OK, I’ll “take his comments about Tubulin” if you’ll provide a link or 3 (one from him that mentions them, then a couple debunking). Now, understand that many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, they gave me this sheepskin which insists I have a degree in Zoology. But the term “tubulin monomers” did not ring ANY bells. So I googled it. MEGO.
Now Tubulin does have striations & such, that is long straight dealibobbers (that’s a technical term. ). However, despite that sheepskin covered in latin mumbo jumbo over my desk, and despite reading several web pages devoted to this minutia- if some Biologist told me that Tubulin had “needles & holes”- as long as we both understood he was making up some laymans terms for some extremely technical jargon- I’d beleive him.
So, honestly Ben- do you have the sort of advanced degree in Molecular or Micro Biology so that you could say for sure that Behe didn’t just translate some technical terms into laymans language? Or are you just taking someone elses word for it?
“Intended audience would be too ignorant to catch the lie”- damn dude- there ain’t many dudes in America would could even understand his “lie”, let alone “catch it”.
I’m not sure I understand you here. Are you claiming that striation=needle?
**
Yes. I have a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Specifically, I’m a macromolecular X-ray crystallographer. (I’m even teaching a course on the subject this semester.) I have, therefore, precisely the sort of degree needed to understand issues of protein structure.
So if Behe says that tubulin is like a tuna can, and you can stack them, but the tops of the cans have little needles that have to fit precisely into little holes on the bottom of the next can, people can’t understand that? People can’t infer that the placement of the needles has to be so precise that it can’t have evolved?
Anyway, there’s no need to demand a cite- his claim is obvious crap if you just think about it. The tubulin monomers are supposed to stack on their own, under the influence of brownian motion. How on earth are you going to get little needles to fit into little holes under those circumstances? The precision of fit which he claims not only sinks evolution- it sinks the idea that life can exist at all without God moving all your proteins around by hand.
technically true, but it might make them think about it for a minute and not continue in the future.
What part of “the supernatural power and order established by God” don’t you understand.
Not at all; I am being very consistant here. I, however, take as one of my pillars underlying my argument that God exists and established a physical and nonphysical world, which can interact in certin limited but meaningful ways. You disagree. That does not mean I am not being consistant in following my axioms.
No; the division of the world into natural and supernatural elements is inherently contradictory.
If things that are supernatural follow different rules than the natural world, how do they interact? Any interaction between the two worlds must possess properties/characteristics, and thus can be described by laws. Those laws, taken together with the natural and supernatural laws, then define the system.
No matter what explanations you postulate, your system will always be ruled by laws. “Souls”, at least in their most common conceptualization, follow no laws. Thus, they do not exist.
No, sorry Ben. I read every link, and links within links, including those pubished by well known experts in the field, and who have written articles refuting every single minor scientific error. And, none of them have picked up on that “tubulin monomers” “lie” or “crap”.
This Biologist has discussed Behe’s theories & scientific facts in detail, and has debated him. No mention of your “lie/crap”. Ussary does say things like: “So Behe has overstated his case a bit”, “hasn’t done his homework” and such- and even pretty much says Behe was wrong a few times- although not in so many words.
There is one line that sorta gets into “needles & holes”, but I dunno if it is your arguement- Ussery says: “… newly formed peptide chains are then threaded into…”, which although doesn’t say “needles & holes” does mention things being “threaded” into other things. You would think that if your “needle & holes” arguement is such an out & out blatant lie, instead of perhaps “overstating a case” or changing scientific jargon into laymans terms, one of these other dudes who do this for a living would have also caught it. If they haven’t- then write & publish your paper, guy.
I am not saying you are utterly wrong, mind you, but no way does your critism of Behe get to rise into the “lie” or “crap” stages. Behe ain’t no “Jack Chick”. True, many disagree with him, and even point out errors. But “errors” aren’t the same as “crap or lies”. No controversial scientific book gets out there without many peers finding some holes, misstatements or errors. Behe is no exception.
So? I have picked up on it. Behe said it, it’s blatantly wrong, and as a molecular biologist he should know better.
It seems to me like you’re looking for excuses to disagree. First, you ask for a cite. Then, in the same post(!) you lay the groundwork for dismissing any cite I provide by asking whether I’m just taking someone else’s word for it.
And when you find that actually I know what I’m talking about, you declare that since you can’t find my argument already presented by someone else on the web, then that invalidates it, so it’s still not appropriate for me to call Behe a liar.
What on earth would possibly satisfy you? Let me guess- now that you know that the tubulin argument isn’t on the web already, it’s safe for you to declare that if it had been, you would have been convinced.
**
Your link goes to a dead page, but from your quote, it has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
Behe lies about what he finds when he reviews textbooks, and he lies about the current state of the literature on molecular evolution. Oh, and let’s not forget- he lies about tubulin, too.
We are spiritual in nature and wear a physical body in order to experience a physical world for the purpose of learning about ourselves. We are our spirit or “soul” if that is a better word for you.
Why? It is merely a relative distinction following mankind’s inability to accurately percieve the supernatural. I’m sure those beings with a larger perspective do not notice a difference.
I don’t claim to know how they interact. That they do is enough. The “how” is unimportant for me in this context.
Whose said I believed souls follow no laws? I stated, in fact, nothing but to contradict your assertion that a soul must be physically affectable or nonexistant. You would be correct for the material world.
Good old Dave Armstrong. I remember him. I’m sort of mystified as to why he would want to memorialize that debate on his own site. Even with his own cutting and pasting and personal commentaries, he still comes off pretty badly. Someone needs to tell him he lost that debate.
If man can’t perceive the supernatural, how can he be sure that it exists?
How do you know they interact?
Can you describe any characteristic or attribute of a non-material substance or being which would, in any way distinguish it from the non-existent? If a metaphysical object such as a “soul” cannot, in any way, interact with or be detected by the physical world, then what is the objective rationale for believing there is such an object?
(note: I’m not denying the possibility of a metaphysical world, I’m just asking if there is any purely materialistic or empirical reason to presume one)
Thank you for the heads-up, Ben. Strangely, I can’t seem to find any places in the webpage where I’m actually cited. Oh well…
Supernatural: operating without “natural” law.
It’s a false distinction: no law is more “natural” than another.
The properties that are generally attributed to souls are mutually exclusive. They cannot be indestructible and simultaneously either determine our actions or record/preserve our minds. If they can affect or be affected by our bodies, they’re subject to creation and destruction, just like everything else.
More to the point, it doesn’t solve anything to imagine a thing called a “soul” and then attributing aspects of consciousness to it. If our brains/bodies aren’t responsible for, say, a moral sense, how is the soul responsible for it? How does the soul work?
Yeah, like time, gravity, and matter right? Of course, you can detect light, more recently in the non-visible spectrum. Germs, bacteria and micro-particles, perhaps even a concept like ‘space’. The fact that black holes rotate, rather than pulsating. We’ve known about that all along.
EVERYONE, Human Knowledge has officially reached it’s pinnacle! We officially know everything!
Hawking can determine whether black holes spin or not, but he’s never told me there wasn’t a God.
There are some other logical problems with the concept of a soul, as well. For instance, does a soul have senses? Can it see, hear, smell, etc? If the answer is yes, then why do our physical bodies require eyes ears and noses? Does the soul have a memory? Can it think? Then why do we need a brain in our bodies? Also, if the soul can see, then why can’t it see for blind people?
Either the soul is completely insentient, or our physical brains and senses are redundant.
I am one of the Christians that considers the entire matter irrelevant to Christianity as a whole. Whether we evolved, popped out of thin air, or did something we haven’t discovered yet, it still doesn’t change who we are, and what we do.
I think we have to look at the Bible for what it is, and what it isn’t. It is not a science textbook, and I don’t think we should treat it as such. Doing so only ends up demeaning the entire purpose of the Bible, and makes Christians look dumb.
Is evolution true? Maybe. Is it relevant to my salvation? No.
Diogenes the Cynic, you’re off on the wrong foot when you assume that by a soul, Christians mean something with a physical reality. By definition, a soul is something metaphysical, supernatural.
Now, now, perhaps the body is the interpreter for the soul, and/or the representative of the soul within the physical world. When I engage in a decent “soul” simulation (forst person shooters) I find that I can control the actions of my ‘body’ within the virtual ‘world’, and though my body can be acted upon and die, I remain largely unaffected. I think that, give or take the running around wantonly shooting people, this sort of thing can be described almost exactly like the body/soul distinction usually is.
This works perfectly well for the soul observing the experiences of the body. You can watch a movie and the movie will be unaffected.
If a soul is controlling the body I would expect to see some breaking of the laws of physics going on at some level in the brain though…
But if your model had any validity, then drunk people would report that they felt perfectly lucid and rational- they just found that their body was taking off on its own while they watched in mute horror.
I wrote something about all this, but I can’t seem to find the file now. In essence, my prediction is that once evolution becomes as ho-hum as geocentrism, the next battleground will be neuroscience. We’ll have fundamentalists arguing that the Bible clearly states that God used evolution to create living things, but that the idea that consciousness arises from mere matter is completely incompatible with Christianity.
Of course, it will come in a number of shades, too. Die-hard fundamentalists (the equivalent of YEC’s) will believe in something like begbert2 describes: the soul is a Casper-the-friendly-ghost sitting in a cockpit, steering the body around. Then you’ll have the equivalent of OEC’s: they’ll believe that sure, the brain is responsible for a lot, but the soul is responsible for creativity and love. The IDists will believe that the brain is responsible for all cognition, but that the “soul” is just the little extra je ne sais quoi needed to produce the qualia, the “redness” you experience when looking at something red, causing experience as we know it rather than mere complex reflex action.
). However, despite that sheepskin covered in latin mumbo jumbo over my desk, and despite reading several web pages devoted to this minutia- if some Biologist told me that Tubulin had “needles & holes”- as long as we both understood he was making up some laymans terms for some extremely technical jargon- I’d beleive him.