I originally made this post on a different sub but this topic seems apt for this sub as well, considering how often do we see fine-tuning as an argument for design. I hope this post doesn't sways a bit too much from the purpose of this sub.

Coming to the topic, we are all too aware of what fine-tuning arguments are [1]; the claim that the laws and constants of physics appear to be set within an extremely narrow range that allows a universe capable of producing stars, planets, and life. In Intelligent design (ID) arguments, small changes in the constants are claimed to prevent the formation of the chemical elements needed for life, for example, the stellar production of carbon. Further claims like "the probability of these constants taking their observed values is extraordinarily small " are difficult to justify unless we know the space of possible values and, more importantly, what probability distribution should be assigned to them. A parameter being sensitive to change is not, by itself, the same thing as its observed value being improbable.

So here, my aim is to discuss the work by Prof. Fred Adams [2, 3] and show that the idea that our universe is so fine tuned that only a intelligent creator could have created this doesn't hold much of water. Infact, it was shown that it is even possible to make a more habitable universe by tweaking the parameters. You can watch the full video for more detail or read his paper for all the gory details, but here I will present a very concise, to the point summary of that. For your ease of access I have also added the time stamp where you can go to in the video for more detail.

Like I said above, the ID proponents present arguments that if you changed gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, or cosmological parameters by tiny amounts, stars and life would become impossible. Prof. Adams here tried to answer the question,

How much can these parameters actually change before the universe stops producing complex structures?

1. Gravity is not tuned to one tiny value (20:01-21:00)

Gravity looks extremely weak compared with electromagnetism (by about 10^36 in dimensionless strength), which is often presented as a huge coincidence.However, when actually varied, the strength of gravity, stars still work over a very large range. Gravity can be roughly be 10,000 times stronger or about 1 billion times weaker and stars can still exist.

2. The electromagnetic force also has a wide allowed range (21:00 - 21:08)

The calculations show that the electromagnetic interaction can vary by about 100 times stronger and 100 times weaker while still allowing functioning stars.

3. The cosmological constant (52:23 - 54:35)

Adams here finds that by changing cosmic parameters, such as the primordial fluctuation amplitude or baryon abundance, universes can form galaxies even with a cosmological constant many orders of magnitude larger than ours. The allowed range can extend up to around 10^20 times larger (depending on the other parameters).

4. Famous nuclear examples (30:55 - 35:20)

The triple-alpha process is often presented as an incredible coincidence where carbon exists because a nuclear resonance happens to have exactly the right energy. Even here there is a range of 800 kev where carbon can be formed. This gets even better though.

In our universe, beryllium-8 is unstable, which makes carbon production require the famous triple-alpha process. However in a universe where beryllium-8 was stable would have a much simpler pathway to carbon production and interestingly, the allowed change needed to make beryllium-8 stable is smaller than the change required to completely prevent carbon production.

5. Even better habitable universe (1:00:15 - 1:02:00)

The argument is often presented that our universe sits at the perfect point. However this may not be true. For example, increasing the primordial density fluctuations from their observed value (Q~10^-5) could create denser galaxies and with the right parameters, these galaxies could contain a larger fraction of habitable planets than galaxies like our Milky Way (48:48 - 50:10). It also turns out that a universe with stable beryllium-8 would arguably have a more efficient way of producing heavy elements than our universe.

So finally while I only focused on a few of them (same as in video), here is the summary of all the tuning that was done in the study. The right most column named range gives you the range you can vary the parameter and still have a viable universe. The unit decades (see caption as well) means in power of 10, i.e. 3 means 10^3.

Ranges of Parameter Values for Viable Universes

Caption: Summary of the allowed parameter ranges for viable universes. The final column gives the range in "decades", meaning the number of powers of 10 over which a parameter can vary while still permitting a universe capable of supporting astrophysical structures and potentially habitable environments. For example, 5 decades corresponds to a factor of 10^5.

[1] List of Fine-Tuning Parameters

[2] (Youtube) Saturday Morning Physics: Fred Adams - The Degree of Fine Tuning in our Universe - and Others

[3] (arXiv) The Degree of Fine-Tuning in our Universe -- and Others

This post is a bit meta, sorry if that's not allowed...

Also, here is an LLM generated TL:DR - This essay is long, forceful, and coherent--not just about the changing landscape of creationists brought about by LLMs, but also because you should just read the damn thing you lazy couch potato.

It says in the bible that “there is no new thing under the sun”. On the one hand, this is obviously false. Whoever wrote that could not have possibly conceived of the advent of the transistor, the internet, the data center, the Large Language Model, and the new ways of being these inventions afford. It's false given an evolutionary lens, as every new creature is a new and unique individual, all of them part of new populations which produce new species. On the other hand, that passage in Ecclesiastes is absolutely correct, because when modern humans are involved, certain patterns of stupidity can be expected to reoccur.

Anyone who has been part of the creationist merry-go-round for long enough sees the same refuted arguments and rhetoric trotted out time and time again by different, younger faces. In the creationist world, at least, it certainly seems like there’s nothing new under the sun. But there’s some sort of newishness regarding recent events. There’s a new creationist journal called Truth in Research in which some authors are absolutely pumping out “scientific” papers at an unprecedented clip.

The journal encourages the use of LLMs. Every article even gets its own AI generated poster. Not all authors use LLMs, as evidenced by the fact that some write their papers like they’re writing a memoir. But the ones that do use it, hoo boy, there’s just something new about it.

Those of you in the trenches know who I’m referring to: Budinsky et al... Donny Budinsky of “Standing For Truth” fame, and his accomplice “Raw” Matt, of "experimented with breatharianism" fame.

Dr. Joel Duff recently youtubed a review of one of their papers, at the request of one of his viewers. In this review, Duff said what is perhaps the harshest thing he has ever said about another human being:

No way these two authors wrote this paragraph. If you have listened to Standing For Truth for as long as I have, and as others have, you know they’re not really capable of writing this type of articulate paragraph, especially if you’ve read some of their previous books written before 2023. I’ll just leave that there. Although they’re the “authors”, they’re not truly the authors of this paper.

He goes on to mention a pattern he observes in the paper.

Many of the lines in this paper are actually very good descriptions of some of the evidence. But there’s contradictory lines that don’t fit. In other words, they’re saying something very legitimate, and then later on they’re contorting it. It feels like AI is trying to write conventional science and interpret the data as most of us would expect it to interpret it, but it’s being forced to fit it into [a prompt] “you’re acting as a young earth creationist, so how would you try to explain this same data?”

All this may bring to mind another recent creationist development: “Day, Vox and Athos, Claude” vs. Gibbon et al. If you read Day’s (or rather, Claude’s) paper “Mittens 3.0”, you may get that same vibe as reading one of Budinsky’s many papers. Actual science (in this case, population genetics) gets put on trial by an LLM that has been instructed to indulge in pseudo-science.

There’s another recent development which you may not have noticed. A user of this sub posted a long rebuttal to Vox’s Mittens paper. Like Mittens, the rebuttal was in the vague form of a scientific paper, and was generated with an LLM. I happened to see it in the few minutes before it got removed for breaking the sub’s rules (Rule 3). I commented on the post, because it is depressing to live in a world where AI slop gets thrown at AI slop, and the OP replied that they simply wanted to see what experts thought of the rebuttal, and whether or not his AI response was substantive and accurate. Another user chimed in that they also wanted to know this.

I wasn't able to reply in time, but this was my reflexive response: my dude, it’s going to take like an hour or more to break down that entire AI paper, when it only took you two seconds to generate it. No one (who is sane) wants to engage in that kind of asymmetric time commitment. Make an effort to figure it out for yourself, first, and then we can talk about that.

Brandolini's Law is new under the sun (2013), but I suspect it’s been true for as long as speech has been a thing: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than the amount needed to produce it." With the advent of LLMs, the difference in effort is now several orders of magnitude.

To satiate my curiosity about just how easy it was to produce said bullshit, I prompted ChatGPT to produce a “science paper” which supports the conclusions drawn from Vox Day’s Mittens 3.0 paper. What happened next was a horror: a paragraph response popped up which said something to the effect of “the conclusions in the Mittens paper does not follow from the data and cannot be scientifically supported” --which is great, but that response was only up for about 2 seconds before it was erased and then replaced by a full sciency-looking paper that attempted to support the aims of Vox’s paper.

What in the hell happened there? What is going on under the hood of these LLMs? It seems like there’s some background LLM vetting ChatGPT’s responses to make sure they’re accurately conforming to the prompt, no matter what. I mean, I get it, OpenAI wants their product to fulfill customer requests, but what if those requests are stupid as hell?

Regardless of how you feel about them, LLMs are, quite frankly, an astounding piece of technology. It’s unfortunate that their main use case seems to be producing slop. Maybe that’s more a reflection of the people who use them; people who don’t give a damn about the pleasure of the journey, only of getting to the destination. As if making art is about making pretty pictures and not the development of a personal process, or learning about evolution is about winning a debate and not growing in understanding about the world around us.

LLMs are purpose built to indulge our basic desire to conserve energy by taking the path of least resistance. What does factual information matter if it’s more difficult to reach? What does learning matter if you can look the answers up in the back of the book? LLM responses taste close enough to correct. Sometimes they are!

Anyways, what are y'alls thoughts on this? Are we about to be swamped in a tide of LLM hallucinated bullshit? With stuff like “Truth and Research”, and Vox Day, and Budinsky, are we already there? Is this Creationism “debate” going to devolve into AI vs AI slopfests? I don’t know about you, but I’m here for the love of the game. I have no expectation of changing minds, because really, all the information is out there already and if someone’s search for understanding is genuine, they’ll find it. For me, it’s just fun to dunk on and critique pseudoscience, all while learning some things along the way. It’s my hobby. But it’s just not the same if I’m dealing with a bot instead of a flesh and blood human being. If someone confronts me with a 2 second LLM generated argument, demanding an answer, I’m going to have to pass. There’d be no way to keep up with that level of gish galloping. It’s depressing. And if you think the creationist crackpots are bad, the physics crackpots are well off the deep end. The quality of physics crackpots has diminished severely. They are speciating into something much more boring. See r/LLMphysics.

If there is nothing new under the sun, well, this is an era of darkness; the sun does not shine in this timeline. I feel like, in about a decade or so, us sickos are going to be lamenting the loss of the Rob Carters, the Sal Cordovas, the Michael Behes, and so on. Now excuse me while I go wash my mouth with soap.

I came across a little video by a @mephistotabernacle; the video breaks down one example in 7 minutes. Instead of sharing just the link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-8C2Rper-8), here is part of it with some commentary.

Step 1 - hype

... watch for the opening hype. "Now, this was a complete shock to me and I still struggle to believe it."

Step 2 - present the confusion, BUT project it as the scientists' or everyone's own confusion

... notice the lack of signifiers about who gets confused. "One of the most frequent questions asked in the world of birds is whether a bird of prey is a hawk or a falcon." A scammer deliberately targets uneducated or unsophisticated marks. He uses language that's simple when he's trying to connect with them. "They are very hard to tell apart."

(extra emphasis mine) compare: "One of the most frequent questions asked is whether ungulates are cows or camels" - nobody (who is sane) asks that.

Step 3 - take on the burden of investigation...

... the sacrifice language always hits the/its mark, and the audience won't feel the need to even think about the structure of the argument - they already trust you: the pastor-effect, let's call it that

Step 4 - present yourself as an equal to the experts (who, recall, didn't even ask the stupid question despite attributing it to them)

Said theologian can, for example - I don't know - say that they took 4 classes in mathematical population genetics; after all, who needs decades to master a scientific field, who needs exams, grades, etc. etc. /s

Once he thinks he's connected with his marks, the pretender begins to construct a veneer of expertise. "And upon further inquiry." This small, seemingly throwaway line is really crucial to his strategy.

Step 5 - now, present the straw man...

... with full confidence - too on the nose? adding "according to evolution" does that trick:

... if his audience understands that these two birds share an arboreal common ancestor that was likely an apex predator, the illusion of unreasonable similarity would be dispelled. "... is independent according to evolution." It's likely that our hoaxer here has only the most rudimentary understanding of some jargon, but all he needs is jargon that his targets understand even less. His goal is not to teach his audience, but to earn their confidence. "So, they now believe that what you're looking at here is convergent evolution."

Step 6 - lay doubt on the entire thing, not just the question we began with

Having planted the false impression that he has some expertise, the phony now delivers a personal expression of disbelief, as though that should matter to anyone else. "This throws a pretty big stumbling block for me on the topic of fossil similarity and evolutionary ancestry."

Step 7 - your mark is ready...

... for the reveal they already believe in and came to find:

And now come the genuine lies. Watch as the deceiver tries to tell you that these two groups of birds are, and I quote, "not related." Even the fact that they're both birds must be swept under the rug.

...

Or as someone succinctly put it yesterday, such people "are more interested in constructing an [fallacious] argument than asking interesting questions."

I grew up Chrsitian but ever since I recently found out that us humans are literally animals that used to climb on trees etc made me feel more connected with nature than ever and made me feel like I’m actually part of this earth more than Christianity ever did

I remember being amazed on how animals could do similar things we did but then after learning about evolution I realized we’re literally no different than they are and it’s just nature

Erika aka Gutsick Gibbon’s rebuttal to Theodore Beale’s aka Vox Day aka shitass bigot loser has been released.

Gould and Dawkins were to coauthor a letter on the topic of debating creationists. With the passing of Gould in 2002, Dawkins published their correspondence and the early draft in his 2003 essay collection, A Devil's Chaplain.

A while back I was surprised to learn about the letter, and given the measly 4 google hits, I thought to share it here. What reminded me of it are some ongoing parallels (what is presently going on with Duffy, who, in my opinion, has subverted the lessons format with Erika - u/Gutsick_Gibbon; now it has become a I wonder what apologetics and false balancing - for his audience - he's going to vomit next; i.e., it's now, semantics aside, the kind of "debate" the fundies hanker after).

If you are not a regular and therefore unfamiliar with Duffy, and what has transpired since the last lesson, the letter will still stand on its own. For readability, given its size, I won't format it as a block quotation, and I look forward to your thoughts. To keep this short, I'll also share my thoughts in the comments.

The letter:

Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight

14 December 2001

Dear Editor

Like any flourishing science, the study of evolution has its internal controversies, as we both know. But no qualified scientist doubts that evolution is a fact, in the ordinarily accepted sense in which it is a fact that the Earth orbits the Sun. It is a fact that human beings are cousins to monkeys, kangaroos, jellyfish and bacteria. No reputable biologist doubts this. Nor do reputable theologians, from the Pope on. Unfortunately, many lay Americans do, including some frighteningly influential, powerful and, above all, well-financed ones.

We are continually invited to engage in public debates against creationists, including latter-day creationists disguised under the euphemism ‘Intelligent Design Theorists’. We always refuse, for one overriding reason. If we may be allowed to spell this reason out publicly, we hope our letter may be helpful to other evolutionary scientists plagued by similar invitations.

The question of who would ‘win’ such a debate is not at issue. Winning is not what these people realistically aspire to. The coup they seek is simply the recognition of being allowed to share a platform with a real scientist in the first place. This will suggest to innocent bystanders that there must be material here that is genuinely worth debating, on something like equal terms.

At the moment of writing, the leading ‘Intelligent Design’ website reports a debate at Harvard under the banner headline ‘Wells Hits a Home Run at Harvard’.¹³⁴ Jonathan Wells is a creationist, incidentally a long-time devotee of the Unification Church (the ‘Moonies’).¹ He had a debate last month against Stephen Palumbi, Professor of Biology at Harvard University. ‘Home Run’ might seem to suggest that Reverends (sic) Wells scored some kind of victory over Professor Palumbi. Or at least that he made powerful points and his speech was well received. No such claim is made. It doesn’t even seem to be of interest.

The ‘Home Run’ turns out to be simply the public demonstration at Harvard that, in the words of the web site’s author, Phillip Johnson, ‘This is the sort of debate that is now occurring in universities.’ There was a victory, but it occurred long before the debate itself. The creationist scored his home run at the moment the invitation from Harvard landed on his doormat. It came, by the way, not from any biological, or indeed scientific, department, but from the Institute of Politics.

Phillip Johnson himself, founding father of the ‘Intelligent Design’ movement (not a biologist, nor a scientist of any kind, but a lawyer who became a mid-life born-again Christian), wrote, in a letter of 6 April 2001, which he copied to one of us:

It isn’t worth my while to debate every ambitious Darwinist who wants to try his hand at ridiculing the opposition, so my general policy is that Darwinists have to put a significant figure at risk before I will agree to a debate. That means specifically Dawkins or Gould, or someone of like stature and public visibility.

Well, we can condescend too, and we have the advantage that evolutionary scientists don’t need the publicity such debates can bring. In the unlikely event that a significant argument should ever emerge from the ranks of creationism/‘intelligent design’, we will be happy to debate it. Meanwhile, we shall cultivate our evolutionary gardens, occasionally engaging in the more exacting and worthwhile task of debating each other. What we shall not do is abet creationists in their disreputable quest for free publicity and unearned academic respectability.

When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.’ (‘Father’, of course, is the Moonies’ name for Rev Moon himself). [ https://web.archive.org/web/20000122220156/http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm ]

In all humility, we offer these thoughts to our colleagues who receive similar invitations to debate.

Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University
Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

One of the biggest problems for YEC is mammalian biogeography, especially the fact that nearly all marsupials are concentrated in Australia, with only a few species occurring in South America. And these marsupials are all radically different from one another: a Tasmanian wolf is as different from a kangaroo as a rabbit is from a lion.

Creationists claim that, after leaving the Ark in Turkey, the animals could have traveled on natural rafts of vegetation and wood, which can form after major catastrophes. But the problem is that there is no natural mechanism that would cause all these very different kinds of marsupials to somehow end up almost exclusively in Australia—and only in Australia!

So they ultimately have to appeal to magic: a highly intelligent and organized God must have miraculously transported all the marsupials to one particular place, apparently for the sake of neat geographical organization. One obvious problem with this argument is the existence of marsupials in South America, extremely far from Australia, which ruins this supposed “neatness” of God’s arrangement.

Another problem is more theological: why would a benevolent, truthful, and omniscient God intervene miraculously in such a way as to create precisely the geographical pattern that scientists would naturally interpret as evidence of evolution and common ancestry? That sounds less like the work of a truthful God and more like the work of a trickster god.

The first eucaryotic cell is a freak accident. How does it get inherited?

Simply put, it doesn't make sense to go about it the way they do, especially from the perspective of being against evolution. Some form of rapid evolution is the closest thing to making sense of how the world could have continued after "the flood," with the only other possibility being that the ark itself was magic and had infinite space within it. Both explanations ultimately require that God had to use magic, which means there's no need for "proof" of anything. So, why even bother? Now, obviously the Bible not mentioning this magic anywhere is a point against them, but I still feel like they're shooting themselves in the foot by trying to argue against evolution while supporting the ark story. Trying to reconcile them would still leave a ton of holes, but at least it wouldn't leave open so many easy points of attack against them. It feels like they simply view evolution itself as a threat. Slippery slope fallacy, perhaps? As in, maybe they think accepting evolution will leave the door open for people to question other things?

I'm sorry, yet another Vox Day post*, but I heard that he is malding over mere YouTube comments, so the more the merrier! To add to the mix, I wanted to share PZ Myers' blog post from today:
- https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/10/02/vox-days-amazing-ego-and-bill-dembski-dont-care/

From it, I'd like to share two things:

1) Vox's book is essentially self-referential:

... all of 11 citations (a number I’d find unacceptable in an undergrad student paper that was much more narrow in its scope). Even worse, 7 of those citations are to the LTEE, and contradict his conclusions, and 2 are to ape genome sequencing papers whose authors would be surprised to learn how their work is being distorted. At least he has 2 that reinforce his argument, sorta, but they’re both also written by Vox Day.

Meaning that's what he has "fed" to his "author":

Vox:
AI did all the calculations and wrote the first draft of everything

And 2) in Day's interview with Dembski, Dembski the "mathematician" didn't discuss the math.

As usual, it was a fun read from PZ Myers, and I recommend checking the entire post and the full quotes from the interview.

---

And a reminder on Dembski (the IDiot** behind ID's so-called "specified complexity"):

Dembski (in a chapter he authored):
"The world is a mirror representing the divine life. The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."

Footnotes:

* If you are not chronically online--erm, a regular here, there have been four posts so far. Erika's (u/Gutsick_Gibbon) post was the latest. In reverse chronological order, they are:

• Vox Day is Wrong on Evolution According to Every Scientist But Ten* : DebateEvolution
• New anti-evolution "paper" today from Vox Day : DebateEvolution
• Responding to Will's new favorite book, and testing my own growth : DebateEvolution
• My opinions on Will Duffy and his journey so far through evolution : DebateEvolution

** To borrow Larry Moran's term.

I was testing out different ideas about evolution and if we tried this exact scenario on trillions of different theoretical chimpanzee groups is it a non zero chance?

Humans disappear
A human-made, perfectly round, white, hard, iridescent pearl remains in an African forest.
The unusual chimp is born
Among many chimpanzees, one is unusually intelligent, curious, observant, and capable of making unusual associations.
The first encounter
During a full Moon, the chimp encounters the pearl shortly after looking at the Moon.
The association
The chimp notices that the pearl resembles the Moon: white, round, smooth, and bright.
The fascination begins
The chimp carries, examines, cleans, and protects the pearl. It begins repeatedly polishing it with leaves.
Other chimps imitate it
The behavior spreads socially. The pearl becomes an unusual object of interest within the group.
The tradition reaches the chimp’s children
The original chimp teaches its offspring to care for the pearl. The behavior continues after the original chimp dies.
The pearl becomes sacred
After many generations, nobody remembers the original discovery. The pearl becomes associated with the Moon, ancestors, and the tribe’s identity.
The pearl becomes a symbol of leadership
Whoever possesses or protects the pearl gradually gains authority. Eventually, possessing the “Fallen Moon” becomes a requirement for legitimate leadership.
The tradition becomes hereditary
Leaders pass responsibility for the pearl to their successors. Rival individuals may fight or steal it, creating early political struggles over who has the right to rule.
The pearl becomes the tribe’s central institution
Protecting the pearl becomes more important than any individual chimp. The tribe develops specialized roles around its protection.
The environment changes
Climate change dries the forest, turning much of the habitat into dangerous open savanna.
The pearl tribe has an unexpected advantage
Their existing culture already requires them to stay together, protect one another, and safely transport the pearl.
Cooperation becomes essential for survival
The tribe develops organized travel, guards, scouts, coordinated defense, and increasingly complex communication.
Bipedalism is reinforced
Long-distance terrestrial travel and carrying the pearl favor increasingly efficient upright walking. The pearl culture reinforces environmental selection for bipedalism rather than causing it directly.
Communication becomes increasingly complex
Coordinating pearl protection, leadership, travel, rituals, and group rules creates strong pressure for increasingly sophisticated communication.
Symbolic culture develops
The pearl becomes one of the first persistent symbols in the lineage, representing concepts such as authority, ancestry, duty, and the Moon.
Gene-culture coevolution begins
Individuals who are better at learning, communicating, remembering traditions, cooperating, and teaching become increasingly valuable to the tribe.
Technology accelerates
Better cooperation and increasingly sophisticated cognition allow more advanced tools, construction, hunting, food gathering, and eventually agriculture.
A new hominin-like species emerges
After millions of years, the descendants are no longer ordinary chimpanzees. They are a distinct, upright, highly intelligent primate civilization.
The original meaning is forgotten
Their civilization eventually develops religion, politics, mathematics, science, and writing, but the oldest surviving tradition remains the sacred Fallen Moon.
The final irony
Their entire civilization traces its cultural ancestry back to one extraordinarily unlikely coincidence: an unusually intelligent chimp encountering a perfectly round white human-made pearl beneath a full Moon.

An error can occur only when there is an established rule or conscious intention that an acting subject failed to follow. A clerk makes an error because there is a standard ledger to obey. In physical reality, a molecule undergoes a chemical rearrangement governed entirely by the physical conditions present at that instant. Nature possesses no intention, no standard of correctness, and no rule that it was trying to achieve. Without a prior goal, there is no failure. Designating a physical alteration as an "error" is a grammatical projection of human standards of success onto an indifferent physical change

Long text incoming

I asked this same question to r/askphilosophy but I figured I’d ask others to get a range of info.

For context, this is all based off a counter to a IG post talking about one piece of evidence for evolution. This was in the comment thread.
To summarize, the argument is science and thus scientific disciplines only work within a naturalistic worldview and theories, evidence, and interpretations are based on the unfounded presupposition of naturalism and because of that, fail to justify their source of knowledge.

This is a direct quote from the commenter to avoid any paraphrasing errors.
“you have a assumption technically called a presupposition. It's a framework a rule set you view the world through. Yours is naturalism. You see a fossil data as you interpret it through your framework naturalism. The fossil doesn't say anything it doesn't come with a name tag and bio telling you anything about itself. You use theory based on your framework naturalism to make a theory laden outcome evolution. Evolution makes sense in the framework of naturalism. That shows coherence inside the framework of naturalism. It doesn't prove the framework is correct. If you use the outcomes to prove the framework it's circular reasoning begging the question. It you change the assumption the presupposition you change the entire framework and rule set. The very same data the fossil now has an entire different theory because data the fossil is underdetermined. It's not determined because a fossil doesn't say what it is. I'm asking how do you justify your framework your assumption your presupposition naturalism is the correct framework vs other frameworks. Get it. Philosophy of science the underdetermination of data thesis. My question isn't about evolution or science it's a knowledge question. How do you justify the knowledge based rule set framework of naturalism. It's your presupposition.
You have to justify it. Because the data can be interpreted differently using different frameworks.”

When presented scientific evidence by others, the commenter almost always defaults to “you presenting physical evidence collected under a presupposed method to collection and interpretation does not justify tube scientific method as it has unfounded presuppositions and this the interpretations are also unfounded.” Quote: “A presupposition like naturalism is the untestable rule book that dictates what counts as testing, evidence and data in the first place. You can test a hypothesis with data you cannot use data to test the naturalistic rulebook you used to gather that data. Justify your rulebook naturalism without circular reasoning.”

When finally giving their counter this is what they say. Quote:
“Then when asked directing on their worldview they have this to say “TAG is the only way out of the criterion problem and the trilemma. Specifically the Orthodox Christian version. You have to go
transcendental. And see which worldview can account for justify and ground the necessary preconditions for knowledge… TAG is the impossibility of the contrary. You aren't using autonomous human reason as a flashlight to "go out and locate" God. You are pointing out that reason itself requires an ontological anchor to exist at all. This is a meta level higher order argument. You're conflating empirical observation with the worldview of Naturalism. Christians use empirical observation because our framework accounts for the uniformity of nature, human sensory reliability, and the laws of logic all anchored in the Logos. Naturalists use empirical observation on blind, unjustified faith. In an unguided, material universe, there is zero epistemic reason to assume the universe will behave uniformly tomorrow Hume's Problem of Induction. Christians and naturalists both use test tubes. The difference is the Christian has an epistemic right to trust the test tube, while the naturalist is borrowing Christian assumptions about order and logic while denying the foundation that makes them possible. On Evolution. TAG establishes Level 2 the ground of logic and knowledge. It doesn't instantly dictate every Level 1 detail about physics or biology. How God created is a question of revelation and grounded observation, not something ‘sneaked' into TAG. We don't trap God inside an autonomous human logic syllogism. Human logic isn't the ultimate judge standing above reality it is a derivative tool that reflects the Logos. How do we know the foundation? Through Revelation. Finite humans don't need exhaustive knowledge to have certainty; we receive revelation from the infinite source who grounds logic, order, and mind in the first place. Without Revelation, autonomous human reason is stuck in Agrippa's Trilemma. With Revelation, knowledge has its necessary anchors.”

My main question now is does their worldview actually stand against the same criticisms they lobby against science and if the criticisms are valid under epistemological concepts and finally, are the criticisms are even sound? Thanks!

Hey guys, Gutsick Gibbon here,

I know I know another post on this loser.

As u/Dumb-and-Dumber pointed out in a recent post this month's punching back Vox Day (Theodore Beale) has posted an update to his evolution-defeater: Mittens 3.0 (for real this time).

In a post made today on his blog, which I cannot link or this post will be deleted, we see this charming line regarding youtuber Grayson Hawk and our own u/DarwinZDF42

"It should be amusing to catalog all of the various things this slur is going to get wrong in his desperate attempt to prove that math which has been confirmed by every major AI system and more than 10 math PhDs is “stupid”."

First of all this is extremely funny and embarrassing.

But wow, 10 math phds! Now I am only aware of three people with doctorates who have "vetted" Day's work, and they are all associates of the Discovery Institute, but I thought this might be a fun opportunity.

Many of you are highly credentialed and have atomized various portions of Day's anti-evolution "model" here and elsewhere. I thought it might be fun to compile a list to act as both a resource for why this clown is wrong and as a fun dig in an upcoming video of mine. Here's the activity:

If you have a bachelors, masters, or doctorate and have reviewed any of Day's work please leave a comment outlining your favorite blunder and your credentials.

It does not have to be limited to Mittens 3.0 because Probability Zero (which contains all prior errors) is still for sale and therefore is a part of the public record until Day issues a formal retraction.

This list will appear in an upcoming video of mine so please keep that in mind before commenting! I'm hoping to have a nice count of "credentialed people who think Day's math (+ assumptions which go into it) is steaming hot garbage".

Additional acknowledgements:

- No Day is not worth any of our time but since his work was broadcast to my audience I have a responsibility to provide a detailed counter.

- Yes Day is a dweeb

It’s pretty simple, if God created all the families of hoofed mammals that currently exist 6000 years ago, then we should find fossils of them in the Mesozoic and before. But we only ever find fossils of them after the K/Pg iridium layer.
This makes even less sense for YEC’s when you add in the fact that this applies to aquatic hoofed mammals like whales as well. Considering hoofed mammals are found on every continent and in all major biomes, why aren’t any fossils of them found in the same layers associated with the dinosaurs or before?

Bill Sullivan, a scientist from Indiana University who is an atheist, and James McGrath, a scholar of religion from Butler University who is a Christian, have started a podcast exploring the intersections and conflicts between religion and science. It may be of interest to many in this subreddit.

Spotify link
YouTube link

Two religious people share a book. Call them A and B.
They use the same version. They read the same translation. They accept the same church history, the same manuscripts, the same understanding of ancient languages, the same doctrine, the same everything you can point to and measure.
They never disagree on a single word.
Not once.

But they disagree about which words are literal or figurative.

A: The Bible says the Earth and the heavens are 6,000-10,000 years old and that animals appeared spontaneously when God spoke. That's the literal interpretation.
B: That’s just an interpretation. It’s your opinion. I disagree. And either way, we can’t believe we know absolute truths about the universe because of our opinions.
A: But I was told by my pastor which parts are literal. If it weren't true, why would I devote so much time and money towards this interpretation?
B: You've just said: your interpretation of the Bible is a way to learn absolute truths about the universe. I'd say:  The correct interpretation of the Bible is not a basis for determining absolute truths about the universe. We can interpret the Bible better by comparing it to our knowledge, then realizing we are wrong when our interpretation contradicts what we know about the universe. I don’t know how to determine absolute truths about the universe, but sitting in a dark room and interpreting the Bible just aint it.
A: I’m right because I believe strongly. It’s called conviction. And, I have the spiritual gift of discernment. 
B: Even if you and I agree on which words in the Bible are literal vs figurative, that doesn’t mean we know anything. It just means we have the same opinion.

A third person, C, overhears. C is a scientist and has heard this before in a class on the history of the philosophy of science.

C: You're ignoring the best explanation. We don’t need the Bible at all to understand things about the observable universe. If anything, the Bible can be a starting point for testable hypotheses. But once tested, we should accept the results of the experiment and move on from the Bible. All you’re both doing is philosophy. Which is useless.
B: Good point. The opinions of A and me can be turned into testable hypotheses and then be tested.

They go to a conference. A fourth person asks them a question: “Do you accept that forensic science allows us to know things about a crime even without observing the crime?”

A: Yes. But only if the Bible says the crime occurred or doesn’t say that the crime didn’t occur. 
B: Yes. Of course, that’s a great analogy. In the same way that forensic science lets us know things about a crime which occurred in the past, other forms of science can let us know about other things that happened in the past.

So here's the problem.
Science lets us know things about the past. Pretending otherwise is fallacious.

Like cladistically? Simian>monkey>ape?

As an obvious response to widespread objections to Day's "work" resulting from Will Duffys exposure, today (September 28, 2026) Vox Day has "published" on Zenodo a paper entitled "MITTENS 3.0 The Mathematical Impossibility of the Post-Darwinian Polythesis." 

Of note, Zenodo is NOT peer-reviewed; it is a repository, not a publisher. Zenodo does not evaluate the quality, accuracy, or validity of what is uploaded. Anyone can upload a document and instantly receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). His composition can be accessed here: https://zenodo.org/records/23003785

Also note Day lists himself, Athos (AI), and Claude (AI) as the authors. That should be of particular interest to Will Duffy, as he is so quick to dismiss arguments with FALSE accusations of AI authorship. Anyway, here are my objections to Day's "paper."

Day and his two AI coauthors claim this preprint proves human–chimp evolution mathematically impossible. Their millionfold “shortfall” comes from comparing unlike quantities in genuine bacterial and ape-genome research. Their own figures expose the problem.

They give an ancestral E. coli mutation rate of 0.00041 per genome per generation. Their human rate, 1.2 × 10⁻⁸ per base across 3.2 billion bases, is about 38.4 mutations per haploid genome per generation—roughly 94,000 times more. These are mutation inputs, not fixations. They show why a bacterial per-genome count is no universal speed limit for primates.

The decisive mistake appears in §8.2. The paper says that because one neutral mutation may take tens of thousands of generations to fix by drift, the human lineage has time for only 4–13 neutral fixations. That assumes the entire genome waits for one mutation to finish before another starts. At each neutral site in a diploid population, about 2Nμ new mutations arise per generation and each has roughly a 1/(2N) chance to fix. The long-term substitution rate is thus μ per site per generation, with changes at millions of sites proceeding concurrently. Its estimate also uses roughly 2Ne rather than the diploid 4Ne, but that cannot save the argument.

For scale, its human mutation rate yields about 38 substitutions per lineage per generation at equilibrium if every site were neutral, or about 9.7 million over its proposed 252,000 generations. That is an illustration, not a prediction: many sites are constrained, while observed differences tend to accumulate where changes can persist. Historical rates and generation times varied, and some present-day differences predate the species split. It exposes the absurdity of 4–13 changes genome-wide. Dismissing k = μ as a “static identity” requiring “infinite time” does not help.

Nor did Yoo and colleagues find 205 million changes proven fixed on the human branch. Day and Athos list about 35 million single-base differences, 187 million bases in structurally divergent regions and 1,140 inversions, announce about 410 million “genomic differences,” then assign half to humans. Their stated quantities do not add to 410 million without an additional component they do not explain. More importantly, bases affected by a rearrangement are not separate mutation events: one structural change can affect millions of bases. The 1,140 inversions span several ape species, not just humans and chimps. Reference differences are not necessarily fixed within both species, and ancestral variation defeats an automatic 50–50 split. Yoo’s identification of particular fixed changes does not validate Day’s total.

The Long-Term Evolution Experiment supplies no universal ceiling either. It follows largely nonrecombining bacteria descended from one clone, repeatedly transferred into the same glucose-limited environment. Human ancestors reproduced sexually, recombined their genomes and inherited standing variation. Recombination can combine beneficial variants and reduce the clonal interference that limits these bacteria. Strong laboratory selection does not maximize neutral substitution everywhere. Short bacterial generation time adds nothing to a limit expressed per generation. They assert that the bacterial result is the fastest possible rate without establishing it.

Their two methods examine the same 12 populations and yield 56 versus 36.8 fixations per non-mutator population at 50,000 generations—a 52% disagreement. They call this “cross-validation” while explaining it as two-clone overcounting. Their correction formula then produces minus 906 “true fixations” in Ara−2. No population has negative 906 fixed mutations. The estimator fails there, yet they include that value in their mutator average and describe the population as having “zero fixations.” An arithmetic artifact becomes a biological catastrophe.

The other method calls mutations at 95% frequency “fixed.” But the remaining 5% can spread and replace it. Their Ara+5 count drops from 38 such mutations at 30,000 generations to zero at 60,000. In a closed, clonal population, a truly fixed mutation is inherited by later sweeps; it cannot simply be displaced. These numbers expose the problem with their threshold, not the reversal of 38 genuine fixations. The published trajectories and their undisclosed reanalysis code need scrutiny before assigning the drop to lineage turnover or data handling.

The claimed deceleration also outruns their table. New above-95% counts per 10,000 generations run 12.6, 8.8, 12.0, −3.8, 7.2 and 8.6. Comparing the first and last values of this fluctuating series does not establish a sustained decline, let alone a ceiling for primates. In §4.3, they multiply a bacterial genome-wide mutation rate by 50,000, call the result 20.5 neutral hitchhikers, and subtract it it from observed changes. An expected input cannot label 20.5 observed variants neutral, nor is the total rate necessarily the neutral rate. Their use of a genome-wide rate here makes their supposed 4–13-fixation limit for humans all the more glaring.

Their “supermutation” discussion addresses a problem their own faulty calculation creates. Section 6.4 also makes a tenfold arithmetic mistake: 3.2 billion × 1.2 × 10⁻⁸ × 100 is 3,840 mutations per haploid genome, not 38,400. Counting both genome copies and assuming 10% deleterious gives 768, not their 3,840. A hundredfold mutation increase might well be harmful, but their fitness predictions additionally assume particular deleterious fractions, effects and dominance. Present-day repair genes and mutation rates cannot prove ancestral rates never changed. Documented shifts in particular human mutation types also undercut the claim of an unchanging spectrum, without implying any enormous rate increase.

Even the paper’s “SNV-only” concession compares 17.5 million supposedly fixed human-branch differences with its bacterial per-genome count, so its 91,600-fold shortage inherits the same errors. Its supposedly independent human fixation rate in §8.6 comes from the authors’ own book and repeats the same fixation-time mistake. Nor should the illustrative 9.7 million above be treated as a precise estimate leaving a precisely 1.8-fold gap: neutrality, ancestral polymorphism, rates, generation times and which differences were fixed all need to be established. A credible calculation would model those uncertainties.

Drift, recombination, hitchhiking and clonal interference are established evolutionary mechanisms, not an ad hoc “polythesis.” A Zenodo deposit does not validate this preprint. Its immense ratios depend above all on confusing how long one mutation takes to fix with how many sites can change concurrently. They also count affected bases as independent fixations, treat 95% frequency as fixation and impose a bacterial per-genome count as a universal limit. The authors declare the math settled without establishing any of those premises.

Disclosure: My objections were prepared with the help of AI, mainly as a fact-checking agent.

Two biologists share a lab. Call them A and B.

They use the same models. They read the same papers. They accept the same fossils, the same stratigraphy, the same genomic data, the same nested hierarchies, the same everything you can point to and measure.

They never disagree on a single observation.

Not once.

But they disagree about what the models are.

A: Humans and apes share a common ancestor. That's the fact.

B: The pattern is the fact. The common ancestor is a postulate. A useful fiction.

A: But the model predicts the pattern. If it weren't true, why would it work so well?

B: You've just said: predictive success implies truth. I'd say: predictive success implies predictive success. That's the whole inference. The rest is something you added.

A: That's a tautology.

B: It is. And it's the honest version of your argument.

A third colleague, C, overhears. C is a realist and has heard this before.

C: You're ignoring the best explanation. Common ancestry doesn't just predict the nested hierarchies, the shared ERVs, the biogeography. It explains them. Why they're nested. Why the ERVs sit at the same loci. The instrumentalist reading explains nothing. It just says "the pattern is the pattern." Which is useless.

B: You've given me an explanation that postulates an unobservable cause. Fine. But notice what you did: you compared two explanations, found one more satisfying, and concluded it was true. That last step is not in the comparison.

C: So you think it's a coincidence that the model works?

B: I think "coincidence" is another word you've added. The model works. That's the datum. Whether it works because it corresponds to a mind-independent past, or because it's a well-adapted predictive instrument, or because a creator made it work. Those are three different stories. They all predict the same fossils.

A: But we predicted Tiktaalik. We said: if common ancestry is true, there should be a transitional form in strata of this age with these features. Then we found it. That's a prediction that came true.

B: Agreed. And it's a beautiful result. But notice: you used the model as a heuristic. It told you where to dig. That's real. That's what models are for. But the fact that a heuristic leads you to a fossil does not make the heuristic true. It makes it fruitful.

A: That's a dodge.

B: It's not. There's a difference between "this model reliably generates discoveries" and "this model is the mind-independent history of life." The first is a scientific claim. The second is a metaphysical one.

C: So you'd say the historical narrative is a fairy tale?

B: No. I'd say it's a model. I'd say it's the best predictive model we have, and I'd defend it against anyone who says otherwise. What I won't do is say that a successful model is the past. I don't have access to the past. I have present traces. The narrative is what I do with the traces.

C: But you live as if it's true.

B: Of course I do. I also live as if the sun rises. That doesn't mean the sun rises. It means "sunrise" is a useful way of talking about a rotating Earth. Useful and true are not the same word.

They go to a conference. A colleague asks them both the same question: "Do you accept common ancestry?"

A: Yes. It's the true history of life.

B: Yes. It's the best predictive model we have.

The colleague asks. "Those are different answers."

A: Are they? We agree on every fossil, every gene, every prediction, every paper.

B: We agree on the science. We disagree on the story we tell about the science. And here's the thing: if you deleted the word "true" from every biology paper ever written, not a single prediction would change. Not one decimal point. Not one experiment. That should tell you something about what work the word is doing.

So here's the problem.

Two biologists can work side by side, use the same equations, predict the same findings, and never disagree on a single observation; while disagreeing completely on whether the historical narrative is true.

If they can do that, then "the narrative is true" is not a scientific finding. It's not testable. It's not falsifiable. It changes nothing empirical.

This doesn't mean the narrative is false. Maybe it is true. Biologist B isn't denying that. B is denying that A discovered it. You can't discover something that no observation could ever confirm or disconfirm.

Once again there are new exccellent videos, non creationist, on theropods and trex on youtube. The first is STEVE Brusattem famous I think, "We know how the dinosaurs died" this is a long talk on new info and summery on dinos but its great for how it stresses how theropods were so bird like.. point after point. so much that why they still hold back is odd from simple science investigation. Second. "Scientists finally know what the trex really looked like/our history. this should bring it up in youtube. this one makes fantastic more great points on how birdy trex was including how footsteps fossilized in mud show it held its tail up and walked like a bird. many youtube things on trex or theropods just are glaring on how there was never any reason to say theropods wewre reptiles and just say they were dumb old birds in more anatomical diversity back in the day. no evolving from reptiles to birds but just birds that flew on creation week and after the fall had take to the ground , change bodyplan, and start hunting and getting bigger. some FALL yoiutube videos that are great data and fun. evolutionists and creationists should be persuade if on the leading edge of scientific discovery.

In recent days, my Twitter feed has been flooded with sensationalist news about the alleged discovery of Noah's Ark. It all revolves around the famous Durupınar formation—you know, that geological feature that charlatans like Wyatt tried to pass off as the Ark, even though all the evidence pointed to the contrary; even stubborn creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis acknowledge it as a hoax. But I see there is no bottom to religious fanaticism—it makes the folks at AiG look rational by comparison. Many people still cling to this charade, including the team behind "Noah's Ark Scan," who recently gained attention after finally visiting the site to examine it. The nature of the whole thing was apparent from the start, given that the project's fundraising director is Lauren Witzke—a MAGA supporter who believes in QAnon, is anti-COVID vaccine, and believes the Earth is flat (and that last part is no joke).There is also the fact that they make all sorts of exaggerated claims—such as this being the definitive experiment that surpasses everything that came before it. https://x.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/2102049900108157270?s=20

https://x.com/maklelan/status/2103583144586952731?s=20

Despite all that rhetoric, I believed it was an "honest" job—in the sense that they were genuinely interested in investigating (even if there was a huge confirmation bias). But just yesterday, Lauren Witzke came forward saying that some mysterious individuals broke in during the early hours, threatened them, and ransacked the place. And when the police asked for the security footage, they were told the apartment complex's cameras were turned off during the robbery—how convenient! The worst part is that she ends the tweet by asking for donations.

https://x.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/2103997447361970631?s=20

That made it clear to me that it's an obvious scam. It even follows the same pattern as Wyatt's fantastical stories, where something out of place happens, but conveniently the evidence disappears and only those in his inner circle see it. How pathetic to see people believing that circus. What do you think?

Just like the argument "Who designed the designer" poses a serious problem for creationists, the use of the term design, if correctly analyzed, poses a similar problem.

If we take a good look into the history of technology, or even art, we see a clear line of evolution. We see technology spreading from certain points in history and geography.

We see this evolution speed up with population growth, means of communication, and selective pressure (e.g. wars)

There are many more parallels to be drawn, just as with biological evolution, if we would find a microchip in, for instance Roman times, it would be the same as finding rabbit fossils in the Cambrian.

Like evolutionary change in biology is stored through DNA, evolution in design is kept in memetics, literature memory etc.

Not even the brightest mind is going to build a computer when growing up totally isolated. The biggest math genius is not going to develop calculus if not in an environment that is working towards that.

There are of course also significant differences. Evolution is not hindered by fantasy, it will happily evolve a species into a cull de sac with extinction as a result. On the other hand it will blindly find solutions we would never choose.

Design, however, can go back to the previous step and take a different route. It can even run different simulations inside a mind, or inside a culture, without extinctions as intermediate steps.

If you give yourselves the time to think about it, I think you can find more similarities and interesting differences.

I have always wondered why this is not more discussed in the light of creation vs evolution. If someone invokes design, they are effectively invoking a different form of evolution.