mark24

Ah, nuff said mate. It was the cheesy grin that gave it away in the end, anyway

Mark

DNAunion

DNAunion: No I'm not. I am not advocating that ID is true: where have you been?!?!?!

And so that we can get back on track from your distraction, let me point out that I was specifically addressing how Miller misrepresented Behe. You are going off onto a tangent, trying to bring things irrelevant to the current discussion in. A bit of the old "muddy the waters" tactic.

DNAunion: Unsubstantiated character assassination!

DNAunion: Misrepresentation! Behe calls it a CHALLENGE, not a refutation.

DNAunion: Why not? Evolutionists are the ones that are allowed to say that their position is undeniable scientific truth, so they are the ones who need to be able to completely demonstrate that such is the case. No?

Once again, we should all avoid following into your little "muddy the waters" campaign and stick to whether or not Ken Miller misrepresented Behe's statements (actually, there is not debate - he did....case closed).

Principia

It is only because of DNAunion's and other IDiot's lowlife characteristics and/or his overwhelming need to follow party-line politics that I continue to attack Behe and his ID positions.

Principia

Then you can't be advocating that Behe's position is true. Where have you been????

[Edited to remove personal information. -Pomp]

[ December 08, 2002: Message edited by: Pomp ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: Excellent evidence for accepting that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor.

But what does that have to do with the fact that Ken Miller misrepresented Behe?

Principia

LOL. BZZZT. WRONG. I love it when IDiots put 'scientific' and 'truth' together in the same sentence.

[Edited to remove personal information. -Pomp]

[ December 08, 2002: Message edited by: Pomp ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: That’s only your personal opinion. After replying to something else you state, I’ll show a reason or two to doubt it.

DNAunion: IIRC, in that exchange, Behe was not using his 1996 definition of an IC system, but a newer formulation of IC that looks at what exact evolutionary path could have led from a starting system to a final system, and if it required multiple mutations to have occurred simultaneously.

That would be different concepts of IC, kind of like there are for evolution: one can use the term evolution to mean changes in allelic frequencies in populations in one discussion, then to mean the historical changes in biological forms revealed by the fossil record over eons of time in another discussion.

DNAunion: Might be…might not be.

Are you using the terms loosely, as you see fit (like LucasPA uses the terms reproduction, growth, metabolism, and response to external stimuli when he asserts that it is an undeniable scientific fact that proteinoid microspheres are actually alive)? Or are you using them according to their actual intended meanings. To show that something is actually IC is more involved than just running down a list of terms/criteria that you interpret as you see fit.

And I believe we’ve already seen you make claims (or implications) that certain things are IC according to Behe’s usage when in actuality they are not. In fact, let’s see how you continue.

DNAunion: So like so many others, you refuse to use Behe’s definition of IC and insist instead on creating your own. Then, when you use your definition of IC – not Behe’s – to show that something is IC, you claim to be speaking for Behe. That’s nonsensical. All you could show by following that method is that you could refute your own definition of IC.

DNAunion: So what about DNA replication? Behe’s states that it is not IC, yet it is a real, complex biochemical system that requires multiple parts to function, and which cannot be performed by just a single part.

And if you try to sidestep the above by claiming that a single enzyme could produce DNA from an environmentally supplied precursor, then I could just say that a single enzyme could produce citrate from an environmentally supplied precursor, which would also counter your statement.

Finally, here are a few things to keep in mind about the biosynthesis of AMP and the TCA.

(1) Number of steps
a. AMP biosynthesis: 13
b. TCA: 8

(2) Number of enzymes involved
a. AMP biosynthesis: 12
b. TCA: 8

(3) Intermediates useful elsewhere
a. AMP biosynthesis: no (intermediates 3 through 11 play no independent roles in cells)
b. TCA: yes (TCA is an amphibolic pathway in that, although normally considered catabolic, many of its intermediates are used by cells for anabolic processes, such as the synthesis of amino acids.

(4) Portions of pathway functional
a. AMP biosynthesis: No
b. TCA: yes (“TCA” does not have to be complete or cyclic to be useful)

So the biosynthesis of AMP has more steps and requires more enzymes than the TCA, and the intermediates of the AMP process are not useful to the cell, while those of the TCA are, and portions of the TCA cycle can exist on their own because the intermediates are useful even for organisms that are anaerobic. This all points to AMP biosynthesis being more complex and less amenable to a gradual step-by-step evolutionary origin than the TCA, yet Behe explicitly states that even AMP biosynthesis is NOT irreducibly complex.

Now I can predict where these exchanges are is leading: a semantic battle, which seems to be abhorred here (unless of course, it is Principia who is relying on the finest details of something to argue against me, then, for some reason, it’s fine). So we have two choices Nic. We can either continue along these lines and get deeper and deeper into a semantic battle over the finest details of certain terms used by Behe, or we can simply agree to disagree and leave it up on the air.

But whichever we choose, we still have the undeniable fact that Behe explicitly stated years ago that the TCA is not IC, yet Ken Miller somehow feels justified in using the TCA as a counterexample to Behe’s claims.

DNAunion

DNAunion: For the cilium, it’s 3. If the anti-Behe-ists out there would bother reading the book, they’d know that. In fact, the following contains the quoted material Ken Miller used, so again, he has no legitimate excuse for screwing it all up.

DNAunion: And when Miller “refutes” Behe with his eel-sperm flagellum, does it still have microtubules? Yep. Does it have dynein? Sure does. Does it have nexin linkers? Absolutely. Yep, it had all three. Hardly any refutation of Behe (more like a confirmation!).

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: I'm not going to look through the whole book to find that! But here is what I found by looking in a few places I though of.

First, keep in mind that the term "IC core" is not used by Behe in his book. That is a term that, as far as I know, IDists came up with to explain what Behe meant when he said certain things. So I cannot present a quote from DBB that explicitly states "IC core". But I can show some examples of the IDEA of an IC core.

For this first quote, keep in mind my last post about Behe's statements about the 3 parts required for ciliary action - and the cilium being a member of the class of swimming mechanisms - when reading this.

DNAunion: I'm getting tired of typing so much, so this next quote might be choppy. But I will provide page numbers so people can read the whole thing, if they want.

DNAunion: That should be enough to demonstrate that Behe does hold that you can have an IC core to a system with additional parts added on. The accessory parts are not part of the IC system itself, and can be removed without loss of function.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: I don’t think so. People argued this years ago at ARN and were never able to demonstrate that. I think this is another “urban legend” about Behe’s book.

Some people did simple searches for articles that contained the words “flagellum” and “evolution” and when they got dozens or hundreds of hits, claimed Behe was wrong. But that is NOT enough to demonstrate Behe’s statements wrong. Behe himself mentions in his 1996 book that there were articles that deal with the evolution of cilia (or is it flagella, or something else), but points out that they are conceptual in nature (“word pictures&#8221 , not in-depth, step-by-step, molecular-level, detailed explanations of the type he was looking for.

Failing to take context into consideration leads many people astray.