Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
The Panda's Thumb has a post up detailing the Discovery Institutes attempt to hold a Wistar Symposium retrospective. The Disco Institute rounded up their usual cast of characters (Meyers, Nelson, Behe, Dembski, Wells, Axe, Marks, etc.) and proceeded to lecture a bunch of real evolutionary scientists about evolution. The results were about as surreal as you can get. I can't resist quoting three parts.
First in a section on biological information we get this:
Bob Ulanowicz pointed out a mathematical inequality in Dembski's model, implying non-conservation, and asked where the conservation comes from. Dembski answered that he just inserts that into the program himself. Bob followed up by asking if that meant Dembski was open to the idea of information being created and destroyed. Dembski replied that it's like "a thermodynamic thing" but it's also not "a second law thing."
Yup, just adds it in the program! Second, we get news about what all those folks at the biological institute are up to with this summary of some research:
She was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed "leaky growth," in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, "So, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?" at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce beneficial new information.
You heard that right. They proved evolution could happen at which point the moderator ended the discussion. Go figure. Then in the comments we get this from Paul Nelson (who still hasn't answered my question about Explore Evolution):
An adult nematode is required to specify a nematode embryo. So whence the adult nematode?
Read the rest at the Panda's Thumb!
Comments
You Tease! What's next - pictures of you wearing a tight sweater, and a short skirt? :)
Posted by: J-Dog | February 7, 2008 8:36 AM
Oh good grief! They can't really be that dumb, can they? Is the whole DI edifice built on their inability to answer the question as to whether the chicken or the egg came first?
Posted by: Dunc | February 7, 2008 9:14 AM
H. Humbert, one of the commentators to the article sums up the ID scam:
"There is little separating those who see cells as tiny machines from those who see the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich."
Posted by: J-Dog | February 7, 2008 10:21 AM
What's wrong with referring to cells as machines? Is it just because the word "machine" is associated with being artificial?
Dictionary.com returns:
"an apparatus consisting of interrelated parts with separate functions, used in the performance of some kind of work"
Posted by: Mark | February 7, 2008 4:23 PM
J-Dog, You lost me on that. How am I a tease? Besides isn't the sweater and skirt Lou FCD's thing?
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | February 7, 2008 7:20 PM
Yup, just adds it in the program!
That's the beauty of thinking there's a designer. You just add, subtract, or change anything in a model -- at any time, for any reason -- because that's how you model what god would do.
As they say, that's the difference between god and me.
Posted by: QrazyQat | February 7, 2008 11:11 PM
Yup, then the next thing you know, you are seeing yourself in a sandwich
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | February 8, 2008 12:36 AM
The chicken (nematode)/egg dilemma was actually resolved by the ancient Greeks, to the extent that they recognised it required the pre-existence of chickens or nematodes. To be fair, they supposed this was a spiritual pre-existence, since they had no other mechanism available to them.
There was some Englishman in the mid 19th century who explicitly realised that you could avoid the spiritual existence stuff if you substituted a preceding species. His name will come to me...
Posted by: chris y | February 8, 2008 6:01 AM
[[the next thing you know, you are seeing yourself in a sandwich]]
=slapping forehead= No! NO!!!! I am NOT going to ask the dreaded question:
"i can has Virginburgr?"
AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
"Surreal" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Posted by: wotthe7734 | February 11, 2008 12:04 AM
The point about machines is that, at least ordinarily, a machine is pre-defined to perform a certain function or set of functions, in some direct way. Biological development is different in that it is extremely contextual, and even the functioning of the resulting organism is normally far more contextual than that of an ordinary machine.
However, since the development of computers, and of machines with computers in them, etc., the concept of a machine is being broadened to the point where we may as well consider biological systems to be machines, as long as we don't start thinking that this means they must be machines in the simple-minded sense required by ID-ers.
Of course, ID-ers are fabricating biological theory to fit theological theory, not biological reality, so they have to treat development "mechanically" or have their Designer constantly intruding into development and even behavior. God forbid a highly contextual, feedback-based, environmentally sensitive process, since that would allow too many opportunities for the developmental sequencing for a species to arise incrementally by variation and natural selection.
The worst thing for ID in this respect is that we know observationally that their view of development is false, because we can systematically manipulate environments and see how these manipulations affect development -- and they do. Development simply isn't a rigidly deterministic process isolated from the environment in which it occurs.
Living things are open systems, not little self-contained entities that don't interact with their environments (or that react only marginally and minimally).
Thus, we see that the ID view, as expressed by ID-ers themselves, is profoundly anti-rational biologically as well as profoundly anti-rational philosophically. In this respect, it is worse than merely inadequate as a theory, it actually trivializes biology, by throwing out much of it so as to preserve the rigid, simple-minded determinism so it can be used as evidence of design.
Posted by: Chris Cogan | August 12, 2008 4:39 PM
The best commentary on ID I've seen was on Al Franken's TV show, awhile back, where he had a fundamentalist preacher conversing (played by himself of course) with a Native American on the subject. They were in agreement that the theory of evolution was Evil (capital E and all) and wrong and that the world was created by God...but then they started talking about creation and everything went haywire. Because, you see, they had 2 very different Creation stories, 2 different Creators who went about creating things in 2 very different ways and each was quite convinced that his view was right and the other's was wrong. So, IDers, who was it? Yahweh? Taiowa? Allah? Brahma? And how long did it take? 7 days? 1 day? 5 minutes? A single instant? And how did it happen? By word? By a wave of the Divine Hand? By diving into the primordial sea or soup? Let's get the details now! And did it all go as pre-ordained or was God surprised? These things are important!!!!!
Posted by: DianaGainer | August 13, 2008 5:01 PM
Ooh! I see I forgot the most important question of all! IDers, how do you discover the answers to your questions? Since the scientific method is a bunch of poo, and we obviously can't put God in a test-tube to see what's what, how does one proceed? We can't just pray, you know, because we all pray in different ways and we come up with different answers. That won't do. Hm, hm, this is definitely getting messy. Help me out now, folks. Whatever shall we do??
Posted by: DianaGainer | August 13, 2008 5:30 PM