Comments on: Expelled Q & A at Biola University

By: Cedric Katesby

Cedric Katesby — Sun, 25 May 2008 15:30:47 +0000

Thanks to Troy for his monitoring of the slimy and shifty creationists.
I hope he was able to take a long shower afterwards.

By: ORFan genes and intelligent design « Playing Chess with Pigeons

ORFan genes and intelligent design « Playing Chess with Pigeons — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:58:22 +0000

[...] a previous post about a Expelled Q & A event held at Biola University, I mentioned that Paul Nelson (of the Discovery Institute), who chaired [...]

By: clear as mud

clear as mud — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:01:34 +0000

Heh. OK, good advice. The third is a trick for most folks, I imagine, so Troy is definitely lucky on that score! The second one is probably the most important. Just keep at it, know that some people will simply never respond, and assume there’s others, however few, who will leave with more knowledge then that with which they arrived.

By: Kathy Britain

Kathy Britain — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:45:19 +0000

Clear as mud asks:
How do you do it without just giving up in complete exasperation?

1) You have to have a brain that can retain enormous amounts of information (to nit-pick the details).
2) You have to have the drive, passion and the knowledge that 1 out of 100 people (hopefully) who read blogs like this one will actually use their brain instead of letting other people think for them.
3) You must have a wife or partner who for years has been used (abused?) as a sounding board for your thoughts, ideas and complaints that she hears over and over again on the same subject(s). And yet, this same wife encourages him to go after the brainless bastards.
How silly am I?
I am very proud of Troy and his blog.

By: clear as mud

clear as mud — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:47:43 +0000

Oh man.

Reading about this kind of interaction makes me reel. I’d played with the thought of attempting to simply describe the super-simple basics of genetics and natural selection to friends, fellow bloggers, and family. Just to be a source of some rationality.

But just getting a rough idea the endless random and fake flotsam that is thrown in the air to utterly confuse everyone – makes me so discouraged that some joker won’t just come in pull out one sentence from a random real article (or make a fake claim from a non-existent source) and go “ha-HA! I’ve disproved everything!”.

On the one hand, in a blog setting, one can go and do some literature searching, get to the bottom of the bs, and put up a nice point-by-point rebuttal. But, on the other hand, when this nonsense is pulled in person – I mean who knows what random crap their going to pull out of their rears.

Is it even possible to prepare oneself for every new warping of actual observations – which could be pulled from anywhere and any time period – or lying about observations that were never even made?

It makes my heart race.

How do you do it without just giving up in complete exasperation?

By: Ian Musgrave

Ian Musgrave — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:12:22 +0000

To be fair to Paul, he’s not really the one pushing the mutational hot spot idea. But if he could educate those pushing it, that would be nice.

Afterall, when he learnt that the genes of unknown function in Mycoplasma were not ORFans, he quickly dropped that argument.

By: Jim Lippard

Jim Lippard — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:27:49 +0000

Now that Paul Nelson is aware of this (and he can consult Nishikimi himself to verify), he will have the choice of demonstrating that he is capable of correcting his errors and learning from mistakes, or he can follow what seems to be the modus operandi of the Discovery Institute, and turn the mistake into a lie.

That could actually be the DI’s motto: turning mistakes into lies since 1996 (that’s actually giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that this is only the MO of the Center for Science and Culture).

By: NP

NP — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:04:03 +0000

Ian, I think it is also appropriate to ask whether Nelson will issue an errata, or if he will continue to use the paper as “evidence” in his future talks.

By: Ian Musgrave

Ian Musgrave — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:05:18 +0000

Jim (Comment 15). This is correct. Nishikimi has agreed that this is an error. Whether an errata or follow up paper is forthcoming is another thing.

By: Jim Lippard

Jim Lippard — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:53:02 +0000

Re: Ian Musgrave comment 15: And I hear that Nishikimi agrees with your conclusion, and that his paper was in error on that point.