding with a couple of his kids, did you know that?), that your position is worth considering.
See, if you start with the bludgeon, all you get is bloody people shouting "OW!" Such people are ill-disposed to listen to your reason.
Plus, I have yet to see your strawman claim hold true: It's haughty arrogant anger which doesn't serve, not passion.
Posts: 89 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
(Quick aside: I of course could be wrong, but I actually don't think there are a "couple" members of the Card familia posting here; pretty sure Geoff is the only one. Carry on, though.)
Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Seemingly this forum is swayed by emotions and pays absolutely no attention to facts. I shall therefore bow out with the following observations:
1. The best way to deal with arrogance is to demonstrate that it is not merited. There has been only one valid correction to anything I've said (even my supposed hyperbole has been accurate).
2. I am not trying to sway people directly. I am presenting some extremely damning facts which should suffice on their own. My presentation has a different (and repeatedly stated) goal. I would however challenge people to look through the many links I presented.
3. The person who seems most concerned about politeness distorts quotations, accuses his opponents of having understandings that no rational person could have (therefore his opponents are not rational people). I do not go anything like that far and yet I'm the one being jumped on.
I therefore think that my continued presence here will only further annoy everyone (myself included).
But please go back and read the links in my posts.
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Only Geoff? Well, OK. I didn't know he had multiple ID's here.... because they're multiple ID's! :-)
I'm not close-personal-friends with OSC or any of his kids, of course, but that wouldn't prevent me from inviting him to my house, should he make his way to the Portland Oregon area. My dad's an ameteur playwright, you see; he'd geek out! :-D
Posts: 89 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:My presentation has a different (and repeatedly stated) goal.
Dude. No one here is complaining about your facts. They're complaining about your presentation. Do you understand this yet?
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quote:3. The person who seems most concerned about politeness distorts quotations, accuses his opponents of having understandings that no rational person could have (therefore his opponents are not rational people). I do not go anything like that far and yet I'm the one being jumped on.
What, calling people idiots and tools isn't going as far as to indirectly call someone irrational? Not that I think that's what actually happened.
"You're irrational." "You're an idiot."
Yeah, I'm lookin' but I ain't seein' much space between those two things. You are either unable to see a difference, in which case you are an idiot. Or as is more likely since you appear intelligent otherwise, you know damned well there is no difference, and you're being duplicitous and throwing on the handy-dandy old martyr cloak and whining.
quote:Originally posted by Oobie Binoobie: Kagehi, if you heard some pilots arguing "Bernoulli vs. Newton", you would know that they are a class of people who admit that airplanes can fly, who fly them generally with great skill and safety, and still have no clue why they fly.
You also wrote, "The point being that you can't argue for design when the thing you are looking at barely works right," referring to a rising popular idea that human beings are designed badly.
Well, OK, you've a right to that opinion, but it seems like so much movie-critiquing to me; noone has shown another system of life, biological or otherwise, which is empirically better, even from the standpoints you cite.
And in any case, wouldn't a creationist simply rejoin with, "The fact that it works at all is the Godly miracle!"
Gets us noplace.
Yes, if you simply assume that someone would design life the way it is, its not unreasonable. The fatal flaw with that logic is that when we describe design in comes with some *basic* assumptions. Among them is that designers try to minimize redundancies, design parts to efficiently achieve specific tasks, etc. The problem with trying to project design on biology is that it fails on *all* grounds that we define design. It is:
1. Rarely ever terribly efficient
2. It has a huge level of redundancy, more than half of it in bits and pieces of code that no longer do anything, but, save for the defective part, are identical to existing processes
3. It contains ad-hoc solutions, like the enzyme production in mice than has one junk of code that is defective, producing the wrong enzyme, and some entirely different section which tells the RNA to modify the defective one to turn it into the correct enzyme. Mice are the **only** species that incorrectly codes for this enzyme.
And so on.
This has led to the inescapable conclusion that either a) its not designed, since this is exactly what you expect from a semi-random process, or b) the designer is like some two year old kid with a hammer, a bag of nails and some boards, who tries to build a tree house, while having no clue about construction. You get extra nails sticking out that are 'maybe' just bent over, but don't attach anything to anything else, stuff nailed "to" the tree, instead of resting on the branches, bits that tilt pracariously when you stand in the wrong place and a roof that leaks. All problems that get solved through trial and error, using even more ad-hoc solutions. God or, for that matter, space aliens are *presumed* to have a far better understanding of what they hell they are doing than that. But natural processes can and do produce things which appears designed, like balancing rocks in some places, pyramid shaped formations in Egypt, nearly perfectly round holes through solid rock, etc. They are not perfect, but they are as good, if not sometimes better, than the two year old can come up with.
The problem with arguing design is that the pro-ID side is babbling about new discoveries supposedly proving it (though they can't give supporting evidence of that), the other side is looking at the same *complete* evidence and wondering, "Why the heck does this even work at all?" And it doesn't help that people like those on this project:
Are using the equivalent of 1% of the number of rules as the real universe uses to drive evolution and getting stuff that is a) so complicated they can't figure out how or why it works either and b) smart enough that in one case it figured out that the scientists where dropping it into a test program, to feed it specific types of data, then killing the more developed versions. They where trying to see if they could prevent evolution in the system, by killing all the more advanced versions. Instead, somehow, the artifical lifeform figured out that the condictions in the test environment where different from its normal environment, and that only those that pretended to be dead in that environment would survive. So they played dead when tested, then went right back to breeding in the normal virtual world, as though nothing had happened. Someone certainly designed the "world" these things live in, but *they* evolved from batches of purely random data, with some basic rules that defined how and when they would be able to replicate, just like abiogenesis. And they produce so called irreducibly complex systems within a very small number of generations.
This of course would all be a big, "Oops!", for creationists and design advocates, except the former simply claims it doesn't count, and the later insist it must all be staged. The fact that, according to the developers, something like 80% of the people downloading their software have been creationists and IDers, and that those people have to date been unable to do more than point out a few minor software bugs, doesn't bode well for either view point.
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Your other points are interesting, but speaking for myself, I don't see major redundancy as a flaw in engineering or biology, really.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:This has led to the inescapable conclusion that either a) its not designed, since this is exactly what you expect from a semi-random process, or b) the designer is like some two year old kid with a hammer, a bag of nails and some boards, who tries to build a tree house, while having no clue about construction.
or c) the system was designed but over millions of years accumulated mutations that result in the redundancies and inefficiencies that we see today.
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quote:Originally posted by Oobie Binoobie: See, I've done engineering myself, though with electronics instead of bio systems. It is virtually always a balancing act, acheiving desired features by accepting a flaw elsewhere. Those sorts of questions arise easily in a mind like mine. Saying the octopus eye is "better" doesn't completely resolve the question. Octopus eyes live in salt water and the lighting conditions of an ocean. Human eyes do not.
Except... There are numerous other types of eyes that do work in air and *are* still more effective. Its rather unclear from an engineering stand point why having a blind spot would benefit, when there are hundreds of other types of eyes that work better in the same conditions, many of them with identical capacity to see color, etc. The use of the Octopus eye in the example is merely due to it being the closest in overall design to a humans, including color perception, etc, save for a) the environment it works in an b) how the nerves are attached. It still begs the question of what advantage we get in trade for a flaw that other air based vision system *don't* have. Especially given that 90% of the vision system is in the brain, not the eyes. Its like, having discovered the flaw in hubble, we had just said, "Well, maybe there is something naturally blurry we can look at.." But even so, you are talking about engineering as applies to biology, without knowing enough about biology to judge what constitutes reasonable trade offs. Engineers that *do* know enough are the ones saying that a lot of it makes no sense.
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quote:This has led to the inescapable conclusion that either a) its not designed, since this is exactly what you expect from a semi-random process, or b) the designer is like some two year old kid with a hammer, a bag of nails and some boards, who tries to build a tree house, while having no clue about construction.
or c) the system was designed but over millions of years accumulated mutations that result in the redundancies and inefficiencies that we see today.
I don't think so : The original, non-ad-hoc version would work better, and be selected for. The kind of jury-rigged stuff we're talking about here can only survive if it's competing against things that plain don't work; against something properly designed, it would be outclassed.
But in any case, if you're going to use 'this works well so it must have been designed' as an argument, you can't very well turn around and say 'except for the bits that don't work so well.' That's completely circular reasoning.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Your other points are interesting, but speaking for myself, I don't see major redundancy as a flaw in engineering or biology, really.
Maybe not in software design... After all, someone a while back decompiled a version of something MS wrote and found that 60% of the code in it was unused dialogs, strings that are not used, printer dialogs that where not implimented, chunks of code that used to do something, only to be replaced by something else, but never removed, etc. Its almost funny how similar MS applications are to DNA. However, even they didn't have three to four identical copies of a dialog, each with slight changes, of which only one (or even none) do anything.
Point is, when you design an airplane and discover that the engine you planned to use doesn't work, you *remove* the old engine, not leave parts of it in the airplane, along with stray wires, etc. This is what you get with DNA. Parts that are not simply redundant in the sense that they do something or someone simply forget to remove them.
With DNA on the other hand it is quite ovious that replication errors caused duplications, which later got hijacked for other stuff. Sort of like if the application I mentioned had taken an unused printer dialog and glued it to a database, rather than designing a real database dialog. This would make no sense at all, since none of the fields would apply to such a database, but its exactly the sort of thing you see in DNA. What originally was a copy of something that produced stomach acid might grow hair, because a copy of the original got glued by accident to the code that produced claws and somehow that managed to produce hair (this is hypothetical btw). Point is, scientists **see** this type of replication, then reappropriation of processes in the lab, though usually in viruses. But not always.
Point being, I could try to describe book writing in terms of computer code, but I wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about, even though I could argue that both use letters and both follow some sort of planned path. I could even point at "choose your own adventure" books and argue that constituted proof. But short of *writing* a book, I would be arguing from the stance of ignorance. But it is true that engineers and mathmaticians tend to be more prone to seeing ID as reasonable. Both also argued that there must be tombs in Egypt under those pyramid shaped rock formations, that places like the Devil's Postpile, with its hexagonal stone extrusions where "carved", that there where canals on mars and numerous other arguments that are reasonable only from a standpoint of knowing too little about the subject being discussed. There are people who are both biologist *and* engineers though, and they are often the ones claiming it is *not* designed.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:This has led to the inescapable conclusion that either a) its not designed, since this is exactly what you expect from a semi-random process, or b) the designer is like some two year old kid with a hammer, a bag of nails and some boards, who tries to build a tree house, while having no clue about construction.
or c) the system was designed but over millions of years accumulated mutations that result in the redundancies and inefficiencies that we see today.
Interesting.. There have been plants though that have code in them to repair their own DNA if altered, so *prevent* such errors. Was a nasty surprise to the geneticist trying to figure out why the genes he introduced didn't work. I guess the designers overlooked this in every other species on the planet? Seriously, the problem with this theory is that we know the rate mutations normally take place, and some of those glitches are so old they had to have appeared back when the only living things on the planet where microbial.
Oh, interesting article in Discover Magazine, seems they found a virus that has a mess of stuff in it that it shouldn't (1,000 genes, where normal viruses only have about 10). Viruses are only supposed to be made of simple chunks of DNA or RNA, very rarely both, and unable to replicate themselves or do any other complex things. This one is far larger than any other, and while it still can't replicate on its own, it has both RNA and DNA and a mess of processes normally only found in full cells. This suggests that life progressed like:
1. viroids - RNA that lack the ability to form a protective shell. 2. viruses - RNA or DNA with protective coatings. 3. Germs - Self replicating organisms that we define as life. 4. Multicellular, single cell type. 5. Multicellular, with specialty cells, like us.
Still leaves a gap between chemicals and viroids, but a viroid can be as little as a few fragments, which can and do cause disease, and can be copied and replicated by the host, but do not code for anything specific. Sort of like:
a = 1 end
By itself a viroid does nothing at all. Get a lot of them together... And the building blocks of those fragments are literally only slightly less common than carbon.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:The problem with trying to project design on biology is that it fails on *all* grounds that we define design. It is:
1. Rarely ever terribly efficient
I'm no biologist, but what definition of efficiency are you using? Plants are a lot better at converting sunlight to energy than anything we've been able to develop, right?
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I have two major problems with "classical" ID theory (pre-Creationism de-evolution of the concept). Well...okay 3 problems.
1) Whenever sufficient time has passed following the publication of a claim for the "irreducible complexity" of some biological phenomenon, subsequent research has found precisely the kind of graded intermediaries that the ID folks claimed couldn't exist. I don't have the cites in front of me, but Behe's own challenges have been answered pretty spectacularly and not in his favor. Failure to keep up with the literature on this subject can really undermine a very appealing argument. Which leads me to #2
2) I completely and thoroughly reject the notion that God is "placeable" in the black box that Behe and others submit as the <insert God here> point for Intelligent Design. Partly, I think it's a mistake to point there and say "here's where God did it," because every time someone does that, someone a few years later proves that it was a natural phenomenon afterall -- this has been going on consistently since before Darwin. ID, in that respect is nothing new.
BUT...When I think about it, ID is really a theory that proposes an External Influence, not necessarily a designer. Check it out. They are usually silent on the possible extra-terrestrial origins of some things. It's not because of Occam's Razor, no no! They actually include among the possible sources of the "unexplained" phenomenon that they came from outside our planet...and may have arrived fully formed. Oops! Let's think about this. So, something couldn't have evolved here, but it got here somehow. That's one possibility, right? So, what makes them LEAP to the conclusion that it was intelligently designed? If that's a serious possibility, what they've really said is that we should go inspect the flora, fauna, and fossil record of wherever that "thing" came from and see if maybe it evolved there. Ooops. Seriously, this is a fatal flaw in the logic as far as I'm concerned. At least if the goal is to prove, by absence of other explanations, that there IS an intelligent designer. All they've done is give the opposing side a blank calendar on which to write in a date (perhaps millions of years in the future) at which time they would concede defeat having exhausted the intervening years searching all non-Earth planets and solar systems.
That's just muddled logic on their part, IMO.
And my #3...
3) ID theory is a repackaging of a theory that has been around a long, long time, and it is no more successful today than it was in Darwin's time. That's not fatal, of course, but I think biologists have earned a rest from this theory. It's as if every time someone came up with a medical advance, someone came carping in from the sidelines and screaming that they'd neglected to consider the influence of phlogiston imbalances on the bodily humors. I know that Behe (and a few others) seemed to really have hit upon something novel, but it really is/was another attempt at the same old argument that Darwin himself thoroughly exploded in his writing. And not only with data and observation, but with basic logic. The logic is as follows:
Absence of a sufficiently robust explanatory theory that does NOT include external influences does NOT, ipso facto, provide proof that an external influence exists. In short, it's the wrong evidence. It's the kind of evidence that "science" has a huge track record of demolishing...eventually...since empiricism and the scientific method gained sway among practitioners. Basically, it's betting on a horse that has lost every race that's reached a conclusion. Because there are always still open questions, this type of <insert designer here> theory continues to be put forward, but time is their mortal enemy.
(Special to OSC). I highly recommend reading Finding Darwin's God. I was a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould and punctuated equilibrium until I read this book. I think he does a VERY good job of explaining why PE is just Evolutionary Biology anyway. I mean a REALLY good job.
I still like Jay Gould's writing (he was a brilliant essayist), but his theory of PE comes down to nothing but a slight repackaging of plain old evolution through natural selection, and it's a repackaging that is not really necessary. The issues he raised were ALSO addressed by Darwin in his original work.
Finding Darwin's God is also a very good treatment of the whole ID question (on it's own terms, not the Creationism aberration of it).
I don't think the author nailed the theological arguments in the last half of his book, so it sort of fell flat for me in terms of resolving the BIG questions, but it did an admirable job of showing why the ID alternative doesn't do well.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Oh, and I'd like to add that I too was taken by complete surprise when ID morphed into Creationism with a twist. It didn't make any sense to me at all, but it happened and I got caught by it just as you seem to have. I made some statements about ID and found out I was talking about the older, more pure version of it. Dare I say, the almost clever version of it...
Currently ID is Creationism, right down to its 6,000 year old earthy toes.
quote:The problem with trying to project design on biology is that it fails on *all* grounds that we define design. It is:
1. Rarely ever terribly efficient
I'm no biologist, but what definition of efficiency are you using? Plants are a lot better at converting sunlight to energy than anything we've been able to develop, right?
So, because plants are better at one thing than what we manage means "all" forms of life are, or that everything the plant does is better? I didn't mean that life can't produce specific improvements we can't currently duplicate, just that the code used to get there is often more convoluted than needed and the solution found isn't always the best possible.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: Oh, and I'd like to add that I too was taken by complete surprise when ID morphed into Creationism with a twist. It didn't make any sense to me at all, but it happened and I got caught by it just as you seem to have. I made some statements about ID and found out I was talking about the older, more pure version of it. Dare I say, the almost clever version of it...
Currently ID is Creationism, right down to its 6,000 year old earthy toes.
Very disappointing.
Yeah. I don't have much of a problem with something David Brin's uplift concept, save for a) it doesn't appear necessary and b) there is absolutely no evidence of it. Its not an impossible idea, but the only valid argument I have seen for non-terran origins is that maybe we came from Mars on some rocks, since we find Mars rocks here and there are some microbes and even multicelled organisms, like one called a Water Bear, which could survive the re-entry. In fact that animal is a bit creepy. You can boil it, back it at thousands of degrees, etc. and the moment conditions allow it, such as just adding a drop of water in the case of baking it, the damn thing starts moving around again. Its life span though is like a week or something, so its not exactly immortal, even if it is nearly indestructable.
In any case, the more I read, the more unlikely distant origins or external interference becomes. But the real irony is that everyone is looking for some external intelligent force. I think the best argument against it is that I can't comprehend why a universe (or just earth) that may as well have infinity-1 permutaions of landscapes, chemical variations, etc. and a big ass thermal battery bathing it in energy would possible induce the formation of something "less" complex than the planet itself. Its like claiming that a golf ball dropped on the side of a mountain should, without outside intelligent influence, simply stop right where it hits and never roll any place. But that is backwards. If such intelligent interference happened, you would expect to find *less* diversity, more similarity and fewer solutions, not billions of species of animals and what one biologist estimates is close to a billion times more different viruses than animals. At best you can shove the time of intervention so far back as to render it virtually irrelevant, given that you are still stuck explaining why intervention was needed to make the first microbe, if something else managed to develop before that, then show up here to make microbes. It also begs the question of how, that far back, there would have been any life without a million light years that could have done it anyway. It certainly wouldn't have been form this galaxy, since there isn't enough time between the formation of the first planetary systems in it and the formation of early earth, to even come up with us there, never mind one that managed to do what we haven't and figure out a way to a) travel probably thousands of light years to here, b) start it all up, and c) somehow fail to leave the slightest hint of having been here.
ID in the old sense - vaguely possible, but increasingly improbable. Especially given resent new projections that imply life "might" have been able to form something like 100 million years *earlier* than previously estimated, based on the presence of known life near volcanic vents and even some ancient species found in rocks that may have been no where near the surface of the planet for nearly as long as we are able to determine time, and are "still" alive in there, feeding on thermal heat and sulfur, among other things.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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[total derail] In the Uplift books, it was always clear to me that humans really were 'wolflings' - evolved to intelligence without outside interference. [/total derail]
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Bob, can I block-quote your "problems with ID" elsewhere on this site? (i.e., in another thread)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: [total derail] In the Uplift books, it was always clear to me that humans really were 'wolflings' - evolved to intelligence without outside interference. [/total derail]
Yes, but, while its been a while since I read it, there where I believe a small number of nuts that insisted we had to be some long lost species that had been uplifted and somehow forgotten. Just because every scrap of evidence says X, doesn't mean there won't still be people saying it is actually Y.
Hmm. On a similar note, was pointed to this hilarious page today from PZ:
quote:Originally posted by Oobie Binoobie: Well, OK, you've a right to that opinion, but it seems like so much movie-critiquing to me; noone has shown another system of life, biological or otherwise, which is empirically better, even from the standpoints you cite.
And in any case, wouldn't a creationist simply rejoin with, "The fact that it works at all is the Godly miracle!"
Gets us noplace.
Yes, if you simply assume that someone would design life the way it is, its not unreasonable. The fatal flaw with that logic is that when we describe design in comes with some *basic* assumptions. Among them is that designers try to minimize redundancies, design parts to efficiently achieve specific tasks, etc. The problem with trying to project design on biology is that it fails on *all* grounds that we define design. It is:
1. Rarely ever terribly efficient
2. It has a huge level of redundancy, more than half of it in bits and pieces of code that no longer do anything, but, save for the defective part, are identical to existing processes
3. It contains ad-hoc solutions, like the enzyme production in mice than has one junk of code that is defective, producing the wrong enzyme, and some entirely different section which tells the RNA to modify the defective one to turn it into the correct enzyme. Mice are the **only** species that incorrectly codes for this enzyme.
And so on.[/QB]
Kaeghi, let me offer appreciation to you for some very decent and interesting thoughts on the subject. The difference between what you're doing and what Francis did are well-illustrated here.
You make a good case that biological systems don't follow the rules of design you put forth, but I'll counter that those are rules of design for only one context.
Other design requirements prevail in human designed systems which do not meet your requirements (and using the term "intelligent design" only technically):
Efficiency: The design of an SUV is rarely fuel-efficient; it's touted by many as a *flaw* in the design, as you've put for that that certain bio systems are not efficient. SUV's are nonetheless "intelligently designed," and entirely appropriate for certain applications, such as hauling 10 people or two tons of stuff.
Redundancy: The avionics packages on a Boeing 777 are seven-way redundant, illustrating a context where a massive amount of capability is held in reserve against the time when the primary system fails. The Space Shuttle design also employs three-way redundancy.
Both systems were "intelligently designed."
Ad-hoc solutions: Microsoft-designed software, indeed, most software programmers working on a mature system, where the designers assume a surfeit of certain computer resources, leave unused bits of code behind and simply don't call on them, on the rationale that excising them creates more side effects than leaving them in place. I can think of two or three examples from my own work where I took the unusable output from a small subprogram and wrote another program to translate it into something useful; there is actually an entire sub-industry of programmers about the business of doing in software what mouse RNA does for that enzyme.
Also, "intelligently designed," while at the same time being much more complex than avionics systems and much less complex than a biological system.
And, if you want the best example of an intelligently designed system which contains massive inefficiencies, at least four-way incomplete redundancies, and about 26 ad-hoc solutions, well, look no further than the Constitution of the United States, as amended.
Also, "intelligently designed," and arguably as complex or moreso than a biological system.
Maybe software is the best example of the sort of thing for this sort of discussion, since its permutations are as mathematically endless as Turing has proved. You mentioned http://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/
...well OK, but while that defeats the arguments for a designer in terms of irreducible complexity, one cannot ever escape the notion that Avida itself, even if patterned after some bio processes, was...
...intelligently designed, as was the simulated universe in which the simulated organisms find themselves.
The point of this is not to trumpet the supremacy of "Intelligent Design" as a philosophy, merely to point out that a scientist's efforts to understand bio processes does not *ever* resolve the question of whether "God did it," even if they system is irreducably complex.
And since his work also doesn't ever *deny* the notion that "God did it," the whole argument is dogmatist-eat-dogmatist. Who is behaving worse? That's difficult to say, but right now, I'd lay money that Creationists are behaving worse, and that reactions such as PZ Myers to it are not helping them behave better.
Posts: 89 | Registered: May 2005
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Umm. "by PZ's site" rather, not written by PZ himself, in case that sounds as incorrect as I realized. Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:The point of this is not to trumpet the supremacy of "Intelligent Design" as a philosophy, merely to point out that a scientist's efforts to understand bio processes does not *ever* resolve the question of whether "God did it," even if they system is irreducably complex.
And since his work also doesn't ever *deny* the notion that "God did it," the whole argument is dogmatist-eat-dogmatist. Who is behaving worse? That's difficult to say, but right now, I'd lay money that Creationists are behaving worse, and that reactions such as PZ Myers to it are not helping them behave better.
Well said.
The only thing I might add is that a debate over who is behaving worse is, to me, a symptom of the unresolvable nature of this debate.
Personally, my sympathies go out more to the evolutionary biologists because, from what I've seen/read, they really have addressed the concerns put forth in "classical" ID numerous times over the course of the last 150 years. The counter-examples change, sure, but the basic argument is the same, and it's still as flawed as it ever was.
I give partial sympathy to the ID folks because I agree that current evolutionary theory doesn't explain everything, even within its own domain (i.e., the stuff it SHOULD explain). A lot of evolutionary thinking reads like a "Just So" story rather than something backed up by direct observation (let alone experimentation).
As long as that is true of evolutionary biology, there will be people who insist that God is in the gaps.
All I have is my gut feeling that it's a bad strategy -- and I think it really IS a strategy, rather than an intellectually honest attempt at meaningful dialog.
I believe God is undiscoverable through the means being applied in ID-type arguments because the answer isn't really "it must be due to a designer" as much as it is "we don't know WHAT happened, so it must be due to an intelligent designer."
And the various versions of this argument have not progressed in 150 years beyond that clearly incomplete and disatisfying assertion.
Granted, irreducible complexity sounded like a new wrinkle, but when those counter-examples started falling apart in the face of new data (sometimes published within mere weeks of being trumpeted by Behe and his fellows), I think people in the scientific community just had a sense of collective deja vu. It's the God in the Gaps argument all over again. And it just doesn't satisfy.
We need, instead a scientific theory that would distinguish between a designed system and a naturally evolving one. It would have to have some sort of predictive strength -- i.e., it should be able to point us to someplace fruitful to look for evidence of the designer beyond an apparent complexity.
Ultimately, I despair of ever seeing such a theory because, honestly, I can't think of anything that a designer would do that nature couldn't produce. As someone said earlier (brilliant, whoever you were), complexity may really indicate lack of any intelligent direction since one thing designers do is simplify.
I think of things like...sometimes designers scrap everything and start over from scratch. So does nature. One good asteroid strike and it's a giant reset button.
Designers sometimes float more than one version of a product to see which one does better in the real world. So does nature.
Designers sometimes fail spectacularly in hidden ways so that the product's fatal flaws only become evident after long periods of use. Nature's got that covered too.
To me, this is shaping up as another intellectual dead end, like the nature/nurture debate. The only difference is that evolutionary thinking has a long and robust track record of providing meaningful explanations and, at least from a scientific perspective, is the simpler theory in that it doesn't rely on a giant unknowable "effector" inserted to make everything work out.
I'm betting on God in the infinite. But I'm betting on evolution in the proximate.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: [total derail] In the Uplift books, it was always clear to me that humans really were 'wolflings' - evolved to intelligence without outside interference. [/total derail]
Yes, but, while its been a while since I read it, there where I believe a small number of nuts that insisted we had to be some long lost species that had been uplifted and somehow forgotten. Just because every scrap of evidence says X, doesn't mean there won't still be people saying it is actually Y.
Hmm. On a similar note, was pointed to this hilarious page today from PZ:
What you say is true, but you were referring to "David Brin's Uplift concept" as though you thought he believed in his own books. Apparently I misunderstood you. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: The use of the Octopus eye in the example is merely due to it being the closest in overall design to a humans, including color perception, etc, save for a) the environment it works in an b) how the nerves are attached. It still begs the question of what advantage we get in trade for a flaw that other air based vision system *don't* have. Especially given that 90% of the vision system is in the brain, not the eyes. Its like, having discovered the flaw in hubble, we had just said, "Well, maybe there is something naturally blurry we can look at.." But even so, you are talking about engineering as applies to biology, without knowing enough about biology to judge what constitutes reasonable trade offs. Engineers that *do* know enough are the ones saying that a lot of it makes no sense.
By the same token, you are yourself projecting naive ideas about engineering. And you probably shouldn't assume that I don't know enough of what I'm talking about regarding biology. I don't have to be a biologist to reject Behe. (and here's a hint: I reject Behe)
In any case, you've excluded the middle: which of those biology-wise engineers are also atheists? And which controls thier opinion? The disposition toward atheism? Their training as engineers (who are not trained as scientists, near as I can tell)? A more-likely complicated combination of both?
(Of *course* ID makes little sense as science. I count my blessings that our school district isn't plagued with a call to teach it as science; I'd end up standing against people who go to church with me.
And OSC said as much; he thinks is a leap of faith.)
Posts: 89 | Registered: May 2005
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It has been interesting to read this thread, and finally a lot of good sense is being written. I do have a bone to pick with one comment, however. Bob writes:
quote:I give partial sympathy to the ID folks because I agree that current evolutionary theory doesn't explain everything, even within its own domain (i.e., the stuff it SHOULD explain). A lot of evolutionary thinking reads like a "Just So" story rather than something backed up by direct observation (let alone experimentation).
I absolutely agree that current evolutionary theory doesn't explain everything, or even most things within its domain. But that is just because it is an evidence based endeavour. Consider, for example, Behe's most famour example, "the" bacterial flagellum. At the time of Behe's writting, the proteins in the flagellum had not yet been all described (indeed, AFAIK, still have not all been described). What is more, at the time of his writing there was still not information on the detailed structure of a range of bacterial flagella. The flagella is not the same, of course, on all bacteria. So, at the time of his writing, Behe's complaint about the lack of an explanation of the origin of the flagella amounts to an expectation that we have a complete evolutionary explanation of the system before we even have a complete description of the system.
This is fairly typical, and has been commented on by critics of ID and creationism. The examples are always drawn from poorly known and poorly studied systems rather than from those which are well known.
Depressingly it suggests that even in a hundred years creationists will still be with us. There is simply so much to learn about in biology that even in a hundred years there will be hundreds of systems only partly characterised, and for which detailed evolutionary explanations have yet to be found.
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quote:Originally posted by Oobie Binoobie: In any case, you've excluded the middle: which of those biology-wise engineers are also atheists? And which controls thier opinion?
Hmm. This might be a valid point if not of a single obvious flaw. Despite statements to the contrary by IDists, something like 70% of scientists *and* engineers are Christians, with less than 1% of them supporting ID in any form. I would say that since it is therefor impossible for the majority of such engineers, given that only 30% are atheist to begin with, would be basing their assessment on atheism, instead of engineering and their understanding of biology. The only way the question is even valid is if you presume that most engineers and scientist are atheists, which is pure bullshit. Merely applying that its a valid question *is* ignoring the middle, than is neither fundimentalist *or* atheist, but who never the less reject the creationists version.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: I absolutely agree that current evolutionary theory doesn't explain everything, or even most things within its domain. But that is just because it is an evidence based endeavour. Consider, for example, Behe's most famour example, "the" bacterial flagellum. At the time of Behe's writting, the proteins in the flagellum had not yet been all described (indeed, AFAIK, still have not all been described). What is more, at the time of his writing there was still not information on the detailed structure of a range of bacterial flagella. The flagella is not the same, of course, on all bacteria. So, at the time of his writing, Behe's complaint about the lack of an explanation of the origin of the flagella amounts to an expectation that we have a complete evolutionary explanation of the system before we even have a complete description of the system.
This is fairly typical, and has been commented on by critics of ID and creationism. The examples are always drawn from poorly known and poorly studied systems rather than from those which are well known.
Depressingly it suggests that even in a hundred years creationists will still be with us. There is simply so much to learn about in biology that even in a hundred years there will be hundreds of systems only partly characterised, and for which detailed evolutionary explanations have yet to be found.
And it also makes very obvious that they are attacking biology out of some bizzare fear or as a literal wedge to get at all of science, else why is it considered acceptable that **every** other science contain similar gaps and incomplete understanding, but evolution is the only one attacked?
Cases in point, weather - we are still decifering this, gravity - What the hell is it anyway?, much of cosmology, quatum physics, atmoic theory - guess if its so accurate and gapless they don't need those new super colliders.., etc. Logically, if they where at all serious about the supposed "gaps" in science, then Pat Robertson's definition of how weather happens, i.e., "God will strike evil people with hurricanes", would be a main stream theory, we would still be looking for the demons/angels that hold our feet to the earth, instead of gravity, people would be testing for Psi waves to explain quatum physics, geologist would be trying to ask Pele or Hephaestus about continental drift and volcanism, and so on.
There are a million things that Christianity and other religions came up with to explain things, not one of which we have 100% complete explanations for, some of which have far bigger holes in them than evolution (what did you say gravity actually was again?) and are *not* being challenged. Why? Because they make useful predictions and produce tangible results? Hmm... 90% of modern research into everything from making bacteria that produce insulin to possible causes of diseases and cures/treatments for MS, Down Syndrome, AIDS, antibiotic resistance etc. is **all** based in things from the field of evolution. None of them are even possible without the basic presumption of common descent, changes over time and that everything works enough like everything else that you can make reasonable preductions about it.
The only reason evolution is being attacked is because people have a biased belief that being the only species that invents mass genocide, child rape, world wars, dooms day devices, destructive ideologies, oppression, racism, fascism, religious bigotry and environmental destruction *must* make us somehow superior to mere animals, who do *none* of these things. That in essense, there is something so horribly wrong with being an animal, that they have to fight it tooth and claw, even if that means lying to do it.
And the very first argument you will get from *everyone* making this claim is that animals are ammoral and we have free will. So.. All the evidence that proves otherwise, like monkeys who will "help" others get food, even when they don't, birds that chase of known theives of their own species, and so on, are all what, someone's imagination? And.. Just like people, the monkey can "choose" not to help the other. The bird that steals wouldn't be remarkable, if other birds of their species didn't react to their "choice" to do so. And so on.
Animals do think, they do make choices and they do know right from wrong and "choose" to do the wrong thing, just like people. Why are we superior? Because we can invent more convoluted and insane justifications for it than, "I want that shiny object and if I have to steal it from the other guys nest I will."? This hardly impresses me as making us somehow qualitatively better or more free will possessing than and animal. More self deluding and dangerous maybe... It doesn't make us special, unless your implying Special Ed.
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