Title Author Date

Stink Bug? Kobayashi , Layne Nov 17, 2005

Was presented with the "StinkBug" as being evidence for intelligent design ...
It appears to me to be a case of Irriducible Complexity ... but am having trouble finding relevent data on the subject ... any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Exegesis vs. Eisegesis Holloway, Simon Nov 13, 2005

Naftali,

Your letter is superb but, while I thoroughly agree with most of your
arguments, I must say that I differ with you regarding your conclusions.
You have attempted to present the Sages of the Talmud(s) as rogues, bent on
manipulating the Torah text as a means of buying themselves power, a power
which they systematically used to subvert those who disagreed with them.
While there is no denying the schismatic nature of the Rabbinic movement
(or, indeed, any other), I think that this demonisation is a little
far-fetched.

You make the extremely valid point on p.66 (according to my printed-out
copy) that "of course, it is possible that the law really pre-dated the
exegesis". Such a phenomenon, common in Judaism, is not called exegesis at
all, but 'eisegesis'. It is the practise of finding a textual support for a
longstanding tradition. You followed this observation up with two
questions: an enquiry into the source of the law, and a question regarding
the purpose of the homily. As you answered neither of those questions in
your text, I am assuming that they were both rhetorical.

The supposition that the homily may have served an eisegetical purpose is
too important to the issue for it to be brushed aside so lightly. I am
certain that individual traditions did not extend back to "Moses at Sinai",
but I am equally certain that a group of belligerent grey-beards did not
sit down and make them all up. These were longstanding traditions which
already held validity to an entire community of people. All that the Rabbis
did was utilise the texts that they loved to give them some kind of
sanction.

Is that so bad?

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Letter to My Rabbi

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Divine Farce -- ID vs Science Chalmers, John H. Nov 09, 2005

Your article is an excellent discussion of science vs ID, one of the best I have seen. However, few exobiologists/astrobiologists or origin of life researchers think that DNA is primordial. Most accept that an RNA world
preceded the present RNA-DNA-Protein world because RNA is both catalytic and informational. That said, many prebiotic chemists also think that RNA may be too complex and that something simpler, more stable, and perhaps easier to make under primitive earth conditions came first. Candidates are threose-RNA, peptide-RNA, or some other polymer with a backbone simpler than the chiral ribose phosphate of RNA.

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Divine Farce: A Scientific / Philosophic Romp Through Intelligent Design

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Curious discovery about evolution T, P Nov 07, 2005

Hi

The sender writes computer simulations for molecular evolution and may have discovered something about how DNA evolves. Your email address was found by a relevant search on the internet and if you can spare a few minutes your view would be appreciated...

No-one sensible denies evolution, although some sensible people think that totally random genetic mutation, even after the action of natural selection, still cannot fully account for the rate at which species diverge from a common origin.

But it might be possible that an unknown source of mutation could change the speed of evolution while leaving it thoroughly based on Darwinian natural selection: because while it is impossible for most scientists to accept any intelligence behind species design, any design which occurred as a result of selectively advantageous cell chemistry ought to be completely acceptable.

Visit http://www.mutationengineer.homechoice.co.uk and you will see how a simple molecule could dramatically accelerate evolution in a way which might allow design without intelligence.

In a computer simulation the action of just such an agent threw out three surprising co-incidences :

It generated long sections of repeating short period junk DNA (a genetic mystery)
It explained how gene clusters of common origin could mutate in tandem (another genetic mystery)
It gave a powerful selective advantage to genes organised with introns (another genetic mystery).
The author accepts it's probably all rubbish. But what should you do when you stumble upon something which might make sense, and yet are disinclined to drop everything and become an experimental biologist?

My solution is to publish a website and share the information in the hope that someone picks up the baton.

PT (Nov 2005)

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Just my humble opinion... Martin, Steve Oct 23, 2005

I find the whole blood clotting cascade debate interesting, however, I think two points are being missed. The first point is that the elegant diagrams of the cascade most likely do not actually represent in vivo function of clotting factors. The second point is that when considering survival of an individual or species, platelets are much more important than clotting factors anyway.

The discussion seems to be about blood clotting in general, but the arguments are all specifically about blood clotting factors. Blood clotting factors only play a small role in overall blood clotting. It seems everyone assumes that lack of these factors invariably leads to death at birth, but this is not true. Dysfunction of blood clotting factors leads to a broad spectrum of results in humans, ranging from early spontaneous abortion, to relatively healthy adult. While we are taught the extrinsic, intrinsic, and common pathways, this is most likely not the actual functioning in the human body. The "physiologic pathway" probably starts with the extrinsic pathway and jumps to the intrinsic pathway.

The most important part of blood clotting is the blood platelet, not the clotting factors.

What does this mean? It means these great arguments about the clotting cascade are really not relevent. Using the argument of the cascade as revealing intelligent design is not only wrong, it is a totally irrelevant analogy.

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Clotted rot for rotten clots

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