3.8M-year-old skull of an early ape-like human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia

> a noteworthy CS professor points out some obvious and undeniable flaws in the current theory or protein 'evolution.' He also points out that is difficult to get serious researchers to grapple with this issue because Darwinism has turned into a dogma where people are viciously attacked if they point out some fundamental flaws with the idea.

All of this is wrong.

A noteworthy CS professor has zero relevance in a discussion about evolution or biology, particularly when he quotes people who aren't notable in the relevant field and tries to "demolish" strawmen. The word "demolish" is itself a huge red flag.

The sources he quoted are creationist crackpots linked to the Discovery Institute, a notoriously dishonest organization who disguises religion as science.

It is a mistake for the scientific community to engage with crackpots.

> Your comments -- in any other area of discussion on HN -- would probably get you flagged.

No, calling crackpots crackpots -- the mainstream consensus -- won't get me flagged. A big indicator of quackery is a persecution complex ("everyone is against me because of dogma", "they want to suppress dissenting views"). I think it's even in Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit. Sometimes people will call someone a crackpot because they've heard their arguments again and again, debunked them, and still that person insists, with a heavy dose of "the world is conspiring against me". It's ok to call that person a crackpot.

One last thing: in the US the term "Darwinism" (which the article uses) is almost always used by Creationists, and in a pejorative way. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism#Other_uses):

"The term Darwinism is often used in the United States by promoters of creationism, notably by leading members of the intelligent design movement, as an epithet to attack evolution as though it were an ideology (an "ism") of philosophical naturalism, or atheism. For example, UC Berkeley law professor and author Phillip E. Johnson makes this accusation of atheism with reference to Charles Hodge's book What Is Darwinism? (1874). However, unlike Johnson, Hodge confined the term to exclude those like American botanist Asa Gray who combined Christian faith with support for Darwin's natural selection theory, before answering the question posed in the book's title by concluding: "It is Atheism." Creationists use the term Darwinism, often pejoratively, to imply that the theory has been held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his followers, whom they cast as dogmatic and inflexible in their belief."

In practice, that is often not the case. Most species haven't been tested to see whether they can produce viable offspring with each other(it's usually impractical), and there are plenty of different species known to breed successfully with one another. Mules, horse-donkey hybrids, while the vast majority of them are infertile, are considered different species. Camels and Llamas can produce viable offspring even though they evolved on two different continents.

He doesn't want to discuss alternative viewpoints. He wants to throw mud because he can't go right out and say he's a creationist because historically this has probably hasn't gone well for him in prior discussions.

Creationism is a intellectually bankrupt dead end that gives a boring answer of "god did it" to any and all interesting questions and requires no further proof or analysis because god isn't subject to any particular rules and can in fact do it however he pleases whereas scientific theories always have edges you can pick on where things could be improved upon.

Since god did it needs no correction or analysis and provides no useful topics for discussion creationists pick at any flaw they can find in the scientific method or particular theories.

Since they rarely understand the scientific method or the thing they are criticizing in the first place such critiques are often not even wrong.

People like this are huge time wasters that will never learn anything from such discussion and rarely provide any useful data other than practice dealing with bad arguments. This is true even when the poster themselves is by other measures actually a smart person. They just create much more complicated insane models of the world that require more effort to refute.

The actually intelligent religious people have long since realized they could say "god did IT" where it is the universe rather than insisting he sit on earth creating thousands of slightly improved models of snails over the epochs in a way that looks really convincingly like evolution because this either implies he's imperfect because he didn't create the snail right in the first place or that he really likes jerking biology students chains.

> points out some obvious and undeniable flaws in the current theory or protein 'evolution.'

He doesn't. He showcases his lack of knowledge of biochemistry.

> that is difficult to get serious researchers to grapple with this issue

It is difficult because serious researchers have found out that explaining these issues doesn't lead to understanding for those who refuse to understand these issues.

If I would illustrate that "Nonsense sequences are essentially random" is not true or that "Your task is to invent a new gene by mutation" is a thought experiment completely unrelated to the discussion, would you change your mind, or would you ignore it and focus on some other "obvious and undeniable flaw"?

At this point, why would any serious biologist bother explaining something to people who feel their very existence depends on that something not being true?

What did I miss?

I argued that:

- The author of TFA is not a subject matter expert.

- He relies on the opinions of people known to hold fringe, debunked opinions on the subject matter, like Stephen Meyer.

- Said people belong to the Discovery Institute, known to promote religion as science.

- It is a pointless exercise for the scientific community to engage with crackpots and people dishonest about their actual goals (e.g. promoting religious views, fighting atheism, whatever it is they believe they are doing).

- A persecution complex ("they want to suppress dissenting views") is usually a sign of crackpottery.

I believe this is substantive, don't you?

> way to do a lot of arguing without actually arguing about anything substantive, A+

If you meant to say "I disagree with you" just say so.