If you happen to have a spare 3.5 hours.... OMFG TEH VIDEOZ!
BIG thank you to Doug for taping and subsequently 'dealing with' a shitload of video, just for readers of ERV. Least you all can do is clicky over to his site to see his gorgeous photography. You can also watch his short films at YouTube :)
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Three-and-a-half hours?!!
I can't even keep up with the blogs as it is. (580 unread - and that's after giving up Good Math, Bad Math and Unapologetic Mathematician.)
Maybe you can tell us where the good parts are?? Please?
lol Im talking to a crazy hobo. There are no good parts. But my part is the middle of Part 2 and all of Part 3 :)
Oh, I can barely listen to this guy ... I'm only 6 minutes in and he's giving me a headache.
Cool,
thanks Abbie !
I get the sinking feeling watching this that you talking to the creozombies about ERVs left them rather baffled LOL
Jackson gives me a headache. But you seem to have done a very good job (still only at video 3).
I've posted this on Richard Dawkins forums.
Idk how, but I made it thru video 10...good job dealing with him. And the 'zomg you didnt read teh biblez cuz ur still evilutionzist' lady...
Part 8 made my brain sad.
"Most people have heard about the DNA molecule- if that sounds like a big word to you there, we're talking about DNA molecule"
Way to talk down to your audience by the creationist. And is there such a thing as a "DNA molecule"?
And that shirt he was wearing! Ugh!
Wait -- I only saw like an hour and a half. Where's the other two hours? :P
Srsly, though, thanks for sharing, Abbie! I don't know how you managed to maintain your poise and grace as well as you did. I found myself yelling at the scree on more than a few occasions. Max Bear now thinks I'm a crazy person.
I'm glad I made it all the way through all ten videos, though, because I found the very last bit to be the most telling. The fact that Dr. Jackson equates "make believe" with "theoretical" tells me that he simply doesn't have a scientific mind. It's as simple as that. If "make believe" is the same as "theory" to you, you're not a scientist. End of story. I really wish you'd had the chance to point that out. (And you may have afterward -- from the abrupt ending, it seems that the discussion continued after the end of video 10.)
What's even funnier, though, is taking that idea to its logical conclusion. He makes the point that, from his point of view, the evidence points equally to evolution and goddidit. In other words, he thinks there is no strong evidence for his point of view. He then describes anything for which there isn't tangible proof as "make believe." Ergo, ipso facto, and other snooty Latin phrases, he's describing creationism as "make believe." That makes me giggle.
Keep it up, though! You're gonna have your own TED talk one of these days. :)
And by "scree" I mean "screen."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's right.
You did well. However, one thing that did particularly annoy me was that you allowed him to get away with the micro vs macro distinction. It's frustrating when scientists allow creationists to use this language as it really is such a canard. It should be explained in no uncertain terms that macroevolution is simply evolutionary change at, or above, the species level and, as such, speciation, which has been observed dozens and dozens of times, is a perfect example of it. Any other defintion they want to use, such as 'large scales' or 'kinds' is essentially arbitrary, and could not be objectively determined, and they would not be describing 'macroevolution'. If they are going to use the term macroevolution, it should be ensured that they use it in its meaningful context, and not simply as a way to accept any evolution that we observe while rejecting the rest. One speciation occurs, organisms can only possibly drift apart; there is no boundary saying "woh there, you're becoming a bit too different from one of your distant ancestors, no more mutations for you."
its red and the same size as the blood cell in the 6000 yr old dinosaur... yay! *opens bible*
Right off the bat, he comes out and says that he "interprets" all scientific data through his "creationary [sic] lens".
How then are we supposed to take him seriously when he says later on that he would give up creationism (and even going to church) if he came across evidence for evolution?
Abbie, My first time with a comment on your site even though I've been reading it for over a year. I was brought up a creationist and even became a fundamentalist (SDA) minister till I worked out through reading that it was all crap (about 25 years ago). Please keep up the good work! Us laymen need people like you to take on creationists - it helps us with our debates with relatives etc as well as with the development of our own knowledge. I have tried to educate myself about all this stuff - but it is sometimes hard work finding material at the right level. 3 cheers for Jerry Coynes new book. I was surprised that he only gave a paragraph to ERVs. I see this is as very strong evidence. I couldn't quite get Jackson point about ERVs. How could viral (bad) insertions at identical points in genomes of different species be the reult of sin. Have chimps sinned? Anyway, thanks Abbie!!!!!!!!
Already all over twitter, good job!
Wow. I have to commend you for having the courage to post this. I am about half way through your first 20 minute presentation.
My objective (remember, I also once commented that PZ Myers won a debate against a creationist) analysis is, so far, you're loosing, bad. Maybe it will turn around later. I'll let you know.
And how, exactly, is she "loosing" [sic], Willy Boy? Jackson ties himself into logical knots at every turn. Is Abbie the most charismatic speaker in the world? No. But she's got the facts on her side, and she pounds them for all their worth.
Jackson, on the other hand, even manages to swing and miss when he tries to pound the table.
Abbie doesn't talk down to the audience in an obnoxious magistral voice. That settles it.
In which I am forced to admit I didnt just do this for the lulz :) This was a no-stress opportunity to practice verbally presenting science to the public. Blagging vs public presentations are very different things, and I really did have a marvelous time using Jackson and this church as test dummies (no pun intended, of course *grin*).
I would love to be a face for science in the future, which means I need to practice :) I make no apologies for mistakes I make practicing, as long as I learn how to do better in the future. This appearance did bring up some 'presentation' questions for me... Fr*ming questions... As many of you noticed, I was very *nice*. I dunno why, I just thought I would try it out. Well, after the presentation, Creationists came up and blessed me and said all these lovely things... but not to my face, they have been behaving like damned dirty apes in the local newspaper.
Now, fr*mers tell me that we need to be nice and conciliatory with Creationists-- Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Yet the reaction Creationists have to evilutionists, whether you are 'nice' (me), or blunt (Dawkins) has been identical: Burn them.
Which makes me wonder why I shouldnt just be 'mean'. Its a lot more fun, and if youre damned if you do, damned if you dont (literally), why not have a good time? Why fake a smile, when you can make fun of Creationist stupidity? Why pour a cup of tea, when gutting a Creationist Claim with an electric knife is so much more satisfying?
Hmmmhmmmhmmm.
It's sad how patient you had to be with ignorant people for fear of being called names.
Should've just thrown back the question at them and asked "If whatever I say can still be interpreted by you as *GodDidIt*, then why are you asking me as if you care? What would ever convince you *GodDidntJustDoIt*?"
If anything can still be made an excuse for their new ad hoc story of Creation, why do science, or what should science try to offer?
Wow. Creationists are usually slicker than Charles Jackson. He's just rambling inanities. ERV you deserve some sort of award for not freaking out and staying Nice!ERV. I tend to come in with guns blazing and the goal of shaming the opposition...
I think you did fine Abbie, and it's great how your enthusiasm for your work shines through.
And at least you didn't spend half of your allotted time quoting other scientists (also a big FU to Jackson for bringing up the Feynman quote so often, I don't think he'd approve).
Abbie, I hope you didn't take what I said as an insult. Trust me: if I'd been up there, I would have wet myself. You rawk.
True story.
You've got the message. You've got the facts. Those are the important things! The slick presentation will come with time. :)
Of course not! Youre totally right!
Hey Abbie - Do you have any good references for a scholarly summary of the HERV-related evidence of common ancestry?
http://www.pnas.org/content/96/18/10254.full
This one is the best I've yet found, and it's surely a bit out of date by now.
Of course, as soon as I posted that link, I found a newer article that covers some of the same ground:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/gb-2006-7-6-r51.pdf
... ew. That guy cannot seem to formulate a cogent argument, it seems as if he's rambling through creationist talking points that he can't quite remember properly and is just kinda... smooshing them together somewhat.
Gotta say - from what I've seen of effective framing, it has very little to do with attitude and almost everything to do with with word/example choice. Some good, simple examples are 'pro-choice' vs. 'pro-abortion' - one uses a word connected (generally) with good things, the other with something at least questionable, and distasteful with the right picture (very late term abortion pic). Nisbet/Mooney generally have/had it backwards - PZ's 'Expelled' expulsion was perfect framing, by pointing out the hypocrisy in a most obvious manner - and laughing at the opposition (which makes people wonder what's so funny - and thus forces them to try to think like you) only improves it.
Huh - maybe I should write more of that up somewhere...
Anyway, it was interesting, but you seemed a bit soft on him and let quite a few things go by. Are we going to be able to see more of the Q&A?
I swear, if the leaves on Jackson's shirt were just a little different I would be convinced he was wearing a pot shirt.
I know, I know. A complete non sequitur. But Jackson doesn't seem to be taking his audience seriously at all.
Thanks, Abbie, for standing up to science against this random hobo. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Tips for later consideration:
Being kindly while explaining science to the Creationist questioners was both right and tactically correct. It worked.
However, I think you were too easy-going with Jackson himself. Here's a guy who is scientifically trained, though certainly out of his element in genetics. Yet he got away with repeated calling hominids "monkeys." He knows better. The "monkeys" thing was a propaganda device (and a lie) aimed at his knuckle-walking followers, who think themselves all that because they don't have tails. That lie hearkens way back to the Scopes trial and earlier. It's a lie, designed to foster ignorance in the Creationist flock that Jackson feel is stupid/ignorant enough to swallow it. Jackson's monkey lie needed to be called.
He also needed to be called on his lying assertion late in the question period that he would abandon Creationism if there were scientific evidence against it. The very fact that he was standing there supporting Young Earth Creationism while possessing a bit more that a layman's understanding of biology shows this to be a lie. Also, his statement earlier that he sees scientific evidence through the filter of Genesis shows he's lying.
Jackson is a liar, and needed, however politely, to be called on his "bearing false witness."
But my criticisms are minor. I was overall amazed at how well you did, and especially how educational was your presentation. Jackson, on the other hand, was shown to be only pretending to support science, while actually attacking both it and reason itself.
I've only listened to the first part so far.
I have to say that I lost a lot of respect for Jackson as a speaker when he adopted a slight silly sing-song when he was quoting Dawkins and Ruse. The contempt he is showing for those that disagree with him is reprehensible.
I will admit that I have contempt for his creationist position, but I would try to keep that contempt out of my debate. That he doesn't shows that he is playing to the crowds emotions and not their reason.
Pretend I didn't say it first.
Wow.
How can you do science when you can't address the guy who brought R.D. to your blog.
Abbie,
I like the way you handled the question about you having read the Bible. When this comes up, it is important to immediately defuse the fallacious notion that being a Christian means you have to choose the Bible as your science text. Implicit in the question is the assumption that all Christians should favor the Bible.
I would like to contribute to your cause in one small way. When I get to this point in my debates, I immediately cite the fact that some 80% of the world's Christians belong to denominations that have clearly articulated social statements embracing science. And these statements specifically cite ToE as being the best explanation for the diversity of life on the planet.
In other words, if you are RCC, United Methodist, UCC, Presbyterian, or Episcopalean your official doctrine claims science as the authority on matters regarding natural processes. ELCA Lutherans do not have an official social statement on science or ToE, however, many Lutheran writers are prolific on the subject, including Ted Peters, Martin Marty, and Rev. George Murphy PhD (theoretical physics).
If you go to the offical websites of these organizations, you can easily find the social statements I am referring to. If you would like links to those statements, I can get them for you.
I usually do just what you did in the video when challenged with "The Bible Question", which is to reduce the question to a matter of personal belief. Armed with the above information, you can go one step further and say that if your personal Christian belief is challenged by science then you are in a small minority of Christians.
If such leads to speaking tours in the future, I demand that you credit me as a launching pad for your success. Had it not been for my intellectually masterbatory letters to the editor of a local-yokel paper, none of this would've occured. ;-)
Whatever advantage Dr. Jackson had in delivery and crowd approval he lost once he started spouting YEC crap. It probably would have been futile to point out to him that belief in an ancient earth is not unique to evolutionary biology.
Among the not-so-good doctor's obvious mistakes:
Pointing out that certain hominid fossils have been demoted from direct human ancestors to distant cousins does not disprove common descent. As someone else pointed out, his constant dickish use of the term "extinct monkeys" showed that he was either ignorant of the topic or appealing to the audience's emotions.
He pointed out that dogs, wolves, jackals, and hyenas are all separate species, but they can interbreed and are all canids. The fact that hybrids from interspecies crosses in this family have varying degrees of fertility is evidence for common descent. (Most wolf/coyote hybrids are fertile, but dog/coyote crosses are about 50%.) Also, as most everyone here is aware, hyenas are hyenids, not canids, and therefore incapable of interbreeding with any members of the dog family. Perhaps that's a nitpick on my part, but illustrative that he knows very little about much of what he talks about.
ERV's poise throughout the debate was very comendable. Hopefully she won't be so polite next time.
Won't you crawl off and die already, you shit-drenched polyp! You said Abbie was "loosing", OP said she's not the most charismatic speaker, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
Given the bizzare natuure of the hyena's vagina, interbreeding with dogs would be mechanically impossible, never mind the genetic considerations.
I haven't watched any of these yet, I am afraid my head might asplode. However, I am sure there were many canards that ERV missed because they came so thick and fast.
A couple of podcasts ago the Skeptics Guide to the Universe interviewed Ken Miller. He talked about debating a famous creationist debater (Herny Morris?). Miller was able to defeat the guy because he basically had 5.5 weeks with nothing to do but prepare. He was able to go through previous debates and prepare answers to all the bullshit that was going to be spewd in the "Gish Gallop". As a result he defeated the creationist. The rational side is always at a disadvantage in these debates because they don't get to make things up.
Abbie, did you have any samples of what this "hobo" was going to throw at you when you prepared for this or did you go in cold?
Abbie, I meant what I wrote earlier. I think the fact that you were much nicer, and that you repeatedly stated your fascination with the subject, the usefulness of evolution in your work, and how cool things are, is a very good thing.
Maybe the Die Hard YECs weren't impressed, but they surely wouldn't have changed their opinion even if you went Dawkins on their behinds. However, don't you think that regular people listening -- who don't pretend to know molecular genetics, but just have been fed what the creationists give them, thinking that creationism is the pious option -- were more convinced by your appearance?
The next time somebody tells them scientists are arrogant, immoral who keep furthering some secret atheist agenda in the face of overwhelming evidence, perhaps they will think of you. This way they got a glimpse of what really motivates a scientist.
What the hell is he going on regarding Homo erectus? I don't seem to find anything about what he's been saying.
Sorry, "R.D."? Rancid discharge? Repetitive dumbness? Reprehensible disingenuity? I give up. In the face of such stupidity, even the gods struggle in vain. As the saing goes.
"There are nine and sixty ways of composing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!"
Now, as for me (aged and steeped in evil that I am): I play nice and listen a lot, cheerfully abandoning straw-man points [1] -- then ask a few questions that they can't handle. A high-school friend is a master of the technique, but she's been doing it since she was young and cute.
"Young and cute" is a huge advantage, and "female" is too (for better or worse.) Evil is also good, so it might work very well for you.
[1] They spend a lot of time attacking Darwin personally, for instance.
Re Militant Atheist
I believe that Prof. Miller was referring to a debate he had with Duane Gish, famous for the Gish Gallop. The point is that Prof. Miller carefully prepared for the debate by reading everything he could find that Gish had written and reading transcripts of several previous debates that Gish had participated in. He was then prepared to anticipate what Gish would say and had a short and to the point response ready beforehand.
@10- hey, I like Hawaiian shirts. Jackson's shirt was the best part of his presentation.
More noise from the sidelines here :)
The theist in video 7 was feeding leading questions, and he led to an unfalsifiable deist perspective, but all of his points were based around a false dichotomy, and he implied that you had to prove creation wrong, but (as far as burden of proof is concerned) it's of course exactly the opposite. That could have been addressed with evidence for evolution, rather than an explicit validation of his assertion. Of course, concede places where facts/data have not been shown, but when the very question is wrong, challenging the foundations of the question itself is appropriate.
I also really, really wish you'd called Jackson on his repeated "evidence != proof" assertions, and took the time to re-explain the scientific method to him, or rather the audience.. Jackson knows it, of course, but the audience is what matters.
Jackson was abominable, and clearly practiced in the Gish Gallop. He kept making under-the-breath assertions or repeating soundbites quickly, and moving on, fr*ming them as just "givens". Since "our side" has the actual evidence, this isn't something that's necessary to be repeated, but it might be worth challenging those in a later rebuttal.
Anyway, thanks for doing this, and kudos and cake to rattrap3 for taking the time to split all the video up and posting it.
WW:
Some people might be ashamed that their level of utter ridiculousness and noisome blatherings would require a direct rebuke from a pre-eminent scientist, but for some reason you seem to revel in this.
The interesting question though, is where it falls in the nature vs. nurture question. So, were you born stupid, or did you just work at it really hard?
LOL. The poignancy of your observation is not lost on me, but it is obviously lost on you. R.D. is Richard Dawkins.
Getting back to the debate, I am assuming the purpose of the debate is to persuade a *real world* audience of the merits of your point of view. To that extent, and only based on what I have seen so far, Abbie was failing. I'll try to watch the entire debate later today or tomorrow.
Others are recommending that Abbie be "meaner". Being mean for its own sake isn't going to help win a debate necessarily, but if in being mean you are more authentic to your true personality (I can't tell what the real Abbie is, the plastered smile Abbie thanking a preacher in the video, or the ravenous for creationist blood seeking a name for herself ERV on this blog), it may help.
Replacing the current anthropologist head of the NCDE (National Center for Darwinian Education) with a real scientist (assuming you finish your education between blogging and debating) would lend credibility to that organization. Eugenie might be willing to give you some tips on that front, as she is going to have to retire some day anyway.
Wait, Anthropologists aren't real scientists?
just as a note about one of the things you said in a comment on this post about whether it was worth being polite and nice when it was better to be mean...
Please, please stay with being polite. People just respect you so much more :) And you are a good speaker, and you do have the facts on your side. it is such a pity when people stop listening or feeling on the side of scientists when they get (in many cases understandably) frustrated at creationists.
Teh quadripleg-ewe baahed thusly:
No, actually I think you are the loster "looser" here. Try googling sal cordova cottage cheese and remember, I was addressing your verbiage. Guess the implication yet? Oh well. Not my fault, yo momma really ought to get a refund on that abortion.
Who is this fuckin' guy? What are his credentials to declare hominids "extinct monkeys"?
Of course we are not, we don't use the bible much for anthrop studies.
Holy shit, Abbie! IMO, you were WAY too nice to that dude with the terrible question in part 7!!
Also, YouTube only has parts 1-10 posted. Where're the other 2 hrs?
So, then, seeing as how you don't live in the real world, your opinion doesn't really matter, does it Wallykins?
Not that your opinion matters in any context, mind you.
Of course, Limp Willy does not, and can not, represent a "real world audience". Real people do not lie, cheat, misrepresent, and generally make an ass of themselves like our Limp Willy.
Quit beating your wife yet, Limp Willy? Lie much?
I just finished watching the 10 youtube videos and I have a few points:
1) In his rebuttal, he stated that the fact that the two species of lemurs had insertions from the same virus is proof that ERV's are not proof of evolution. Isn't this proving your previous point? I mean, scientists researched this *because* the ERV insertions in these to species DID NOT match the evolutionary model- the insertions were in different locations in the genomes, so he effectively ignored your argument and restated an already refuted argument, correct?
2) Regardless of whether or not wolves and foxes are genetically compatible, this does not mean there aren't differences between their genomes, so are there mutations between the two and if so, what's the % difference between wolf and fox dna?
3)The guy's trying to argue that ERV's aren't mutations, isn't this refutable in two words: Insertion Mutation?
4)I'm correct in remembering that a genepool IS NOT a single pair of individuals, correct? If this is the case, then the guy's claim that there being 4 gene pools in human ancestry as indirect proof of the ark is just fucking with words and clearly showing his inability to either comprehend definitions or that he's a lying weasel.
I just finished watching all 10 videos. It was no contest. You were up there talking science and Jackson was up there talking about ways to ignore evidence. He is up there justifying his beliefs, nothing more. I learned a ton from your speech. Ironically, the only thing I learned from Jackson is yet another way Creationists deceive themselves.
Speaking as a complete layperson in the field of evolutionary science (albeit one who is very interested in it), I found your presentation excellent, Abbie. I came in knowing nothing about ERVs, and I learned a lot from you. Thanks. I can't quite say the same of your opponent.
A whole 5 minutes in, and I'm already appalled by this guy, and bored to tears. How ever did you make it through...uh, 20 minutes of this guy? And then rebuttal and Q&A with him?
I guess debating creationists is an endurance sport.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but... was his "deck of cards" analogy actually meant to imply that genes don't mutate?
*descends into hysterical laughter*
I actually think Abbie is a good speaker, she looks very teacher-esque. Not everyone enjoys "charismatic speakers". ;)
D'oh! I'm never gonna live that one down, am I?
I ⥠Abbie. Promise!
Howdy! Random lurker who randomly visits from Pharyngula, here.
I've made it through video 15, thus far. Originally, I had planned to just watch the video you posted above; and then I decided to watch the remainder of it and your intro; and then I decided to see the rebuttals, of course; and then I said "what the hell..." and went for the Q&A; and now, I realize I'm in too deep and feel compelled to watch every last minute of the Q&A. Curse you, ERV!
Jackson really reminds me of Hovind, with his slides at the ready and his inflection of certain "sciency" words. Not as slickly scripted of a presentation as #06452-017, to be sure, but the same style of tossing out "crea-facts" -- and from a former science teacher, at that.
FWIW, Jackson appeared to be caught in a bit of a lie when the questioner asked him if the smell from the dinosaur bones came after they had been soaked in something else. Jackson originally made the claim as if the smell were apparent after being pulled out of the ground and broken apart -- due to them being only a few thousand years old, of course.
FWIW2, a couple of criticisms:
- You let him slide on a lot of points in the (first several parts of the) Q&A by not offering a rebuttal -- though it was great when you jumped in on the part about plants after he rambled for so long, and it sounded as if the audience was ready for a new voice on it.
- You need a remote control like he had, so as not to let the creationist look more tech savvy, whilst flicking through .ppt slides.
Anywho, plaudits to you, Abbie, for debating that guy (and in a fucking church, at that, yikes).
[Of note, there is an incomplete transition (a gap or missing link, if you will) betwixt vids 10 & 11.]
Oh, and ¡viva la wearscience.com!
I'm up to Part 15 now. Holy hell, how is it that no one jumped up and bitch slapped this jackass? What a pompous douche!
@«bønez_brigade»
the gap you are referring to is me changing tapes, the gap was no longer than 15 seconds i assure you.
i almost ended up bringing only ONE tape but was like, well, if it goes maybe a little over an hour and a half better safe than sorry lol
EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED ON THIS, ALL 20 PARTS OF THE DEBATE ARE UP ON YOUTUBE NOW.
I ALSO URGE ALL OF YOU TO GO OVER TO THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxqK7I168Vc
and rip them a new one for CUTTING TOGETHER CLIPS from the debate to make abbie look bad, and jackson look good...which is almost impossible cuz he's...well christ he is just so fucking stupid...
Mr. Cheeseburger in Paradise's shirt proves there is no benevolent, omnipotent deity.
Heres a playlist for all 20 parts.
but i urge you all to comment on the videos, and spread them around as much as you can to help both abbie and myself get as much publicity as we can.
cuz i wanna be famous too.
and i need my science people to help me out here.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=603748642A23A8FF
Rather than a spoonful of sugar, consider a feeding tube. Then we can force-feed the creationists facts until their livers are fat with reason. It makes a delicious pate, especially cured and then served with currants as an amuse bouche.
Keep working on those presentation skills!
I don't have anything specific to add that hasn't already been said, other than that. Doing this kind of thing sets a good example for other youngish scientists, so keep it up.
Rah rah rah, go science, etc.
/shameless chearleading
(What, they do it for sports, and as far as I'm concerned, watching bad ideas get skewered is as fine as any)
@Doug [#68],
Well, you picked a good spot at which to change, as Jackson was starting to babble about "one truth" nonsense. Thanks for recording & posting the videos!
--------------------
I just finished the final part (20), and I was actually astounded that Jackson would use the argumentum ad populum fallacy on deciding what should be taught in class (parts 17 & 18). As he's a creationist, such was to be expected; but as he's also an educator (scary, yes), his adherence to that position is a bit irrational (to say the least). He also seemed to confuse "discussion of differing views" with "basic instruction on the evidence" during said parts.
Weird: Jackson has an identical shirt to that which Richard Dawkins wore on his visit to OU when he met with students in the afternoon before his evening lecture!! - Chance or design do you think??!!
For anybody who wants to watch the video more conveniently (all of the videos on one page), you can see it at Evolutionism versus Creation Science debate.
Hi Abbie,
I actually only just found out about you today due to the Kooks Run Amok item on Pharyngula but did manage to watch through the whole debate. You did very well indeed and I really enjoyed the educational content in your presentation. There are many questions that I have still about ERVs as I only recently decided that I needed to brush up on biology (Physics nerd mostly) and found out about them through the Ancestor's Tale. I must be terse though as the Dvorak switch is still very severely messing with my typing, but I'll start reading your blog and will very likely have questions.
John Kwok, LOL.....I told you.
ROTFLMHO man this is funny.
ಠ_à²
Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Hemorrhoids Off?
Rock Star Piers-- Well, Dawkins shirt was more leaf frond and less pot :P
But dudes, you dont know the best part of Jacksons attire. Its actually not the pot shirt. Its whats under the pot shirt: Jacksons MENSA T-shirt. Should anyone call him 'stupid', Jackson was going to rip off his pot shirt a la Hulk Hogan and be all "I BE ARE NOT DUM! I IZ IN TEH MENSA!"
I was really looking forward to that, but no one took his bait *sad*
I tried to post a comment on Jackson's edited video, calling him out on his bullshit editing techniques. I'll be shocked and amazed if survives.
That's sad. I would have made YouTube poop of it set to "Eye of the Tiger".
Hi, Abbie. This is my first time posting here (although we did have a brief email exchange about a year ago which, although I'm sure you have forgotten about it, I cherish as much as my signed photo of Adam West in full Batman regalia). I just wanted to complement you on your performance in the debate. I think anyone attending there with an open mind would realize that science, as you represented it, actually explains stuff and answers questions, while Jackson demonstrated that creationism has nothing to offer but handwaving apologetics.
The Q&A made me realize that, for many who reject evolution, the issue is not simply a matter of being unaware of the evidence. Their error is a more fundamental one of not even being aware of the meaning of the word "evidence." They seem to think that it is sufficient to come up with an explanation that feels good to them and is not outright falsified by the facts that exist (mainly because the idea is not unfalsifiable in the first place). So they fail to understand that saying something like "ERV's appeared in the genome as a result of sin" does not even begin to approach the level of a legitimate scientific explanation, never mind one deserving of equal status and respect as the TofE.
Again, good job.
I made it to the end and thought that it was a good debate but that your facts got i the way of their beliefs... The man actually made things up and presented them as proof of a creator but gave no evidence, He really had no proof of a creator, only a belief that one exists. He was very condescending and sarcastic towards you. Normal creationist tactics, attack the person not the evidence.
Wow. I'm at 4:30 of part one, and all I keep thinking is 'what a condescending ass.'
And from the few comments I've read it doesn't get any better, but I'll try to listen to a bit more.
I love it when Jackson does accents. His Richard Dawkins sounds like what would happen if Dick Van Dyke's character in Mary Poppins became flamboyantly gay.
If he does impressions of Abbie in future presentations I look forward to how obscenely misogynistic they will be.
Perhaps a Bettie Boop falsetto accompanied by gum snapping, nose picking and fondling a couple of balloons shoved up his "I heart Mensa" T-shirt.
He reminds me of the old Trinity Broadcasting Network "Power Team" presentations where some muscle bound roid raging freak for Jesus would punctuate his disjointed ramblings by breaking a stack of ice slabs with his forehead and prance around doing impressions of secular humanist "pansies".
Pausing part 3 to say ERV's are really, really cool. This sort of makes me want to study biochemistry. Maybe I'll pull that copy of Lehninger I bought for 3 dollars.
Oh, yeah. I can't, because I GAVE IT AWAY! (headslap)
Now, having watched the entire debate and question and answer period, wow.
I retract my suggestion that you seek advice from Eugenie Scott, the current head of the NCDE. If Eugenie watches your performance, it is likely to cause her PTSD to recur, and you've heard how her husband simply loathes it when Eugenie cries out during her nightmares "Have mercy on Dr. Gaven. Mercy, mercy, mercy. Please Daune Gish, leave him alone."
After watching this debate between you and Dr. Jackson, your future mate may have to deal with similar issues, only in these instances it will be complicated by your association with Dr. Jackson's physical appearance with the likes of Peter North.
To say that you lost the debate is an understatement. You were wholly unprepared, confused, naive appearing, whereas Dr. Jackson was very prepared. He clearly spent much more time studying both sides of the Evolutionism/Creation Science perspectives, whereas you came prepared with dumbed down science and dumbed down caricatures of "creationists".
The minor debate point during the question and answer period, after you kept talking about how "fun" science is, was outstanding to watch. Your argument was laughable. ~"My parents are teachers..." blah blah blah. Wow. Your only answer to not discussing evolutionism/creation science controversies in the classroom was that the children have too much to learn, and that they need to master the basics before learning about the controversies. Dr. Jackson eviscerated your point of view. The ACLU is likely to advise you, as well as Dr. Scott, to refrain from debating Dr. Jackson anymore, as you're doing more to hurt the evolander cause than help it.
Worse, the inane questions from the peanut gallery, you should be ashamed that you invited these knuckleheads. ~But doesn't the fact that we can eat other animals prove common descent". Goodness. Is the best of OK evolanders?
I can guarantee you that Dr. Eugenie Scott would say, if she watched your miserable performance, "See, I told you."
But as I said before, I applaud your courage in linking to the videos.
So, Willy, I'm assuming you won't have the courage to give a straight answer to this, but hell, I'll ask it anyway, just for giggles:
Does it not matter to you that Jackson didn't have a freakin' clue what he was talking about? Does it not matter to you that he tried to make a point that Abbie had already dealt with? How can you claim Jackson won the debate when he clearly demonstrated such a lack comprehension?
The point has already been made, but in case you're wondering specifically what I'm referring to:
Abbie pointed out that those in her field were able to recognize the different between similar insertion events and common descent. Jackson followed that immediately by claiming that scientist assumed that similar ERVs in two different species could only arrive there by common descent.
To make it simpler for you, since your comprehension skills seem to be as lacking as Jackson's, it would be as if Abbie said, "See, we can tell the difference between pink and purple," and Jackson followed immediately with the claim, "Evilutionists assume there's nothing but pink, but look! Look! Here's some purple! I winned!"
The greater irony is that he's reading from a paper about how said team determined that it was two separate insertion events, all the while claiming that scientists assume common descent.
The irony was lost on him, and seems to be lost on you.
Jackson is a hustler. There's no doubt about it. He's a slick talker, and to the ignorant he certainly appears to be more authoritative. Seriously, the only way anyone could think Jackson to have won this debate is if he or she ignores the facts, ignores the actual words that were said, and relies on some lizard-brained authoritarian follower instinct.
WW,
So if you believe that Jackson won the debate, you should be able to specify one of the points where demonstrated that molecular genetics does not support evolution. Except you don't actually seem to mention any such point in your post and, strangely, I can't recall any occurring in the debate itself, either. I do recall him repeating a bunch of quotes from scientists in funny voices, and mentioning things like the high degree of genetic similarity between humans and other primates and saying that, when he looks at that thru his "creationist lens," it looks to him like evidence for creation. But I don't really see how any of that refutes the molecular evidence for evolution. Do you?
Well, since Limp Willy thinks you lost, that means you TOTALLY PWND HIZ A$$!!!eleven! ROXZORZ!
*bored*
[sarcasm]*GASP!* Oh no oh no oh no! I lost the debate and made a fool of myself! William Wallace said so! I am never going to debate anyone ever again! Im just going to sit down and shut up and let Creationists do whatever they want-- thats safe! Oh I am so embarrassed![/sarcasm]
WW, you cant scare/embarrass/intimidate me into shutting up. Casey Luskin has been trying this approach for years, to no avail. Those tactics might work on pathetic creatures like yourself/CaseyTARD, but its completely ineffective against people with an ounce of earned self-confidence and honest self-awareness.
Pathetic.
Yeah, the lemur ERV study was just one example where Jackson obliviously presented evidence that refuted his own position. Another point was where he mentioned the 98% similarity between human and chimp genomes, then intoned with great portentousness, "But guess what? We share 50% of our genome with bananas." I still can't figure out what point he thought he was making there.
Another point was where he mentioned the 98% similarity between human and chimp genomes, then intoned with great portentousness, "But guess what? We share 50% of our genome with bananas." I still can't figure out what point he thought he was making there.
Good point, and nice "reductio ad absurdum". By his logic, the lower the percentage of being in common with bananas, the greater the evidence for being related to bananas, and since people are 50% bananas, then evolution is 100% bananas. I don't think he thought that one through very well...
Presenting complex data for an audience of laypeople = "dumbed-down science"
Crazy hobo who says molecule is a "big word" = not dumbing down = WINNAR
Oh Wally, you can always be counted on to have the most deluded perspective possible.
If the hobo actually "spent more time looking at both sides" then it's because all that time was spent trying to make his way through alla them really big, challenging words like "molecule".
Abbie said: "I lost the debate and made a fool of myself! William Wallace said so!"
And the four comments on his site say so, too. Five idiots can't all be wrong, can they?
One big logic fail on Jackson's part that jumped out at me was his claim that erv's, after 85 million years are still erv's. Even as a non-scientist, I realize that once they're in the genome, they're not active viruses anymore, they're dna, which, as Abbie pointed out, is subject to proofreading. ERV's do not evolve at the thousand fold rate (or whatever he claimed, if that's even accurate) of viruses, but at the rate of human dna.
6:50 into part 7.
I just have to ask this before I hear Abbie's answer:
What would the biochemistry of 'sin' look like?
OK, I'm back. You did a great job of answering his questions. I wonder if the guy has ever heard of Occam's Razor.
Shorter WW:
WATERLOO!!!!
So...molecular genetics provides evidence for creationism? Yeah right...not a scrap of data, not a single testable mechanism. The science battle was settled long ago and evolution won, now it's a PR battle to convey this to the public. Thanks again to Abbie for doing her part and then some.
Your reaction formation is showing. You may want to tuck that back in a bit before everyone gets the idea that your primary motivation for trolling this blog is, in fact, your attraction to its author.
Is anyone convinced Jackson even actually understands the ERV evidence? I'm not. His arguments certainly don't suggest he does. His reference to the two species of lemur contracting the same retrovirus suggests he believes common descent is demonstrated only by the presence of identical viruses in different species, and not by the existence of identical INSERTION POINTS.
In a way, it's not surprising. When it comes to ERV's, incomprehension is the only defense creationists have to save their precious belief system from going down in flames.
My god WW.
Debate requires you to back up your assertions with
actual evidence, not just anecdotal beliefs or "feelings" or faith. The "winner" is not decided on based on who "tawks
purdier".
To quote someone wiser than myself:
"Leroy, you are dumb as hell!"
Abbie,
FWIW (and it probably isn't much), I'll give you some feedback from a veteran biologist who's spent a fair amount of time speaking in public and debating creationsts (although rarely doing the two together).
First, let me say that the way you presented your explanations of the data was very, very good. Using the "two computers" to show different means of producing new genetic material was very clever and very easy to understand. And very good job on not just leaving it at the abstract/idea level, but following each up with specific examples. Give yourself some cookies!!
I second the other poster's suggestion that you purchase a remote clicker to advance your slides. That'll allow you to walk around more, which has the duel effect of letting you get closer to your audience and making you feel more at ease (it does for me).
One thing that's always worked for me when debating creationists is to approach the debate as if we're starting off with creationism and evolution being equally possible. Then you pose the questions: What would we expect to see if evolution/common descent were true? What would we expect to see if YEC were true? What wouldn't we expect to see if evolution/common descent were true? What wouldn't we expect to see if YEC were true?
Then you define what is and isn't expected under evolution/common descent and put it to your opponent to define the same for YEC. IOW, you're putting them on the spot to say what could potentially falsify YEC. And as any veteran of these debates will tell you, they can't do it. And as they try and weasel out of it (which they will do), don't let up. Politely keep your foot on the gas and keep asking, "But what would falsify YEC?"
The net effect of all this (in my experience) is that those who are more inclined to actually listen to you (the hard-core creationists won't care one way or the other) will come away understanding that evolution/common descent carries all sorts of positive predictions that have been born out in the data, and "evolutionists" will even give you lists of things that would disprove it all. Whereas YEC can't do anything similar and can't come up with even one thing that would prove it wrong.
In the end, the overall event looked very much like what one would expect when a professional snake-oil salesman debates a young graduate student. The professional con-artist knew how to sell to a friendly audience, even though what he was selling was obviously bullshit. And the young graduate student really knew the details and had some clever ideas about how to present them, but wasn't quite sure how to sell it all to an unfriendly audience.
But don't worry. I remember my first public meeting in a hostile environment. TV cameras, reporters, angry mob waving signs and chanting slogans....and me, a fresh young biologist trying to show slides of data. Believe me, it gets easier. You were very wise to see this as a learning experience and a chance to get some practice.
BTW, how many people were in the building? I'm just now to the Q&A, and was a little surprised when the camera turned and I saw a bunch of empty pews. Did people leave, or was it just sparsely attended?
Oh, and one more BTW....Jackson? Come on. His tone came across as waaaaaaay too "fatherly". Did he think he was the Pope or something? And what's with the shirt? Was he trying to say, "Hey kids! I'm hip...just look at this whacky shirt"? Even as professional creationist presenters go, he was pretty bad.
As a follow-up to the above strategy suggestion, it basically falls under the banner of "Make them defend creationism".
The title of the debate was "Evolution vs. Creation", yet you spent the entire structured time talking about and defending evolution.
In the future, try and devote at least some time to putting them on the defensive and making them defend the absurdity that is YEC.
Ok...watching the Q&A....Jackson so far has been given waaaaaaaay too much free reign to just spout one falsehood after another.
Abbie, perhaps in the future you could politely interject at key points, e.g. when he was doing his "they're just extinct monkeys" thing, pop up and say, "I'm curious as to where you draw the line between 'monkeys' and 'humans', and specifically on what traits that line is based".
Or when he was going on about "microevolution is just the reshuffling of existing genes", you could again politely interject and say, "So evolutionary events where new genetic material is generated are 'macroevolution'?", and if he agrees, point to a couple of insertion events and say "There ya' go...macroevolution is an observed fact!", and if he disagrees, politely point out how he's contradicting himself.
Again, make them defend creationism. We all know they can't do it in any honest, consistent manner; all you have to do is ask them to explain their assertions and a lot of other people will realize it too.
Wallaids, you really are the most pathetic piece of shit I've ever met, even online. You prattle on and on about how Abbie lost the debate without bringing up any specific points or why you found them compelling. All you do is try lame intimidation tactics with more than a little hint of misogyny. Really, you're fucking pathetic. You need to an hero ASAP.
Last post for now....
I can't watch any more. The Q&A is 90% Jackson spewing outright lies, one after the other as if he were channeling Hovind from prison. How many freakin' times is he going to say "it's just an assumption" before someone corrects him with "No, it's a conclusion based on data. An assumption is something you just make up."
Abbie, I have to give you some serious props for keeping your cool. I don't think I could have. And having read your accounts of your encounter with DreamDate Casey, it's obvious you have a snarky bad temper, which makes your composure here all the more amazing.
YEC is such an inherently dishonest position, it is impossible to advocate it in a truly honest fashion. I've yet to see a YEC [b]not[/b] engage in dishonest behavior.
I need some liquor and a hot soak.......
Well, it seems, that wee willie wanker shares the usual in common with other creotards like Jackson. I.e. the propensity to make blanket statements unsupported by any evidence and to openly lie for jeebus without apparent shame.
When someone puts on a Fey accent to quote someone, they automatically lose any respect they might have had.
I think I understand what people are saying when they say you are being too nice. Dr Jackson was allowed to spout off a whole of stuff that should have been responded to. And ignore hard questions that he didn't want to answer. A couple of examples. He stated that 'Evolutionists' say there couldn't have been global flooding. First of all what's that got to do with Evolution? And when have Geologists ever declared, no large scale flooding! Ever! That's just a total strawman.
And for the flood 'sorting' the remains into the way they are, that was just complete BS on his part.
It's letting stuff like that go unanswered that I think leads to the claims of being 'too nice'.
Dr Jackson was clearly an experienced talker, and experience should help you with things like this for the future. I enjoyed watching the video.
That's because he didn't watch the debate. Nobody would watch the botch that is the beginning of part 2 and conclude that Kramer Dr. Poolboy won. Chromosome fusion means they fused in humans but not in chimps? What? This guy could lose an argument to a coat rack.
To their credit, I've met several YeCs who are quite sincere in their beliefs and direct in their presentation of them. This is much more than I can say for the IDiots, who grow on disingenuity like fruit flies maggots grow on a disgusting paste of yeast and cornmeal.
Chromosome fusion means they fused in humans but not in chimps? What? This guy could lose an argument to a coat rack.
I don't see how he could lose that argument. If Jesus wouldn't have fused the chromosomes, then humans would be pretty much the same as chimps. Jesus wanted humans to be different (of course), so that's why he created humans with the more complex chromosome fusion.
To their credit, I've met several YeCs who are quite sincere in their beliefs and direct in their presentation of them.
Oh, I've met some who tried to say "My YEC is based completely on the Bible", which on its face seems honest enough. But start asking questions about science, and you'll quickly see that while on one hand they tut-tut and wave away science as "the product of fallible humans" and say it's only "God's word" that matters, OTOH they fully enjoy the fruits of modern science.
That in itself is inherently dishonest.
Hey Abbie,
Did you know your picture is on the blog Why Women Hate Men In fact, the caption is right above your picture. Did you start a new blag? Hope Dumbeski, Behe, W.W., Sal, etc. didn't cause this.
Â
About the remote control for presentations...
What's funny is that Abbie had a picture of a remote control in the slide about laptop accessories, jeez.
Wow, good job! I wouldn't have been able to keep still once the Q&A started and the real crazy hobo talk came out.
It seemed like you were really only willing to talk about genetics and ERVs, which of course is what the talk was supposed to be about. All that stuff about dinosaur blood and fossil evidence was obviously bullshit, but you didn't have the tools to castrate him on it. Not many do, simply because unless you know what wild assertions the ambling hobo is going to throw out it's hard to explain how the data is being abused. But when it came to genetics he looked like a fool. I so wanted someone to call him on how absurd the need for abiogenesis is when talking about evolution. I mean we understand how gravity works, but we still don't know what it is; it's magic as far as anyone is concerned but because we can measure it we can do science!
I wonder if you could take a page from Hitchens rail against how absurd the creationist position is: can we trace all animals back to two genepools as we'd expect on the ark, what are the implications of carbon 13 decay being sped up 100,000 times what it is, where did all of the flood water go, human corpses floated in the flood but not the ones who were already buried. That'd take a lot of prep though, and wouldn't really further science outreach.
Was anyone else a little upset that he got to be "Dr. J" but you were still "Abbie". Not that there's anything wrong with "Abbie" :)
Interesting tactics by the creationist here. I strongly suspect this guy knows that evolution is true: One of his main tactics was basically giving a piece of overwhelming evidence for evolution (We share 50% of our genome with bananas, the chromosome 2 fusion thing etc.) and then saying it wasn't convincing to him without even trying to give a reason. I wonder to what extent the audience could see through this.
The other tactic I noticed, which is a more typical creationist trick, was to try to go outside your area of expertise, make stuff up, intersperse a few cite-able facts and hope you didn't call him on it: To wit, he named a Triassic mammal when the questioner asked him for a Permian one, he cited rate constants for protein decay in simple media and pretended it proved something about what would happen in the presence of lots of other biomolecules minerals etc., and I'm pretty sure that all his claims about rapid geologic change on Mars were bogus (the ocean thing seems to be correct, but I've never heard it claimed that the levels of such oceans changed by thousands of feet over the course of a year.) And it seems, no one called him on any of this stuff. I guess it's hard to combat this for two reasons: 1) Some of his claims are supported by sources he has on hand, or at least seem to be, and it's hard to guess which ones. 2) Even if you're sure he's bullshiting, it's unlikely you'll be able to cite a source to prove it.
Maybe these debates need some instant access to wikipedia.
I don't see how he could lose that argument. If Jesus wouldn't have fused the chromosomes, then humans would be pretty much the same as chimps. Jesus wanted humans to be different (of course), so that's why he created humans with the more complex chromosome fusion.
That misunderstands the nature of the chromosome 2 evidence. The fusion did not cause speciation of humans from chimps, but occurred sometime after divergence in an ancestor of all humans, but not of all chimps. It's not any more complex than a chimp chromosome, and without it we would be no different than we are with it. Chromosomes are just a way of "packaging" genetic information. It has no effect on the content of that information.
The reason it is considered evidence for common descent is that, before the sequencing of the genome, it was already known that humans had one fewer pair of chromosomes than other great apes. Evolutionary theory predicted that the "missing" chromosome was not actually missing, but rather was fused with another in the human line. The chromosome 2 finding confirmed this prediction, and therefore the predictive power of the ToE.
I just sent this email to Jackson. Let's see if he replies.
I will just state up front that I fully accept the theory of evolution and that the young earth creationism you expound is nonsensical and flies in the fact of every scrap of scientific evidence that exists. Just so you know where I am coming from.
I watched with interest the video of your recent debate with Abbie (ERV) Smith, and must say I was puzzled by much of the evidence you presented to support your side. It was not at all clear to me why you believed this evidence supported creationism. In fact, although the topic of the debate was molecular evidence for evolution, I am not convinced that you even have a basic understanding of that evidence. Hence, this email to help clarify some of your points that I did not understand.
1) You commented on the fact that our genome is 98% similar to that of chimpanzees. You then countered by saying we are also 50% similar to banana plants. Since evolutionary theory states that we do, in fact, share common ancestry with bananas, how does that constitute evidence against evolution?
2) When Abbie detailed the ERV evidence for common descent, you mentioned a study that showed two species of lemurs had endogenized the same retrovirus. Again, why do you think this argues against common descent? You were trying to argue that common descent is just an "assumption", yet the very study you cited demonstrated that scientists are, in fact, able to distinguish ERV insertions that are not the result of common descent.
I hope you won't consider this impertinent, but would you be able to explain your understanding of why evolutionary biologists consider ERV insertions to be evidence for common descent, and how the lemur study you cited argues against this?
3) You dismissed the the paleontological evidence of hominid evolution as "a bunch of extinct monkeys." Yet you gave no account of how you conclude these fossils were "monkeys" and not apes or humans. More fundamentally, your young earth creationist beliefs would predict that modern human fossils should be found alongside these "extinct monkeys." Where are they? Creationists repeatedly call biologists to task for supposed "gaps" in the fossil record, but never seem to acknowledge the yawning chasms in the record where creationist evidence should be. If humans were created in their present form on the seventh day of the earth's existence, then we should be finding modern human fossils all thru the fossil record, at all stratigraphic levels. Why is it that the human fossils we do find, according to you, are always diseased, or microcephalic, or whatever excuse you use to explain their different appearance from us? Can you explain why healthy humans seem strangely immune to the process of fossilization?
I appreciate your taking the time to read this email. With your permission, I would like to share your response (should you choose to offer one) on Abbie Smith's blog page.
Why oh why do these people keep claiming that molecular clocks have anything to do with molecular phylogeny?
The creationist spammer:
"My objective (remember, I also once commented that PZ Myers won a debate against a creationist) analysis is, so far, you're loosing, bad. Maybe it will turn around later. I'll let you know."
When you learn how to spell "losing", maybe I'll not just scroll past your content-free rants.
I had to go and find the Newsweek article Jackson referred to at the beginning and used to assert that H. erectus was no longer considered an ancestor of modern humans. I found the Newsweek article...
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/courses/ecol223/Newsweek-for%20ECOL223.pdf
...and it's interesting to see how many times the article directly contradicts other things Jackson said throughout the evening (e.g., that "Lucy" didn't walk upright). But in what one would expect from a popular magazine, while the the article does say that erectus is no longer considered our ancestor, it doesn't give any detail about what happened. To understand that, the Smithsonian human evolution website is a very good resource...
http://anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/ha/ances_start.html
...and if you go to the family tree, you will see that sure enough, H. erectus is now on its own dead end and does not lead to modern humans. But if you click the H. erectus link and then the H. ergaster link...
http://anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/ha/erg.html
...you'll see that it wasn't so much that erectus was removed from our line, as it was that erectus specimens in Africa were renamed H. ergaster and put on our ancestral lineage. Not exactly how Jackson presented it, eh?
So once again, we see the inherent dishonesty one must employ to advocate YEC.
ERV, I loved how you answered "we are slaves to evidence" when my last question (in vid 7) was whether you have a preexisting commitment to naturalism.
I wish I'd kept the mic so I could've asked you to provide evidence that naturalism is true, since, after all, you're such a slave to evidence. I would have loved to see your response.
Given that no one wanted to answer it at the Gift to Rhology thread, want to venture a guess now?
@Shrunk,
I doubt this will qualify me for Randi's $1Ã10^6, but I predict this part of your argument in point #3 will cause him to ignore/dodge the remainder of said point:
"If humans were created in their present form on the seventh day of the earth's existence,..."
Dirt-boy Adam and his rib-wife Eve were created on the sixth day, goddammit! Get to know yer Babble better.
Other than that egregious error, I thought all of your info for Jackson hit the proverbial nails on their respective heads. Good stuff.
Abbie - a big heartfelt thanks for getting out there to represent critical thinking. Keep up the great work!
Goodness gracious that guy is annoying. I'm going to have to sit down and figure out how to make everyone aware of what a dolt that guy is.
@Rhology:
I love how you don't even know what question you asked. You asked if she came to the conclusion of common descent because she had a pre-existing commitment to naturalism.
She said: No, I am a slave to the evidence, and that is what leads me to common descent.
Perhaps you don't understand her point: Sure, fine, a god can insert ERVs into the genome because of sin, BUT why on earth would this god insert the ERVs into the genomes of different organisms in the one and only pattern that would support common descent? Why would sin create a nested hierarchy of ERV insertion events?
You were trying to get her to say that she believes in evolution because she is an atheist very hard, but it simply isn't true, so she wont say it.
I have tried to watch it, puts me to sleep. though would someone be kind enough to post a good source of information on the horse hockey he was trying to pawn off as red blood cells in dinosaur fossils. Like what they really are and how they are formed.
Did you even watch the videos? Dr. Jackson specifically addressed this issue.
@131
The Flood? Then why don't we find human fossils scattered about in layers of all ages? Why don't we find humans in precambrian layers? A worldwide flood would result in all sorts of random fossil assortment, why then, does the fossil record reflect the nested hierarchy predicted by evolutionary theory?
"I wish I'd kept the mic so I could've asked you to provide evidence that naturalism is true, since, after all, you're such a slave to evidence."
There is no evidence that anything but naturalism is true. If you're going to play postmodern theological obscuritanist, at least get your epistemic metrics right.
Abbie,
Dr. Jackson stated that:
Could you reiterate the evidence for and against ERV sequences being evidence of common descent? It seems you missed an opportunity for rebuttal there, especially this is your field of expertise. I know you do admit that ERV sequence similarities could be coincidence, but somehow I believe, given the title of the debate, and a response from you that ~"we can tell the difference", and for other reasons, that you believe that known ERV sequences are overwhelming evidence in support for common descent.
But I don't think you've done a good job articulating why in the debate. A link to a previous post would be sufficient, if you think that previous post answers this question well.
Re #132, no. He said that creationists, like evolutionists, also have gaps in the fossil record, e.g., no discovery of a human skull stuck in the jaw of a T-rex in the case of young earth creationists. But he did also address the question of fossil strata, and a world wide flood, as well.
Then you would agree that since evolution has been used for targeted fossil finds (as in the case of Tiktaalik), and that there is actual evidence to support evolutionary theory that creationism is a vastly inferior position scientifically? Creationists, you have to admit, have not found evidence to support their assertions (No precambrian humans, no evidence for a young earth, and no evidence of a world wide cataclysmic flood).
Sorry, just getting around to Optimus Primate...
He seemed to know what he was talking about, and to the extent that Abbie didn't correct him (and indeed seemed to agree with him a lot), why is it you think he was ignorant.
I assume you mean that he also talked about something Abbie talked about, during his rebuttal. Were there debate rules that prevented Dr. Jackson from using the same sources of information that Abbie used, during a rebuttal? If not, do you think there should have been such rules?
Are you suggesting that Dr. Jackson prepared the slide he used only after Abbie preemptively talked about an article. This guy is good.
And, did he say "only", or is that your addition--the word only? Of course you're being deceitful--he is quoting scientists concluding different infections, which would not be logically consistent with his alleged use of the word only.
Your point is ridiculous on its face. Care to set up strawman for me to slay?
That should have been: Care to set up another straw man for me to slay?
SRSLY,guys, as long as anybody in a debate is on the side of God and Jesus, credulous fucktards like Limp Willy declare them the winner. Simple as that. Why this boring troll hasn't been kicked out on his knobby ass is surely due to Abbie's benevolence. Or her desire to collect godbot quotes from this endless font of TARD.
Well, I received an answer to my email (#122), sorta:
Pick #1, #2, or #3 ... and we'll do another debate just on that very specific topic.
Wow, Willy, you just don't freakin' get it, do you?
I'm going to type this a little slower, so maybe you can get it.
I'm not saying that Jackson prepared his slide after Abbie talked about the article, you snotty little bitch, and you know good and well that I'm not implying anything of the sort. I'm saying that Jackson gave NO indication that he understood Abbie's point when referring to the same paper. I'm saying he ignored -- or didn't understand -- the fact that the statements Abbie had just made dismantled his pitiful argument in advance.
If I had such a slide prepared, and an argument to go with it, and my opponent in a debate made said argument look ridiculous before I got a chance to present it, I would adapt my argument or skip it altogether. Jackson did neither. So he either didn't understand what he was talking about, or he was hoping that his ignorant audience wouldn't. You're certainly making the second possibility look very likely, I'll give you that.
Slay that.
#135: He said that creationists, like evolutionists, also have gaps in the fossil record, e.g., no discovery of a human skull stuck in the jaw of a T-rex in the case of young earth creationists.
I know, but all that means is that creationists can't use the "gaps" or "no transitional forms" argument, since the gaps produced by their beliefs are far greater. (Not a single land organism of any sort in the precambrian, just for one). There's also the issue that the creationist version of the fossil record is unfalsifiable; leaving aside the issue of gaps, any arrangement of fossils could be observed if creationism were true, since all "kinds" are supposed to exist since the moment of creation, with some "sub-kinds" going extinct along the way. IOW, any organism could be found in any stratum. However, evolution predicts a very specific pattern of fossil deposition, with unique organisms found in each stratum and a pattern of nested hierarchies evident as one goes thru it chronologically. The odds of such a pattern emerging by chance, even with a global flood, is for all intents and purposes zero. Yet guess what we actually observe?
That's what I would have liked Jackson to have addressed. I guess we'll have to wait for another debate to see if he can actually answer it.
Wolfhound [#139], if you read above, you'll find reference to the time that I "declared" PZ Myers a winner of a debate against a creationist.
Epic fail, once again.
You were given several answers in that thread, as well as elsewhere. You ignored most of the answers or simply declared without reason or evidence that they couldn't be right. Nobody is going to waste their time with your presuppositionalist nonsense anymore.
In a way, this debate just emphasizes why I am surprised that a scientist can ever win a debate with a creationist. The scientist is at a distinct disadvantage in that she is constrained by her insistence on only using evidence that is valid, while creationists have no hesitation in simply making stuff up or misrepresenting evidence. They also attempt to use their ignorance to their advantage. An example here is where Jackson asks, seemingly rhetorically, how many of the ERV's in common with humans and chimps are orthologous. The impression he leaves is that this is some as-yet unanswered question, when in fact the answer is well known.
As PZ memorably put it to another creationist, "Your ignorance does not constitue evidence." Creationists fail to grasp this simple fact.
I just finished watching it over the past few days. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from your presentation. You could/should have been more aggressive and direct imo :).
I expected your 10 min rebuttle to address some of the more specific things he's said. While I am unfamiliar with Charles Jackson, he does seem to be somewhat more prepared with evidence to refute what he expects you or the audience will bring up. I would have liked to see your response to the dinosaur red blood cells thing, as an example.
I think that one of your strengths as a speaker in that situation, is that you make yourself seem very approachable. (and perhaps if you were more aggressive it would reduce your approachability) Even with very simple, pretty much non topical questions you handled it very well and seemed unintimidating. Thanks for posting this, and thanks for making it accessible.
That misunderstands the nature of the chromosome 2 evidence. The fusion did not cause speciation of humans from chimps, but occurred sometime after divergence in an ancestor of all humans, but not of all chimps.
Maybe, but not for Dr. Jackson. He can have it however he wants because he's got magic that can do whatever he wants. That's his whole shtick.
He'll never be a scientist, and he'll look like an idiot, but he'll never lose an argument. (He's not trying to be a scientist anyway, as we all know, I'm sure.)
Re: The T. rex soft tissue samples that have been brought up several times here. This remains very much a topic of active debate with no clear resolution as yet. Recent evidence has suggested that the soft tissue may in fact have merely been a contaminant:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/34579/title/Soft_tissue_in_f…
In any event, the creationists are just trying to make more of this than is warranted. While obviously a startling finding, it does not in any way refute the idea of an old earth. Even if it does turn our to be genuine dino meat, all that would mean is that our assumptions about how long soft tissue can be preserved need to be revised. We should also be finding things like this all the time, just as we find preserved humans and mastadons, if the YEC's were correct. Yet we don't find whole preserved dinosaurs frozen in blocks of ice. Why not, I wonder?
Talk Origins has a few words about it.
One interesting point they make is that the age of the protein can be directly dated using amino racemization, which looks at the proportion of amino acids that have undergone a very very slow conversion from the shape they were produced in, into a mirror image of that shape.
Additionally, I'm sure that that "Dr." J's claim that the proteins can't possibly survive this long is bunk. Unfortunately, it may take quite a bit of time to track down information on the half-life of peptide bonds in collagen or whatever protein they believe they have found. That pesky 'R' influences the rate of hydrolysis dramatically, as does the tertiary structure of the protein, so I can't just throw out some number like '11,000 years' right now. Once the matrix the bone was in dried out, the the protein would have been stable, so we just need enough time to fossilize the bone and seal it off from further moisture.
I'm having this tattooed on my butt:
"Epic fail, once again.
Posted by: William Wallace | April 8, 2009 12:05 AM"
He'll never be a scientist, and he'll look like an idiot, but he'll never lose an argument. (He's not trying to be a scientist anyway, as we all know, I'm sure.)
Good point. I keep making the mistake of thinking that creationists want to be scientists. Of course, they don't. They just want the public to be unable to tell the difference between science and the superstitious bullshit that the creationists expound.
Abbie, I'm just about finished watching the whole debate. Long time, split it over two days, mostly running in the background while I work. Two points I'd like to make:
1) Dr. Jackson is a Gish-Galloping, nonsensical, unscientific, intellectually dishonest and sloppy turd.
2) I think I love you.
;-)
Abbie,
Watched the debate, don't know if I enjoyed the last few segments were painful. I don't think I could have sat there without resorting to screaming obscenities at Mr. Jackson. One thing that very much bothered me is you certainly had the molecular evidence to pwn him. I just don't think you hammered it hard enough. I think the point that ERVs show up in identical locations of related genomes didn't get hammered in. I thing cdk007 does a really good job of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
Åuvre finit [or something? Commedia finita est]! Watched the debate (?) in two binge installments, kinda like Buffy-DVDs a few years ago.
Good work, Abbie! When I saw his slides I was a bit apprehensive because they're placative, and his word clouds drifted along quite nicely with them, but in the course of the debate, he derailed ever more and you stuck with stuff you knew well. I do not like the tone of his voice, its cadences.
His shirt? Meh. I have a Hawaii shirt on bright red silk. Let me debate you. Ha! (But on what?)
Did anyone else catch the part in the second video at 5:14 where he complains about scientists going away from "hard data" to "more numerical data" and complaining about the use of "complex mathematical models"?
Hi Abbie, I watched the structured part of the debate - I'm too busy to watch all the Q/A na dprobably won't get to it, so I had these points to make:
1. Good job relating the excitement and fun of doing science to the audience. You came off as interesting, approachable, and genuinely concerned with getting at the truth.
2. Your Lego analogy was pretty good, it allows people who don't know much about the biology to grasp the basic idea. Perhaps you could modify it thus: Think about the kid playing with the legos, and modifying one lego structure to turn it into another versus making the second one from scratch. If you got a hold of some Legos and chewed up one yellow brick in an obvious location on one structure, took a picture, and added a few parts to make it a new structure to take a second picture, you've got something really useful and accessible. A chewed up yellow brick in the same place on two similar lego toys would communicate both parts of your argument.
3. I think you could have double-emphasized how we know that certain ERVs are evidence of common ancestry. Your opponent was being dishonest about the evidence, and claiming that all ERVs that are in common between two related species are the result of multiple infections. A simple statement reiterating that and letting the audience know, even politely, that your opponent is misrepresenting the facts and is not knowledgeable about the topic could help.
4. Your opponent left himself wide open for a broadside. Although I did not watch this portion but others have commented, he said that he is open to accepting evidence for evolution. But at the beginning, he said that he interprets everything through the 'lens' of creationism. These two statements are irreconcilable - because if he interprets everything through the creationist paradigm, then there can be no evidence of evolution that will convince him.
5. Be prepared to define pseudoscience to your audience. There was an audience question about sin entering the world and causing these mistakes, etc, and the person asking the question seemed to think, quite smugly, that there would be no way to prove that god didn't do it. Please take this as an opportunity to explain to the audience that this is pseudoscience. You can start by asking the audience member back - "since you believe that God is Omniscient and Omnipotent, do you believe that there is anything that God cannot do?" (No) "So then, you agree that since God can do anything, that there is no possible way to prove that God did or did not do something." (correct) "Ladies and gentlemen, this member of the audience is caught up in what is known as pseudoscience - he has a belief that cannot be proven nor disproven by evidence... etc"
Otherwise, good show, and I hope you get to do more!
Sad to see my comments and questions have disappeared. Especially the one about the intricate functional aspects of some ERVs.
Why, SAS?
Sorry wrong thread - feel free to delete these two mails if you wish, or else leave them as a permanent reminder of my clumsiness!
Watching the next 10 now. Can't believe he got away with the Mars valley flood thing...It's a rift valley. He's a liar.
And morganucodon was triassic, not permian. He's a liar.
And it's totally disingenuous to call it a 'rat'. Small with hair does not a rat make.
I commented too soon...plants temporarily break the second law of thermodynamics...wow.
Can't believe he got away with the Mars valley flood thing...It's a rift valley. He's a liar.
That's one I always like to throw at Creationists. The Mars valley is larger than the Grand Canyon, so unless Noah's Flood included Mars, how did that come about?
I also like to ask Creationists how do they know that the Grand Canyon didn't predate the Flood? Maybe God made it that was to begin with.
@ piers [#75] & Abbie [#81],
Re: The pot/leaf/frond shirt Dawkins wore in OK.
That sounds like the shirt Dawkins wore yesterday for his speech at the American Atheists convention in Atlanta -- if the one to which you two refer is blueish w/ white & green leaves (and not as gaudy as Jackson's).
Wait a second, he claimed that plants temporarily break the second law of thermodynamics???
Please tell me which clip this was in, I want to grab the audio!
Abbie, I'm sorry, but he won this debate. He was prepared, articulate, and sounded actually much more objective than you.
You kept using the word "cool" and appeared smug and unprepared, as if you felt you did not have to prepare for showing something that is so obvious. I was actually an evolutionist, until I saw this debate, and his crazy shirt.
I expected you to rip him up. And then he spoke, and you spoke, and he showed how objective and rigorous a creationist could actually be, while you proved how circular and self-congratulatory an evolutionist could be. Stop smiling, and assuming people think what you do is cool, and fit yourself to fight the facts next time. He blew you away, sorry.
Oh, as to those who think Jackson did not present any real facts, he mentioned the mammal in the Permian strata, he compared the number of combinations of ERVs possible, with the number of known ones Abbie is studying, and asked her if is possible that the known ones should be enough to prove evolution, and she had no answer. And THAT was what the debate was about, folks! It was not about proving Creationism right. Dr. Jackson was aggressive and rigorous, even dismissing a so-called "supporter" who tried to help him with a lame argument about animals eating each other. He was objective and less biased than Abby, who kept gushing over her love of the science, as if that was a convincing argument. Abbie may have science on her side, but the burden of proof was on her to prove her case, and she failed miserably, partly due to lack of preparation and assuming her audience would accept her circular reasoning. I remember one point in the debate, when she appeared flustered, she claimed that these ERVs have taken "millions of years" to develop. That's called circular reasoning, Abbie. Your job is to prove evolution, not assume it--that is exactly why people distrust evolanders, because they make a lot of assumptions.
Limp Willy? Is that you? Hiding behind a(nother) pseudonym?
Wally ripped off the term from some other nut whose name escapes me; it could be that guy who's sockpuppeting.
I always love the "I used to be an evolooshunist until..." trolls. So pathetically obvious, yet they're convinced they're fooling anyone. It's like a retarded kid wearing a plastic Batman mask and insisting he IS Batman.
Because comments like "It's like a retarded kid wearing a plastic Batman mask and insisting he IS Batman." are SO indicative of an unbiased mind.
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