One of the characters who frequents the ID blog Uncommon Descent is the smarm-meister Sal Cordova, an utterly clueless little git with a talent for being simultaneously oleaginous and snide. He has just posted an astonishingly foolish commentary on the apparent impossibility of evolving regeneration, and I promise, you'll enjoy reading Mark Chu-Carroll's reply. Cordova gets everything wrong.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Smarmy Sal Cordova, the Eddie Haskell of the Intelligent Design movement, is at it again, with a post in which he pretends to be competent at information theory. It is with great delight that I watch Tyler DiPietro and Mark Chu-Carroll hand his ass back to him. I know full well the creationist…
I just had to promote this to the top level of the blog.
If you remember, way back in December, I posted something about Sal Cordova's new blog. (As an interesting sidenote, Sal started his blog after
supposedly resigning from Uncommon Descent, claiming that he was returning to school, and that…
Apparently William Dembski, over at Uncommon Descent is *not* happy with my review of
Behe's new book. He pulls out a rather pathetic bit of faux outrage: "Are there any anti-ID writings that the Panda's Thumb won't endorse?"
The outrage really comes off badly. But what's Debski and his trained…
In my ongoing search for bad math, I periodically check out Uncommon Descent, which is Bill Dembski's
blog dedicated to babbling about intelligent design. I went to check them today, and *wow* did I hit the jackpot.
Dembski doesn't want to bother with the day-to-day work of running a blog. So he…
oleaginous?
why how utterly slick of you, PZ.
I've never seen it used before, but it does seem to have unique applicability to Sal.
I would have gone with obsequious and unctuous.
I think PZ was trying to get at the "greasy" nature of Sal with the oleaginous reference.
both the primary and secondary usage of it apply equally well, IMO.
I believe unctuous is considered a synonym of the secondary defininiton of oleaginous.
I've always just used demented sleazeball, myself, when describing Sal.
what's really funny is when you read Allen MacNeill from Cornell describe Sal as "polite and courteous" and that those on the evolution side of sanity would do well to consider his demeanor when arguing our points.
LOL.
I think Allen has since learned differently as to what constitutes "polite and courteous".
if snakes could smile...
Note that Sal's post has been disappeared. :)
Indeed, Sal's post is complete bullshit. However, I would appreciate if you would post something on tissue regeneration and its relation to ontogeny. But you really must not mention scordova in that post.
What I don't get is how ID would be any more feasible an answer. Just another case of bad/lazy design? Why do some fish and reptiles get regeneration and we don't?
just FYI, mark got the link to Sal's drivel wrong, he added a 6 at the end that shouldn't be there.
here is the correct link:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1781
not that I'm doing Slaveador any favors by correcting the link.
In fact, I can only think of two alternatives:
1. 6000 year creation - We were made without it. Surely god could have given us a little healing factor.
2. ID over time/common ancestor - The designer must have removed this feature at some time. Intelligently.
So - If god or the designer didn't think we needed regeneration, then why is it a problem if evolution misplaces that bit of information?
Why do some fish and reptiles get regeneration and we don't?
One likely postulate is that it's due to selection for a linked trait that resulted in dropping regeneration in favor of something else. Selection is always a balancing act, after all, and entirely dependent at any given time to whatever the biggest pressures are on any given trait.
Mark used the excellent example of feline tase sensors for "sweet" as an example as well, though arguably the negative impact of "not able to taste sweet" would be less than not being able to regenerate.
I think mark (or somebody in that thread) gave the example of a potential gene related to reducing rates of cancer being linked to the genes for regeneration, as a hypothetical that's plausible.
It's likely there are evidences of linked traits in the separate linneages that are more relevant, but I'm not up on the literature in this specific area.
related species show differing levels of regeneration, however, so I'm sure somebody has been trying to tease this out. The problem is, often it's hard to tell what the selective pressures were that led to one trait being favored over another, but we can get clues from the relative genomes, like with how the Vitamin C psuedogene is broken in exactly the same way in both Chimps and humans.
Moreover, we can conduct new experiments in selection to see how traits are affected in the field, and even make predictions based on evolutionary theory, as to exactly which direction they will go based on knowledge or control of various selective pressures.
these are some of my favorite studies in fact.
I would recommend reading some of John Endler's work on the evolution of color and fin shape in poecilliids as a great example of field-testing predictions about selective pressures.
even PBS uses his work on the evolution section of their site.
great stuff.
BTW, if you are really interested (?), you might try reading this article, which was published in 1992, and then using the Science Citation Index to see who cited it since to get a clue as to the present state of research in this area:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&li…
... and you might also look at a specific case study from the same period:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pub…
In fact, I can only think of two alternatives:
this is why creationism is so vacuous.
such limited thought processes.
check out real science, man.
it'll blow your mind.
Whoa, settle down there dude, same side.
I was just wondering why Sal would think this was a good thing to knock when the alternatives for him aren't that pretty either.
Cool links though.
Whoa, settle down there dude, same side.
I wasn't sure, but thought it best to point out how vacuous the ideas presented from the creationist viewpoint were anyway.
no offense meant; I recently spent an hour arguing with a completely delusional AIG representative who putatively claimed to have a PhD in genetics from Yale, but couldn't even parse the most simple of questions about molecular or population genetics. Sad what happens when cognitive dissonance destroys the mind's ability to form coherent arguments.
It tends to leave a very sour impression in one's mind.
seemingly a must read in Genes and Development: