You can find Dr. Theobald's response to Camp
here. CTD claims this is "obfuscation" without any comments or evidence. I sincerely doubt if he's thoroughly read any of the web pages in question, be they Dr. Theobald's or Camp's.
At a glance, it isn't difficult to spot all of the logical fallacies in Camp's "critique" that have been listed by Dr. Theobald, along with generous helpings of PRATTs.
Thanks for the link. The intent to obfuscate & equivocate is readily communicated, right off the bat!
The genealogical relatedness of all life predicts that organisms should be very similar in the particular mechanisms and structures that execute these basic life processes."
It is common knowledge that the different eyes found among the members of the animal kingdom are NOT very similar at all. But any argument on such grounds will be met automatically with redefinition of "very similar".
This guy can't even get out of the starting gate without invoking evoblabber.
But anyhow, LindaLou must take his straw man accusation at face value, for to look into the matter would... you know. ...And she knows too. Them folks love their evospeak, and they <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/reallymad.gif" alt="" /> bigtime if it gets translated.
What's next? He inadvertently confesses his intention to bait & switch
Elsewhere in his criticism (e.g., footnote 6), Camp bemoans the article's indifference to mechanism in explaining the evidence for common descent. Throughout the article, it is assumed that the fundamentals of biology (such as genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology) are correct, especially those not directly dealing with the origin and evolution of biological adaptations.
He specifically states what he says Camp "bemoans". It's not bemoaning to call someone on what they say, and he
did say his model was to be independent of any explanatory mechanism.
And make sense of this evospeak: "Throughout the article, it is assumed that the fundamentals of biology (such as genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology) are correct..."
After writing
I do not consider microevolutionary theories, such as natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, theories of speciation, etc., which biologists use as mechanistic theories to explain macroevolution.
Is he saying natural selection and genetic drift aren't fundamentals of biology? Is he saying "developmental biology" (which is evospeak for recap) is a
fundamental of biology?
But Camp is correct. You can't claim indifference to mechanism & then turn around and invoke specific mechanisms, while excluding others. ...Unless you're an evolutionist being judged by evolutionists. Who among them would dare to cast the first stone?
(*)Common descent does predict specific biological universals, since any significant change (any "loss and replacement processes") in the structures that perform the four basic life functions would result in nonviable organisms; these structures cannot be lost nor can they be replaced (although they can be expounded upon).
I see no mention of the "four basic life functions"; but there's no need. He's again full of crap. Evolutionists openly claim loss & replacement when it comes to respiration. They claim gills were lost and replaced by lungs.
Camp's aim couldn't have been better. He nailed that one solid <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/archery.gif" alt="" />
Common descent does not predict that these structures must be identical, just that the similarity must be statistically significant, and that there must be viable intermediates between the variations.
Oh my! Doesn't the bat falsify this? Where's the viable intermediate? Just kidding - we know imaginary intermediates are perfectly "viable", even when nobody can imagine one that's plausible. The burden of proof, they say, is on you to
prove they can't imagine it. (Which makes the whole thing unfalsifiable (which is the whole objective).)
But after all that nonsense about "strict" requirements, trying to build the case that what he presents is testable & falsifiable, he says
In fact, common descent does not require that all organisms even have a genetic code.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hammermehead.gif" alt="" />
(*)That said, the main important point of "prediction 1" is this—we can make very strong a posteriori predictions about biological universals by combining common descent with what is known.
False. The best they can do is predict that they'll be able to come up with an imaginary scenario to fit their preconceptions, redefining terms left & right if needed. (See RAZD's thread for an example.)
Likewise, given the fact that we now know that all organisms studied to date, including bacteria and birds, have a very similar genetic code, we can use common descent to predict that all undiscovered or unexamined organisms that fit between bacteria and birds in the standard phylogenetic tree will also have a similar genetic code.
A circular prediction. Wow!
First, common descent does predict that the genetic codes should be similar a priori.
False. Darwin claimed to believe in common descent & predicted no such thing. Why cannot Theobald point to evidence of this prediction? It ain't there, so now he tries to make out like it's implicit. Nothing of the kind is true, and he'd have cried "straw man" in a heartbeat if any creationist claimed it was implicit.
But that's evospeak for you.
Hunter is speculating about how biologists would have reacted in a hypothetical historical scenario in which we did not find highly similar codes between organisms.
Inaccurate. The "speculation" is about the reaction of evolutionists -
not biologists. And it's not pure speculation either, it's a valid, and well-supported hypothesis based upon observation of reactions in analogous historic contexts.
Common descent does not predict "both A and not-A"—it predicts "both A and B." Hunter equivocates by misidentifying "A and not-A" with a range of predicted outcomes. A range of outcomes (i.e. "A and B") does not necessarily encompass all possible outcomes (i.e. "A and not-A")—thus the equivocation. If a theory predicts both A and B, then either A or B can be used as evidence for the theory.
Again false. Both evolution & stasis are predicted (to hear them tell it at least). A & not A. We have plenty of not A. Anyone honest enough to admit stasis isn't predicted may request other counter examples.
To rewrite Hunter's incorrect statement: when it comes to the genetic code, evolution predicts a range of findings, and it can use any of those findings as supporting evidence. That's how science works.
The way science works, you throw out that which leads to false predictions. The hippo being the closest relative of the whale? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smilieflamethrower.gif" alt="" />
Gotta nest the next one. And a little bold won't hurt, either.
The fact that some leading evolutionists believe early
life forms were biochemically distinct from modern forms confirms that evolution does not predict biologic universals. Robert Shapiro, for example, entertains the possibility of finding living relics of an original protein-based
life form that lacked DNA and RNA. (Shapiro, 293-295.) Likewise, A. G. Cairns-Smith thinks that descendants of ancient crystalline clay
organisms may be all around us. He states: "Evolution did not start with the organic molecules that have now become universal to life: indeed I doubt whether the first organisms, even the first evolved organisms, had any organic molecules in them at all." (Cairns-Smith, 107.)
First, exactly how the universal ancestor originated and evolved is not within the realm of common descent; common descent concerns all evolution and descent from the last common ancestor to the present.
He's in a bind here. His own evopals play games redefining life to make abiogenesis
sound more plausible. But rather than render a conflicting definition, our evobabbler hopes the reader won't notice that they don't claim to be talking about non-life. He gambles that people will be too inattentive, and assume because he
pretends they're talking about non-life it must be so.
Of course biochemical similarity fits easily in a "creation framework." Anything can fit in the creation framework. This is precisely why present anti-evolutionary creationist theories are unscientific; all possible results are consistent with the "hypothesis."
If this were true, nobody ever would have bothered to invent evolutionism. And of course, the informed person knows better.
ReMine's "message" hypothesis is much too vague to be tested scientifically.
More like too robust to be challenged by mental midgets.
The above claim is not the prediction of biological universals; the prediction is that structures which perform the basic functions that characterize life should be similar.
Really?
Because of common descent, we know that certain types of organisms will be extremely similar in the biological universals before we actually go and check the organisms to see what their structures really look like.
And that's not all. Finding for "universal" on the page hits on other sentences above the denial, and it wasn't easy choosing this example. The quotes I marked (*) above are some of the other examples.
Evolutionism: <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smiliewhipit.gif" alt="" /> Babble, slave!
Evobabbler: <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smilieworship.gif" alt="" />
