[EM] Very brief Russ reply

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Russ said:

I made the mistake of trying to persuade him that the 9/11 attacks were
unlikely to have been planned and organized by someone involved with the
Bush Administration. However, I cannot "prove" that it wasn't, which
apparently means to Mike that I have tried and failed to "refute" this
conspiracy theory.

I reply:

First, a conspiracy occurs whenever 2 or more people agree to commit a 
crime. Thousands of people go to jail for conspiracies. No one doubts that 
9/11 was a conspiracy by that standard definition. It's just a question of 
whether a few foreign indivuduals successfully conspired to do 9/11 on their 
own, a particularly improbable conspiracy theory, and one contradicted by 
mountains of evidence.

  Russ continued:

What I *can* do, however, is to demonstrate that such a conspiracy would
be massive in its scope

I reply:

No one has denied that.

Russ continued:

and absurdly risky for anyone to attempt.

I reply:

  Russ is repeating a replied-to argument without referring to the reply, a 
common practice of Russ's, but one whilch violates this mailing list's 
guidelines (as does his bringing up 9l/11).

Maybe it wasn't so risky when considering the gullibility of the public, and 
the media's support for the president.

Russ continued:

As I wrote before, Mike believes passionately that the WTC was wired
with explosives that were detonated

I reply:

  Passionately? I didn't say that. I believe that apparently ordinary 
explosive demolition is consistent with the physical evidence and witness 
reports, and the opinions of fire-protection experts, and that the 
administration's story of collapse by fire is inconsistent with that 
evidence. But it isn't entirely clear where Russ gets "passionately". Except 
that, as I said, Russ says things that give him satisfaction to hear himself 
say, without regard to other considerations such as what Russ believes to be 
true.

Russ continued:

on cue to bring the buildings down.
Now, you can amuse yourself without end by imagining the logistics of
managing something like that without getting caught.

  I reply:

A close member of Bush's family was in charge of security there. That could 
help some.

  Russ continued:


But it goes way
beyond that. In the course of our discussions, I sent Mike a link about
an analysis of the WTC collapse by a prestigious team of perhaps dozens
of structural engineering experts. I don't have the link handy, but I
recall that they won an award for their work.

  I reply:

Actuallly I receilved no such link. If Russ had one, he'd have included it 
in his posting.

Was their award awarded by the Independent 9/11 Committee? :-)

Russ continues:

I haven't read their report, but I think we can safely assume that we
would know it if they had concluded that the WTC couldn't have collapsed
as it did without pre-installed explosives. They obviously came to no
such conclusion. But Mike read a book by a *theologian* who makes that
very claim -- that the WTC could not have possibly collapsed as it did
with pre-installed explosives -- and that was good enough for him. He
dismisses my citing of the professional study as an "appeal to authority."

I reply:

What else do you call it? You invoke a link that yoiu don't give us, ans say 
that it proves your point.

Russ continued:

By the way, I should have pointed out earlier that Mike told me via
email that the EM group is already aware of his views on 9/11.

I replyi:

  In one discussion about Gore vs Nader, I conceded that if Gore had been 
allowed to take the office that he'd won, he wouldn't have paticipated in a 
terrorist act that killed 3000 Americans, and so a Gore presidency would be 
significantly better than a Bush presidency. But I that doesn't mean we 
shoudl vote for Democrats, just because there's somone much worse.

I'd said:

"The funny thing is that that comes from someone who believes that the
evolution of species has never taken place."

  Russ replied:

Mike thinks he trumps me whenever he brings up my views on evolution.
The only problem is that he distorts my views. I never said or wrote
what he claims.
hat I have made clear is that I do not believe that we
could have gotten here by purely naturalistic processes with absolutely
no intelligent design or guidance (as the Neo-Darwinian Theory of
Evolution (NDT) says).

I reply:

No, actually you were initiallyy saying that no evolution of species 
happened. You call that "macro-evolution", and you were angrily arguing 
against it. But yes, later you backed down from that position, replacing it 
with something conveniently impossible to verify or disprove.

Ruiss continiued:

Do you suppose "natural selection" can
work if a million harmful mutations occur for every beneficial one?

I reply:

Where do you get the million figure? I thought you said that no figure was 
available.

  No one denies that most mutations reduce the survivability of the 
individual. But a few increase the individual's survivability. As long as 
the frequency of the mutations isn't such as to kill off the entire 
population (and it obviously is not) then the fact that harmful mutations 
are more common than beneficial ones is irrelevant. A few mutations happen. 
A few individuals don't survive. A far fewer number are benefited. The 
benefiting individuals produce more offspring and thereby become more 
numerous in the population. That's called natural selection.

Evolution speeded up when sexual reproduction began. Then, variety increased 
due to shuffling of existing genes.

When a split-off population is isolated in a new environment, eventuallly 
those gradual changes can naturallly be expected to make that population 
reproductively incompatible with the parent population, and with  other 
offshoot populations. Reproductive incompatibility is the usual standard for 
a different species. But define different species how you want to. It's 
hardly surprising that those gradual changes will sometimes change the 
population enough to make it qualify as a different species.

I respect people's religion, but Russ wants to substitute his for science. 
There's nothing iimplausible about natural selection leading to evolution of 
species.

Russ continued:

Radio engineers know that you cannot recover a signal if the
signal/noise ratio is too low, but evolutionists apparently think that
"natural selection" can "select" good mutations without being
overwhelmed by the bad ones *regardless* of the ratio. That's nonsense.

I reply:

Russ isn't being entirely clear with us about what he means. Experience 
shows that mutation doesn't happen with sufficient severity and frequency to 
  kill off entire populations typically, if that's what he's talking about. 
The few adversely mutated individuals die or doen't do as well. The fewer 
beneficially mutated individuals do better than the others, and so their 
attrilbutes eventually predominate, given sufficient time.

What selects the beneficial mutations from the harmful ones? The 
beneficially mutated individuals thrive and the adversely mutated ones die, 
or do poorly. Which part of that doesn't Russ understand?

Mike Ossipoff

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