Hanging out with Phillip Johnson, Godfather of the Intelligent Design Movement

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• Hanging out with Phillip Johnson
• Godfather of the Intelligent Design Movement

[djs259]

@TheDarwinman The only academic degree that Charles Darwin held was in Theology.

To exclude Johnson's arguments out of hand on the basis of his academic degrees goes against every standard of intellectual integrity. If he had a degree in molecular biology, would you then take his arguments any more seriously? Oh, wait, Michael Behe has already done that, only to be attacked relentlessly the same pointy headed geeks demanding advanced science degrees from those who expose their flawed logic.

[TheDarwinman]

Phillip Johnson is a lawyer. Perhaps we should ask Werner Arber to blather to us about his opinion regarding Tort Reform in someones living room.

[allan3141]

Keith you are the one misleading yourself. He did not say what you are suggesting. If you do not seek to even bother to understand the point someone is making why bother to comment? By all means challenge what is being put forward if you have a problem with it. But he did not say it is suggested that finches did become bears gorillas, or eagles for that matter. Do you really not get the point he is making even if you disagree with it?

[allan3141]

@KeithTaylor1 @KeithTaylor1 "No adaptation favored by natural selection is trivial" Sure it is. "If micro happens it leads to macro, end of story" You say end of story but this issue is far more difficult than that.

[allan3141]

cont.. "That is the idea he is putting forward and it's perniciously misleading" No that is not the idea he is putting forward you are being perniciously misleading. "If an existing species is evolving on a micro level the effect of micro evolution will be macroevolution" Perhaps you mean or understand something different by these terms, but it at the very least is not self-evident that it would and the more that is understood the more implausible it becomes.

[allan3141]

@KeithTaylor1 "No part of evolutionary theory suggest birds can spontaneously become bears or any other such nonsense" He did not say that did not come close to saying and never ever even suggested anything like that. cont....

[allan3141]

@grandconjunct I think and hope so too. I am not a Christian but I recognise that he is a great man.

[StopFear]

Phillip Johnson is a very smart man. Very good guy. He taught at my school.

[Lookin4TruthDotCom]

Not so, sorry I just cannot buy it. Small non speciated (what he calls trivial changes ie. bigger nose on a human) change does not neccessarily mean all changes add up to create speciation. Take Darwin's finches, for example, their beaks change generation to geneation, smaller and then back to bigger. Can we then say over millions of years the longer beak will be a trunk???

If most As become Bs can we simply assume (untestable unrepeatable unvarifiable) that eventually all As will be Zs?

[KeithTaylor1]

No part of evolutionary theory suggest birds can spontaneously become bears or any other such nonsense. That is the idea he is putting forward and it's perniciously misleading. Also if an existing species is evolving on a micro level, the effect of micro evolution will be macroevolution. No adaptation favored by natural selection is trivial, and enough change at a micro level will result in a fundamentally changed species (i.e. speciation). If micro happens it leads to macro, end of story.