avocationist
Posts: 173
Joined: Feb. 2006
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Chris said,
| Quote | | One point though is that I was at a conference last year where several people who are experts demonstrated that partial motility is better than no motility at all, so Im going to have to take their word for it. |
Mike Gene's point wasn't to debate whether some motility would be good. On the face of it, why not. What he said was that a flagellum couldn't be significantly weaker than it is because it wouldn't overcome turbulance. ]
Oh, heck, now I see I did already respond to this. I am trying to figure out why Jay Ray says I ignored feedback.
| Quote | | I have already pointed out what i think problems with IC are. |
If I understand correctly, you think that the proteins can co-evolve. But just saying you think it can be done doesn't seem to get to the heart of the problems with it. Yet two people say they have read Behe's book and aren't impressed. you were one of them. I am a bit stumped by this.
I know you have probably already stated it, but why do you consider IC to be attacking a straw man?
| Quote | You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible.
This is a well studied phenomenon. As I said I dont know if it applies to the flagellum but it does apply to other complex systems. |
You say it is well studied. Yet Behe's chapter on blood clotting comes to mind, and it is way beyond A, B, C. I wonder where somebody has laid out for my reading level how such things have been adequately studied.
| Quote | | It is possible no one has a clear idea of how the flagellum evolved, I'm not sure how this in any way supports the assumption that it was designed. |
I guess I find myself asking, in light of what I have read not only about the flagellum but the complexity of the cell and DNA and replication and so forth, at what point might a design inference become rational? What would it take? To me the construction of these things seems so very like something we would do that I tend to actually find it difficult to envision the Absolute, Infinite God doing it. It looks like the handiwork of a being more like us.
| Quote | | Our view of evolution may change drastically, there may be other factors that we haven't considered, self-organization is a promising example, that are as important as natural selection. Maybe there are currently unknown laws of nature that dictate to some extent how evolution has played out |
And really, to some extent that is all I ask for. Someone once said I was not really clear about my position on evolution, and I answered that at the very least, random mutations just wasn't adequate. There has to be at least one more major factor that we have not discovered, similar to the way that Darwin had not discovered genes. But if we end up finding these sticky laws and self-organizational principles, it is going to look like a grand, intelligently set-up scheme anyway.
| Quote | | My objections to CSI are not to how his method works in principle, but how he applies it to biological systems, at the very best he can say it has a low probability of evolving in the same way that someone has a low probability of winnig the lottery. |
Yet even if this is true, if the probability is ineed low but that Dembski takes it as more proof than it is, how does this translate into ID being a laughing stock?
As for me, I don't have a problem with a low probability event from time to time. I have a problem with evolution seeming to require a steady diet of them.
Jeanno,
| Quote | | You can see a funny world now. What you think is perfectly adapted could also be seen as imperfections. |
And you show me a picture of a perfectly adapted squirrel. You think the squirrel is on the way to wings? What I am asking is, isn't life in a different stage now than some millions of years ago? Wouldn't it be funny to see what humans looked like when they were anatomically awkward, between true upright walkers and knuckle walkers. Pelvis not quite right, arms a bit long but short for knuckle walking, back not quite straight. Don't you suppose that the reason the little proto-bird with its 27% of a wing still managed to catch insects is because the insects themselves were also in an awkward stage? It's not so important if your olfactory sense is poorly developed if your prey hasn't got long enough legs to run away anyway.
About the article on protein evolution. At least it wasn't all that long, but I couldn't really get the gist of it. I did try. How would you summarize it?| Quote | | Nobody can claim that the chromosome fusion in Homo sapiens has anything to do with our adaptation. |
Perhaps by this you mean that the changes and adaptations could have been brought about without a chromosome number change?
Alan,
Yes, I do value enlightenment values.
Questzal,
Hi. I didn't answer a previous post of yours because it was logical and while I didn't agree, I didn't see holes.
| Quote | | But consider: Mike Gene is doing what many ID proponents do. He's selecting one particular system and saying, "This system is way too complex to have evolved without intelligent guidance." In doing so, he in no way refutes non-directed evolution in general. At best, he can only claim that we don't know enough at present to adequately explain how the flagellum might have evolved. But he presumably wants to take that a step further, and claim there is no way in principle that the flagellum could have evolved without intelligent intervention. |
But if we are to get down to the nitty gritty, we must select one system at a time to examine. I don't know that MG is trying to refute non-directed evolution in general. I think that of all IDists, he is one of the closest to belief in mainstream evolution and he may very well think that it does occur in much the way it is proposed to. That would make him a designer-as-tinkerer IDist I guess, but I really don't understand his thought well enough to say. Now, you say that if we don't know how something evolved, the only reasonble conclusion is to assume that our present knowledge is insufficient to explain how. But it is more than just a lack of knowledge of how. It is a thing which gives every indication of being utterly outside of the capability of anything we know about nature's processes and quite readily recognizable as just the sort of thing a purposeful intelligence might set out to accomplish.
| Quote | | Let's suppose he's right - that currently understood evolutionary mechanisms cannot explain the flagellum. What does that tell us? Only that some other mechanism must have been involved. |
Must? Well, yeah, and one of those other mechanisms might have been purposeful design. But if you say that unintelligent processes must have been involved, then you are saying that your mind is made up and will not take in any contrary information.
| Quote | | But even if our feeling is that the odds are too long in light of known mechanisms, that only suggests there are probably additional unknown mechanisms. It does not mean that intelligent guidance is the only reasonable answer. |
I agree, but neither is it an unreasonable answer.
| Quote | | If there's a way to test for intelligent guidance, then we can scientifically ask if it was involved. |
I find the arguments about information persuasive.
| Quote | | I have no problem with people who believe an intelligence was/is involved. I have a problem with people who claim that we can scientifically conclude such is the case, based entirely on negative data. |
At some point if intelligence was indeed involved, we must surely be able to discern the difference between what an intelligence can do versus lack of same. And CSI or even IC, those are not negative data. Negative data about Darwinism is lack of gradations in the fossil record, lack of precursors, lack of ability to show positive mutations leading to new species, lack of plausible pathways to new organs like wings.| Quote | | It's interesting that you would even ask how a chromosome "knows" something. I think that reflects your basic assumption that such things must be purposeful and directed. |
No, I didn't mean anything by it.
Dhogaza,
| Quote | Poorwill catch insects by perching quietly on the ground at night (their legs are too weak for them to stand) and leaping up (powered by their wings) and snatching them as they fly by.
Looks like Denton doesn't know guano about birds. |
Oh my, you have just totally wiped out everything Denton spent several pages on. Those must be powerful wings it has. I give this maybe half credit - it catches insects while remaining stationary, but then leaps. Actually, the niche he was describing did not involve a creature with legs too weak to stand. It involved a four-limbed runner who runs after prey on its hind legs.
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