Another Example of Evolutionist Fantasizing Aggressively Promoted as Science, per Dr. Adequate

Dr. Adequate again:

Opportunely enough, details of a new intermediate form, Liaoconodon hui, have just been published.

Some details here:

The new genus and species described by Meng et al. comes form the exquisitely preserved Jehol biota of Liaoning, and shows the last tenuous connection between the mammalian ear ossicles and the lower jaw, via Meckel’s cartilage, an ancient part of the lower jaw lying along the medial surface of the dentary. They refer to it as a “transitional mammalian middle ear”, the transition being between the mandibular middle ear (i.e. attached to the lower jaw) of the earliest mammals (and most advanced reptiles), and the definitive mammalian middle ear present in the adults of all extant mammals, in which there is no persistent connection between the middle ear and the lower jaw.

Now in modern mammals Meckel's cartilage disappears during embryological development:

Living mammals, including humans, have Meckel's cartilage as embryos, but it disappears as they mature. In the L. hui fossil - an adult - it is ossified and the fossil shows how it supported some of the post-dentary bones as they shifted into the ear.

This is more evidence for the evolution of this irreducibly complex structure.

Meanwhile, creationists continue to attribute this sort of structure to entirely unknown and unevidenced processes; and this they do based only on not being able to see how this sort of thing evolved --- despite the fact that, dammit, we can.

Look, you believe life evolves so something like this is evidence to your mind, although it is only evidence because it fits with your theory, not the kind of evidence that actually proves anything. It's just another of those plausibilities that the whole theory is built of, just an exercise in recognizing structural analogues.

Since I do not believe life evolves, except for variations within a species, such phenomena are simply examples of design similarities that occur everywhere in nature. Its function in the embryo may be quite different than Evo theory makes of it, you're simply smugly content with a facile explanation that fits with the theory, and of course there is no way to falsify such an explanation so you have no fear that anything a creationist might say could unsettle your certainty.

And, we CAN "see how this sort of thing evolved" BASED ON YOUR ASSUMPTION THAT IT DID. We can "see" the same thing you see, we simply recognize that it's nothing but another imaginative construction and not evidence in the true sense at all.

Also, you ask us to take a lot for granted even in the description of the evidence. You ask us to believe that this really is the same cartilage in all the examples you mention though you provide no photographs to demonstrate it, that it occurs in the embryos of mammals and humans -- does it look exactly the same? Are you sure it's the same structure? -- and that it later "disappears," and that its function is as you describe with relation to dental development. Hey, maybe it is, but as I recall, a famous propagator of the "Biogenetic Law," Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, which my generation was raised on, had so fudged the illustrations he offered in proof of his thesis that eventually they were recognized as fraud -- all in the service of proving his belief in that principle and in evolution itself.

Yet we're still only presented with raw descriptions such as the above and not shown anything that would allow us to judge for ourselves whether the researchers are interpreting the phenomena correctly or perhaps imposing their own bias on the data -- fudging a bit here and there.

In any case, the occurrence of any particular structure across many species doesn't prove evolution, merely design similarity.

Oh, and terms like "ancient" and "modern" -- as well as "intermediate" -- are also interpretive bias imposed on the data. A species of word magic.

Evolutionary "science" is really laughable when you take the time to ask the right questions.

Michael Behe Meets Science in Wonderland

Another delightful exercise in fantasyland science from EvC:

A number of Behe's claims have been falsified. His claim that the human blood clotting system was "irreducibly complex" was proven wrong for example, right in front of his face, at the Dover trial. His claim that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex was likewise demolished. This doesn't seen to worry Behe or his supporters as much as one might hope it might, given that honest scientists are supposed to discard falsified notions.

It's really interesting that they will say Behe's claims to irreducible complexity were PROVEN WRONG when ALL that was brought forward to prove this is the usual collection of examples of other systems in nature that have some similarities with the system in question, that is, other discrete designs are ASSERTED to demonstrate evolution only because one can mentally arrange their operations in a hypothetical line of descent based on completely subjective judgments of their homological similarity. This SHOULD be laughed out of court and out of the scientific journals.

Funny how they'll affirm that argument by analogy is a fallacy and yet completely accept subjectively determined gradations of physical homologies as Science, which is the same thing. The delusions of Evolutionist Science are magnificent, really.

William Paley already did it for intelligent design and irreducible complexity years ago. It's completely a matter of clear-headed ability to judge such things, they do not lend themselves to Scientific Method.

What predictive power does Behe's work give us? What observation would support or falsify his claims?

ONLY evidence that a complex functioning system did in fact descend genetically from a functioning system built on only some of the same functioning parts. Homologies don't cut it, that's like taking dozens of models of cars and arranging them in a graded series according to subjectively assessed similarities and saying they developed one from another although we know they were independently intelligently designed. Oh yeah, they'll nitpick the flaws in THIS analogy to death while swallowing whole the same kind of reasoning as long as it supports evolution.

So he says the Dover trial determined that Behe was wrong. How odd that the courts have any power to define Science -- which could only happen with "science" that isn't science or it could determine it just fine on its own. Oh well. That's the way it goes in Evolutionland.

So I looked up Dover to find out just how Behe's claims were supposedly defeated and at Wikipedia I found, surprise surprise , that all they have is subjectively defined HOMOLOGIES and a whole raft of COULDAWOULDAs.

...even cases where removing a certain component in an organic system will cause the system to fail do not demonstrate that the system couldn't have been formed in a step-by-step, evolutionary process ... the possibility that seemingly irreducibly complex biological features may have been achieved with a period of increasing complexity, followed by a period of simplification.

Because they are able to IMAGINE such things they think they've arrived at PROOF? Because they are able to MENTALLY SUBJECTIVELY CONSTRUCT POSSIBILITIES they think they've arrived at PROOF? They have a HYPOTHESIS AT BEST which I argue a couple posts down is ALL they can have. It's all Behe has too. That's the best that can be done with this sort of thing. You can never have proof because you can never have experiment or replication, you cannot apply Scientific Method to these things. IT REMAINS A JUDGMENT CALL, NOT SCIENCE.

"As expert testimony revealed, the qualification on what is meant by "irreducible complexity" renders it meaningless as a criticism of evolution. (3:40 (Miller)). In fact, the theory of evolution proffers exaptation as a well-recognized, well-documented explanation for how systems with multiple parts could have evolved through natural means." (Page 74)

COULD HAVE. Yet, read on, this sort of purely conjectural reasoning is now referred to as "evidence" which they say "refutes" intelligent design and meets the criteria for "testability." What universe do these people live in anyway?

Professor Behe has applied the concept of irreducible complexity to only a few select systems: (1) the bacterial flagellum; (2) the blood-clotting cascade; and (3) the immune system. Contrary to Professor Behe’s assertions with respect to these few biochemical systems among the myriad existing in nature, however, Dr. Miller presented evidence, based upon peer-reviewed studies, that they are not in fact irreducibly complex." (Page 76)

Using "evidence" duly sanctified by published articles put out by the community of true believers in evolution, he declares Behe's conclusions simply NOT irreducibly complex. It's because NONE OF THIS IS TESTABLE SCIENCE in the true sense that they can get away with this delusional thinking!

It's all woulda coulda shoulda analogical reasoning with not a shred of actual evidence or proof.

Oh well. As long as we are dealing with a self-validating subjective analogical authority-sanctified system we might as well give up on trying to have any kind of discussion with them, there's no point in continuing to beat our heads against this brick wall of a fantasy. I can't wait for Judgment Day sometimes to see the looks on their faces. (Of course I do wish them salvation, and then they'd see the error of their ways before it has eternal consequences.)