just to be sure i understand you correctly....are you saying the followingL "It is a bacterial form almost identical in composition to the flagella?" and because i am really struggling to see that....
The argument of irreducible complexity is if you remove any part, the form becomes non-functional... that is not the case with the bacterial flagella. I'll pull out some documentation, but I didn't mean almost identical... what I mean to say that it contains many (not all) of the same parts that are present in the flagella, and as such represent an intermediate form. The point being you can remove some some of the pieces of the flagella and still have a functioning anatomical structure... which is directly in the face of irreducible complexity. I understand if you are not completely convinced by the argument. I'm honestly not sure at this point that I could provide you an argument you would find compelling. That said, you must recognize that the Filter has credibility problems beyond its connections to creationism. The fact is, the majority of science doesn't just disagree with its conclusions but flat out disagrees with the pursuit. This is not a philosophical one, unless the philosophy in question is the purpose of science. You take the mind that this is a subject on which reasonable minds may differ... I'm not opposed to that in principal, as I said, I believe that God created the heavens and the earth... but the mechanism you are supporting is failing to find footing in part because it just isn't on firm ground. More later.
Suggesting that the designer in ID is anyone other than God is a lie and not a particularly veiled one. Once you stipulate that life can not form without intervention, an omnipotent God is the only conclusion. Even if your argument is that we were "designed" by aliens, then you must ask "where did they come from if complexity requires design?" If each iteration of life in the universe requires intervention for genesis, then there must at some point be an unmoved mover who extends from beyond the universe... that prime mover must be God in function if not specific doctrine. Any discussion of a less than divine "designer" is meaningless and everyone knows it... which makes the insistence that the "Designer doesn't have to be God!" by admitted zealots (wedge) ring ohhhh so hollow.
Dembski was inserted into the science faculty at Baylor by Sloan and finally booted out by the faculty. Dembski is not, has never been, and likely will never be a scientist. There is no population of scientists, not even overtly Christian ones, who think that what Dembski says bears any relation to science. William Dembski is bush-league according to God and everyone, and if he had a shred of evidence to back his claims up, there would be monthly pictures of him partying like a rock star on the cover of Nature.
brilliant take Maduro....thanks for those incredible insights. now what do you know about Dembski? because what you told us was very little...
Intelligent Design can be no more disproved than can God. Afterall what scientist can actually say what gravity is? Or what matter is? Carl Sagan once said, "If you whish to bake an apple pie from sctratch, you must first invent the Universe." If I am God, beyond Time, I would see that Evolution is simply whatever catalyzes entropy fastest, and then go enforce a consistent set of Laws of Force for several hundred billion years on a consistent set of matter. If I want humans, I start the Universe so. If I don't want humans, I start the Universe not so. Let Intelligent Design deal with the creation of the Univers and Evolution with how the Universe has functioned since. It is absurd to compare the two. With this partitioning both can be taught in school without conflict.
mia, i haven't been saying that it should be offered in the classroom. in fact, i agree that it should not. but the rest of your logic is poor and it is a sad way that you are choosing to raise the white flag of surrender. i take comfort in the fact that you are intelligent enough to see that your logic ran out before you raised the flag though. ID is most certainly science and the fact that you, or anyone else, doesn't see that is only something that has happened in the history of science many times. plate tectonics was treated similarly for decades before finally being embraced. consider me an early adoptionist i suppose.
but ID does have a mechanism for falsification. prove that a system that appears to be irreducibly complex can actually arise naturally without the help of any intelligence.
no problem mia and we do fundamentally agree so i appreciate the wisdom in calling it quits. i will say that you may be right about the falsification standard, but at the same time, 12 years have come and gone and not one of the examples put up by the ID camp as "irreducibly complex" have been satisfactorily explained. and by that i mean, the best we have come up with are some possible explanations for evolutionary pathways, but no testing or science has actually shown these hypotheticals to be accurate. in a day and age when knowledge is rapidly increasing (sounds like the end of the book of Daniel doesn't it?), i find that at least interesting. in the end though, i agree with you. i believe that God might have used Evolution as His means of creation. what i can't fathom are those who believe that all of this design (regardless of whether it was intelligently crafted at different intervals or front loaded by God at the very beginning) came about as a result of a cosmic accident. that strikes me as borderline retarded and yet i meet people all the time who actually believe that. regardless, it has been nice chatting it up with you to be sure! mop
oh...and by the way. while i am admittedly interested in this topic from a philosophical perspective (that is after all my training), there are those who are doing research into this. i believe the number is growing but as of right now, it is still a small group: intelligent design wiki page this makes for an interesting read (especially if you read the debate that follows): blog report on Nature article here are some interesting answers to common questions (accusations?) about ID. granted this is prepared by the Discovery Institute which acts as the primary forum through which most ID theory is brought to the public, but it seems reasonable to let a movement defend itself: Discovery Institute FAQs from that page:
I think to prove ID as a scientific hypothesis, an ID scientist can simply use his intelligence to design a new species. Since ID does not require super-natural forces, the theory will make great headway if it can accomplish a quick evolution from one species to the next. Currently, ID is a failing theory since no new species have been intelligently designed. The closest we've come at seeing evolution is micro evolution via selective breeding processes and random mutation (supporting Darwin). If we eventually see a new species (real macro-evolution) after millions of years, then Darwin's theory will be proved correct. I think the most likely species derivation will be dogs, but I'm unlikely to live long enough to see it. I assume my toy poodle (removing physical difficulties) can still mate with a wolf. In a sense, the toy poodle was "intelligently" designed using Darwin's natural selection theory, which proves natural selection does have a dramatic effect on biological life. An IDer must create a new species (or a new breed of dog) without the aid of mutation or selective generational breeding to prove his theory possible or correct.
crazy, you should read the argument for the eye being irreducibly complex. it is fairly compelling actually. there are not countless books which describe how the irreducibly complex eye arose. what there is are books which describe the differences between eyes an try to place them in some sort of chronological order. this fails to explain how the entire system arose miserably. Revelation was written centuries after the greeks discovered the earth was round. speaking of the "four corners" is a figure of speech that is not meant to be taken as a scientific statement. do you really not know this?
creed, the reason it supposedly took millions of years is that evolution happens very slowly in successive steps. this means that we SHOULD have some idea about how these systems arose. we know that when new features arose in the fossil record they remained oftentimes unchanged for centuries. if this is true, and i see no reason to think it isn't, then the fact that it took "millions of years" has little bearing on the current discussion.
mop again I/ We beg you. Can you give us a single example of scientific evidence specifically supporting the theory of ID? You have danced a great dance, have refused to come forth with scientific evidence... because my friend their isn't any. You can list philosophical diatribes that are UNSUPPORTED by any scientific data ad nauseum and it will not change the FACT that you have simply been unable to support your argument with ANY scientific evidence. Your arguments are cicular because they are theological and not sceintific. I think the fact that you have been unable to provide any scietific data pretty much verifies the supposition by the majoirty that there simply is not scientific basis to ID. prove me wrong!!!!! and show us a single scrap of empiracla evidence that can be used to specifically support the theory. My bet is we get the same cicular theological arguments masked in scientific supposition without a single shred of scientific evidence. Is the the 4th or 5th time I have asked for scientific evidence? Instead of long philsophical diatribes try to narrow your focus like a laser beam Mop and show us one peice of data supporting ID? It' interesting that to this point it's been an impossibility, a scietific theory without any scientific basis.... that's what ID seems to be, at least from your ability to support ID as relating ot science.
If you can't see that ID is NOT science, then you must have a fundamental misunderstanding of what comprises science. Saying that "it could have all been created" really gets us nowhere. In fact, we could have all been created 1 minute ago. Others have noted that this is untestable, but, more importantly, it's totally useless. It must be some kind of human nature to attribute the supernatural to something we can't explain. It's unfortunate that we DO understand evolution, yet some people still ignore this. I think this is because the subject is unintuitive, and some people dismiss it without learning about it first. Sorry it doesn't make sense to you, but it does make sense to a great many people who study the subject. There is SO much evidence out there to support evolution that you'd look just as silly joining the Flat Earth Society. At least that's a testable hypothesis. Also, just a general note: don't confuse the start of life with evolution. Evolution does not apply to the beginning of life, only how it developed from that point on.
summer, i gave you a link to all of the articles which discuss the evidence. as i have said, i am trained in philosophy (undergrad) and now theology (finish my masters this semester)......so i look at things from the perspective of a thinker more than a scientist. but look at the evidence and let me know what you think of it. by the way...i have asked you a question several times too (as have others) what is your degree in? do you have a degree? you speak with great authority on a number of subjects, which is fine with me if you back it up, but i am curious to know your area of training.
