PZ Myers. 2005 Sep 27. Edward Daley. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/edward_daley/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Edward Daley
I don't understand these far right-wingers. They are so adamantly anti-evolution, and their arguments are so damned annoyingly stupid. A while back, it was Timothy Birdnow humiliating himself with vacuous nonsense assertively expressed; now it's some guy named Edward Daley's turn. And whoa, it's another doozy that flames out, spirals down, and craters in the very first paragraph.
According to Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, Ph.D., the basic theory of evolution, as it relates to the origins of life on Earth, can be explained by using the following formulas:
1.) M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS (the development of living organisms from nonliving matter)
2.) C (cell) + T + E + MUTATION + NATURAL SELECTION (survival of the fittest) = SPECIATION (the evolutionary formation of new biological species into two or more genetically distinct ones)
He does it again deeper into the sludge pit of his essay.
The basic theory of Intelligent Design as it relates to the origins of life on Earth, can be explained by using the following formulas:
1.) M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) + I (information) = ABIOGENESIS
2.) C (cell) + T + E + I = ALL SPECIES
Isn't it amusing how a non-scientist (or more accurately, an anti-scientist) will try to make his argument look more convincing by inventing an equation? Too bad it is total nonsense. No competent scientist has ever proposed those formulas; they don't make sense, and even on the most basic level of factor analysis they don't work. Abiogenesis is not measured in units of grams+seconds+joules+whatever natural selection is measured in. Stringing letters together in pseudo-algebra is not science.
Daley goes on and on, dredging up the same old stupid creationist arguments that we've all dealt with over and over; it's the usual bad probability arguments, Piltdown Man and peppered moths, Haeckel and mangled homologies. He's just another slow-witted disciple of the anti-evolutionist Wells.
I'm not going to take the whole thing apart—it's not just wrong, it's boring—but here's his first argument.
However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is often referred to as the Cambrian Explosion, and even Darwin knew about the lack of evidence in the fossil record to support his theory a century and a half ago.
At least he spelled "phyla" right, but the rest is garbage.
A phylum is a high-level taxonomic group, an abstraction that describes a clade, a complete group of related organisms. When scientists say that most (not all) phyla arose in the Cambrian, they are not claiming that all species present today were also present then; it doesn't even make sense to claim that a phylum "appeared fully formed". The earliest chordates from the Cambrian look nothing like bony fish or reptiles or birds or mammals or horses or people. The earliest Cambrian arthropods were not lobsters or snow crabs or ants or monarch butterflies. These forms emerged gradually over the next half billion years.
What actually happened is that over the course of several billion years, life diversified in many directions. At the time of the Cambrian, about 30 of these lineages expanded into the "large, multicellular, heterotrophic" organism niche. It's a big planet with many strategies for these early adopters of that lifestyle to follow, so each of these lineages expanded further. The planet is of finite size, however, so those 30+ base forms were sufficient to populate it, and any new niches are filled with progeny of those phyla—so we don't see any new phyla emerging. Because a phylum is a very large taxonomic group, filled with many species, it is also unlikely that any one event can totally wipe out all of its members. The constancy of the number of phylum level groups is not a major issue or surprise.
It's no more surprising than the observation that because my father had 5 brothers and sisters, I can group my cousins into 5 lineages; you'd think I was pretty silly, though, if I claimed that all of my cousins (who were born mostly in the late 50s and 60s and 70s) appeared suddenly in the 30s and 40s, when my aunts and uncles were born. Yet this is what creationists commonly try to imply when they claim that all major animal groups appeared all at once in the Cambrian.
The creationists are also not thinking their comments through. There are no Cambrian rabbits, but there were spineless, headless fish. When the creationists claim that all forms were present in the Cambrian, they are making a useful admission: they are telling us that rabbits evolved from acraniate fish. By implication, they are admitting that there were transitional forms from Pikaia to Oryctolagus.
OK, yadda yadda yadda, Daley goes on and on with these same kinds of peculiar objections that he doesn't really comprehend. Go ahead and write your own rebuttals as an exercise. He concludes with more whining about those evolutionists:
They behave as if they have an exclusive handle on the truth underlying all living things, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and they react like spoiled children whenever anyone attempts to break down their facade. In my opinion, Neo-Darwinism is based as much on the philosophy of naturalism, as it is scientific evidence, and any proponents of Evolution theory who insist that Intelligent Design is somehow a more religious theory, should familiarize themselves with the concept of, "the pot calling the kettle black."
Wrong on all counts. Biologists have a better handle on the subject than some random guy with no training in biology bloviating on a website; we react with laughter when said bloviator puts on a circus parade of bad arguments. Who can blame us? And, ummm, scientific evidence is based on naturalism by definition—does he think bringing in the supernatural would produce valid science? I hope not. He's made another useful confession if he thinks Intelligent Design creationism requires unnatural phenomena.
One other thing: here are Daley's qualifications.
Currently he is the full-time caregiver to his elderly father and a landlord of rental property. Edward has been a salesman, bar doorman, typesetter, and security guard.
While I don't think you need a Ph.D. to discuss evolution intelligently, it does require some competence and study. Daley shows none in his essay, and his experience includes nothing relevant to this field. What is it with property managers and obtuse creationism?
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Well, it was posted at RenewAmerica. Not exactly anyone's first stop for scientific discussion (or basic logic).
Do you think we can get the young earth creationists and the ID creationists to go after each other, and leave the rest of the world alone? (They pretend to be allies, but if the ID people gain any ground, like in Dover, PA, I suspect the YECs will get bolder, demanding "equal time".) Just a thought. Thanks for another interesting post.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:08 AM -
PZ, why do you hate America? Here in this great land, everybody's opinion is worth the same as everybody else's, except for you Godless heathen pointy-head types who should be glad you're allowed to live in this great country at all instead of being shipped off to some Commie hellhole where you and your kind belong.
[Sorry, just couldn't bring myself to use the misspellings normally associated with such rants.]#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:09 AM -
M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
Heh. Okay, at about the same level of mathematical meaning:
T (time) = $ (money)
so:
M (matter) + $ (money) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
Does that mean that anyone who's rich enough can create life? I know there are rich people who think they're God, but I didn't realize the creationists agreed with them. - You are right - it is boring!
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Does that mean that anyone who's rich enough can create life? I know there are rich people who think they're God, but I didn't realize the creationists agreed with them.
You're describing the coalition that makes up the Republican Party.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:13 AM -
Redshift: Interesting point but you didn't take it far enough.
M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
Heh. Okay, at about the same level of mathematical meaning:
T (time) = $ (money)
so:
M (matter) + $ (money) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
Einstein told us that mass is energy (E=mc^2). so in fact in naturnal units where c = 1:
2*(mass) + $(money) = ABIOGENESIS
But, with the current rate of exchange $(money) = 0.5*GBP(money) and a here on earth a pound is 0.5 kilograms which is a measure of mass. this leaves us with (ignoring numbers of order unity):
(mass) = ABIOGENESIS
Thus, 1 hour spent in a catholic mass = ABIOGENESIS. Of course we already knew this since the communion wafer turns into human flesh in the same time.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:40 AM -
RenewAmerica? Oh Gawd. I took apart some Really Bad Philosophy from that site on my blog last night-- from an article entitled "Intelligent Design vs. Gay Marriage"... that made almost no mention of evolution at all, by the way, but talked a lot of hookah about mankind's "innate nature," and shamelessly (and inaccurately) name-dropped more dead white guys than you can shake a stick at. The perpetrator? A retired government accountant. (Philosophy is so EASY!... riiight)
Most amusingly, that guy, one Fred Hutchison, is "working on [a] book, which will be titled 'The Rise and Fall of Western Culture.'" Consider my pre-order filed.
The sheer incomptence on display at RenewAmerica is probably one of the great wonders of the 'net. That anyone could assemble so vast a collection of complete idiots...#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:46 AM -
dr.myers, i have a feeling u're being baited for some free publicity...there must've been some kind of property managers association memo that went out in their cirles...
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:47 AM -
"No competent scientist has ever proposed those formulas"
You have no idea how right you are. Check out Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith's biography:
http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/people/wilder-smith-ae.html#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:48 AM -
Did anyone notice that while he is busy writing "Ph.D." all the time he can get away with it (look at his sources), he always fails to mention what fields the Ph.D.'s are related to, and which universities they are from. Also, he forgets to mention peoples' current positions.
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:55 AM
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Go ahead and write your own rebuttals as an exercise.
Are we seeing the emergence of a new exam question?
And, Kyle, that's priceless!#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:59 AM -
So Daley quotes a hard-core Creationist to explain what evolution is. Yet somehow he fails to mention this particular fact.
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 12:01 PM
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Oh, I found a real nice endorsement of Wilder-Smith. PZ, you'll love it:
“Professor Wilder-Smith’s brilliant mind and extensive scientific training and research have not only been devoted to the service of mankind in general but has also been devoted to the service of God in particular. Utilizing his vast store of knowledge and unique and brilliant abilities to communicate, Professor Wilder-Smith has proclaimed the truth of God’s creation and His sustaining grace through both the spoken and written word with tremendous effectiveness.”
—Duane Gish
Vice-president, Institute for Creation Research, San Diego, California#: Posted by on 09/27 at 12:04 PM -
A pharmacologist who was also a "NATO three-star general" ???????
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 12:33 PM
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Give Daley some credit (at least he didn't clip the Darwin quote in the usual place... definitely needs to go back to quote-mining school).
I loved his reference list...
Reads like a who's who of creationism. -
I think it's admirable that you not only go out and collect these examples of curious vocalizations and bring them to the attention of your readers, but that you also are able to find positive aspects to each one. I fear, though, that your passing praise of the piece ("he spelled 'phyla' right") could be taken out of context by the creationist quote-miners, and used to somehow imply an endorsement of the entire piece...
More seriously, to me, calling it "wrong" gives it too much credit. I don't think that gibberish can be incorrect or falsified, it's just gibberish. What experiment could disprove Eqn 1 (either of them)? Hypotheses or theories which are later modified or completely discarded can have a noble place in the history of science despite being "wrong", but they have to have a least a little bit of coherence. You can't be wrong unless you could be right, at least as I use the word. -
Saints preserve us! He best keep his wack self away from MY City, if he knows what is good for him. He is NOT worthy of the name, and his part of the family is probably from Nothern Ireland and Republican too. I declare him Anathema!
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 12:55 PM
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Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, Ph.D.
Evidently Mr. Daley is highly impressed that Herr Doktor Professor Wilder-Smith has both a PhD AND a doctorate!#: Posted by Stephen Stralka on 09/27 at 12:59 PM -
PhD, AND a hyphenated name!
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 01:04 PM
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#41890: Stephen Stralka — 09/27 at 12:59 PM
Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, Ph.D.
Evidently Mr. Daley is highly impressed that Herr Doktor Professor Wilder-Smith has both a PhD AND a doctorate!
#41892: E Z Tu Impress — 09/27 at 01:04 PM
PhD, AND a hyphenated name!
Yeah, but he doesn't have any Umlauts in his name.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 01:41 PM -
I see we should be using the past tense
Arthur Ernest Wilder-Smith
...
Deceased
No wonder he hasn't published much lately.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 01:44 PM - We've had some fun with Mr. Daley's columns before. He's a rare find in that he seems to be an anti-Evolutionist who believes in Social Darwinism...
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My girlfriend owns rental houses which she attends to on a hands-on basis. Thus she is also, in effect, a "property manager." If she had to wade through this Birdnow-Daley crap, she would laugh until she fell over (fortunately, we have PZ to wade through and debunk for us!).
Of course, she's also an audiologist and has had some moderate exposure to real science and scientists, maybe that's the key difference.
Or maybe these two guys would be irredeemable idiots no matter how they made their living...#: Posted by on 09/27 at 02:45 PM -
Speaking of Birdnow, he has his brother Brian weighing in on the Scopes Monkey trial --> The Scopes Monkey Trial....Again.
He makes a bit of a deal about the fact that his brother has a PhD. (although he doesn't say in what).#: Posted by on 09/27 at 03:07 PM -
He makes a bit of a deal about the fact that his brother has a PhD. (although he doesn't say in what).
I'm guessing it's in propery management. -
It's sad. I honestly cannot tell the parody from the serious stuff when science-deniers are concerned. It's all so idiotic.
PZ, here's his qualification to talk about science:
He is a college graduate with a number of hobbies and interests, including [...] drinking 12-year-old single malt scotch.
He's drunk off his ass. That qualifies him to run his mouth endlessly on any old thing.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 04:30 PM -
If we combine the equation 1 from Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith (call it 1a) with equation 1 according to ID (call it 1b) we get a self-descriptive system:
1a: M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
1b: M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) + I (information) = ABIOGENESIS
Subtracting 1a from 1b yields:
I (information) = 0
How much more self-descriptive can you get? -
M (matter) + T (time) + E (energy) = ABIOGENESIS
Jeepers. Serge Lang has barely been dead for a week and
look at what these folks get up to.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 06:10 PM -
On the issue of right-wing ranting from ignorance, bad probability constructs relating to abiogenesis, senseless equivocation regarding evidential burdens ("If you cant show me how conscioussness evolved then evolution is full of hoaxs...why do the seculurists deny ID, its a sound theory"), and the obligatory catty remarks about "materialism" and "naturalism," I discovered a couple of doozies and made some friends in the process.
"Ogre" sounds off on probability here:
http://ogresview.mu.nu/archives/122781.php
while Jay from Stop the ACLU serves up a winner here:
http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2005/09/27/aclu-monkey-business/
The canards are so common as to be not worth noting, and the other commenters are so lost in their delerious bleating that they almost can't be pinned down and slammed for any one logical or scientific transgression. But I am increasingly amused by these guys' slapping each other's virtual backsides: "Ogre has an excellent analysis here..." "An awesome website, the Institute for Creation Research, gives this a sound thumping..." They're like a bevy of Mike Tysons and Lawrence Phillipses waxing rhapsodic about the social graces and rock-solid character of Dennis Rodman and Courtney Love. Frames of reference are at issue, I guess.#: Posted by on 09/28 at 01:17 AM -
He probably got his Ph.D from the people that keep spamming me with an ad to buy a diploma. They are from 'prestigious non-accredited universities based on your present knowledge and life-experience'. That sounds about right for all these wackos with degrees and Ph.D's.
#: Posted by on 09/28 at 02:58 AM
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Beaming visionary wrote
"Ogre" sounds off on probability here:
http://ogresview.mu.nu/archives/122781.php
while Jay from Stop the ACLU serves up a winner here:
http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2005/09/27/aclu-monkey-business/
Why are the comments on those two sites and others like Dembski's so sycophantic? On Pharyngula you get a lot of people who agree with PZ on one thing but disagree with him on another yet on the Anti-Science sites they just lap up everything they say with comments like.
Broken Messenger said (September 26, 2005 06:38 PM):
Of course, atheists disagree with this position because they believe that their views are by default outside the realm of "belief" or "faith." Logically speaking, you are 100% correct and I think you've done a nice job in presenting evidence where a leap of faith must occur. Naturally, the counter argument used is that we just don't know enough through science in order to address your concerns. Of course, science never defines where inane stuborness in holding to such a view begins and ends. One could make the argument that Pink Unicorns do exist and we just don't have enough science yet to support it, yet such notions are laughed at and dismissed while just as great leaps of faith are required to hold to the prevailing thoughts on cosmic and biological evolution.
Brad
Ogre said (September 26, 2005 08:42 PM):
Thanks for stopping by, Brad -- and you get the point of my post entirely. By saying we don't have enough science to explain something means that you must have faith in it. And to believe naturalism actually takes much more faith than intelligent design.
Raven said (September 27, 2005 09:06 AM):
Ok...LOL...uh huh....way cool....
WAY above my head but it was fun to read. LOL
Ogre said (September 27, 2005 09:53 AM):
I tried to keep it simple, but sometimes some "stuff" is just too complex! Thanks for stopping by.
Michael said (September 27, 2005 09:56 AM):
Very nicely done Ogre.
Allah has 72 virgins waiting for his warriors, we just don't have the science yet to prove it yet. I think these are recycled virgins though..
Ogre said (September 27, 2005 09:59 AM):
Thank you, Michael. But "recycled virgins?" That's beyond comprehension there... ;)
GM Roper said (September 27, 2005 11:21 AM):
Ogre, I do believe you have found your niche. That was awesome. Now, if you do it more often you will have to take time from eating neighborhood children and stray dogs and cats....but think of eating troll sammiches instead and keep this up.... great post amigo.
Ogre said (September 27, 2005 12:56 PM):
Thanks, GM!
I'm shooting for about once a week. I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm just trying to analyze the science using science. I see large holes in various aspects of science and I'm just trying to point them out to see if anyone else can see them.
I particularly liked the Ok...LOL...uh huh....way cool.... by Raven it reminded me of Beavis and butthead, similar levels of maturity and intelligence.#: Posted by on 09/28 at 08:09 AM -
The crux to the argument is the Cambrian Explosion. For if it did happen all at once and not over millions of years, then where would we be? Texas?
Because if during the pre-Cambrian period,
T+E+Q+U+I+L = A were ingested by W,
then how can we ignore the dynamic branching that takes place during abiogenesis?
The answer is we can't. And when you take T+M from Halliburton into account, the costs skyrocket into the trillions. It's just that simple.
a modest experiment - Jay from Stop the ACLU, at the top of his article, advises people to learn from Kent Hovind! I sincerely hope he's not expecting to be taken seriously in any way by people who have functional brains. Hovind makes the other dimbulbs look like flashbulbs.
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Jay from Stop the ACLU, at the top of his article, advises people to learn from Kent Hovind!
It's worse than that. The illistration at the top of the page is from the comic "Bid Daddy" written by Jack Chick!#: Posted by on 09/30 at 01:15 PM