copernicus

Originally posted by Mightily_Oats:
<strong>I'm on a 56k modem here so downloading a video and a player is a bit of a time and bandwidth investment.</strong>

Not to worry. Because of the poor quality of my phone line, I can't download at greater than 26.4K. I heard the whole thing in real time without a hitch. The video came through as intermittent still pictures, though. So you bandwidth should not deter you, since you'll get better quality than I did. There was plenty of content in that talk that I have not found in Miller's writings on the internet, and I urge you to listen to it. It's very good.

<strong>...But even if we had all the components of a mousetrap lying next to each other on the floor I can't see that any sort of random motion would result in them being assembled into a mousetrap...</strong>

Ouch!! You've read Dawkins and you still make this elementary mistake? There is nothing at all random about evolution in darwinian theory. Mutations are random. Evolutionary change is fully designed, but not "intelligently" designed. It is crafted by the environment. Reread Dawkins' discussions on the Hoyle's "747 in a junkyard tornado" argument. If you don't understand why evolution is non-random, then you don't understand darwinian theory.

<strong>I don't see that random mutation+natural selection is a powerful enough device to produce "Irreduceably Complex" systems that contain many components, even if several of those components were already present within an organism. You might fluke a few mutations that involve some of the right chemicals being in the right place at the right time, but all of them at once would be miraculous. Finding that this sensational fluke happened not once but in the creation of every codependent biological system in nature could form the basis of a design theory in it's own right.</strong>

Please listen to Miller's lecture!!!! And take a look at the web site <a href="http://www.talkdesign.org" target="_blank">Talkdesign.org</a>. And remember that evolution takes place gradually over geologic time. Hence, Dawkins used the title Climbing Mount Improbable. Over geologic time, events that are hard to grasp in human dimensions become less and less improbable. It is hard for me to believe that you really read Dawkins. Oh well, I eagerly await your critique of The Blind Watchmaker.

<strong>The definative quality of an irreducably complex biological system, to my mind, is that the system fails totally if any of it's components are removed. Hence, rudimentary versions of that system won't be selected for, hence the system cannot be created through darwinian evolution.</strong>

Again, I can only urge you to listen to Miller's methodical demolition of this argument. Rudimentary versions of "irreducibly complex" systems do occur in nature, and components that have unrelated purposes in the survival game do come together to create new functionality. Again, there are plenty of examples of this in the scientific literature that Behe claims doesn't exist.

<strong>...Discussion of an "Intelligent Designer" would be from the outset a metaphysical discussion largely outside the realm of science. Behe's argument that the natural processes we can directly observe don't suffice as an explanation for the existence of life as we know it is not contingent on any particular ideas about what an "intelligent designer" would be like.</strong>

Actually, Behe is trying to advance a scientific claim, so the ID "theory" cannot depend on an explanation that is "outside the realm of science". You can jump to any conclusion that pleases you, but you can't then argue that it is a scientific theory. Evolutionary theory is all about design. What designed these immensely complex living systems? Darwin's answer is simple and clear. The environment makes the decision. Behe accepts some form or Darwinian theory, but he claims that it can't explain everything. If his theory is outside the realm of science--i.e. unfalsifiable--then it collapses. If all you are saying is that you choose to believe in his untestable assumption, then there is nothing more for us to talk about. I don't begrudge you your "faith" in the unknowable, but it has no place in scientific discussions.

<strong>And given that the majority of the human race have had supernatural explanations for the existence of life, wouldn't the claim that we are the product of purely natural causes be the extraordinary one? After all, most people _do_ take, in whatever form, the idea of design seriously.</strong>

Not at all. You misunderstand what I mean by "extraordinary". You are just making the old fallacy of <a href="http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html#numerum" target="_blank">Argumentum ad numerum</a>. The claim is "extraordinary" because it never explains why the designer has to be "intelligent". I could well believe that there might be some other inanimate mindless influence on evolution that participates in design, but that does not require me to postulate the existence of a supernatural being.

[ June 23, 2002: Message edited by: copernicus ]</p>

lpetrich

That's a completely separate issue.

First, there is the serious question of whether that is necessarily the case or whether such an appearance merely reflects gaps in our knowledge. This is essentially a "god of the gaps" argument, and such arguments are fundamentally weak. Consider the case of lightning, which had long been thought to be the work of some deity or other. And then Benjamin Franklin comes along and shows that lightning is essentially a giant electric spark. Does whatever deity is responsible for lightning make it seem exactly like a giant electric spark?

And even if such features were intelligently designed, then what sort of "designer" would that demonstrate the existence of? Visitors from another planet?

That may require a sideways approach in some cases, because a feature that seems "irreducibly complex" can be a modification of some feature used for a different purpose. Thus, bacterial flagella can be modifications of bacterial membrane pores, and sprung-trap carnivorous-plant leaves can be modifications of sticky leaves.

But even without such explanations, is one left with a "god of the gaps"?

What does Mightily_Oats call little green men in a flying saucer?

There are lots and lots of lots of once-widespread beliefs that are now discredited.

The Earth being flat and stationary and at the center of the Universe
The stars being tiny lights
Inheritance of acquired characteristics
Demonic possession causing disease
The brain not being the seat of the mind
The heart sloshing blood back and forth
...

Some of which are to be found in the Bible.

And they would have gotten in deep trouble if they had claimed otherwise, or else had claimed other than whatever had been the official dogma at where they were living. Consider what happened to Galileo.

And Charles Darwin had been an eminent clergyman in the Church of England (sarcasm). And one can derive evolution by natural selection straight from the Bible (more sarcasm).

Automaton

Sorry, it's nothing personal, just general frustration at the whole ID movement. You know it's out of hand when people start calling this stuff science.

Nic Tamzek

Yep, I've got it.

One example of Denton's (1985) cluelessness:

Page 108, speaking of the eukaryotic cilium, which usually has microtubules in a "9+2" arrangement:

But it tain't so. If you read this article:

Afzelius, B. A. (1982). “The flagellar apparatus of marine spermatozoa: evolutionary and functional aspects.” Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology 35(5): 495-519. Link:
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=676404 7&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">here</a>

You will find pictures of, to pick the most extreme case, a 3+0 cilium, in addition to citations of 6+0, 9+0, 15+0, 9+1, 9+2, 9+3, and then some that deviated from the multiple-of-three pattern (5 and 7+0 I think, also). Note that the article was published in 1982.

If you don't want to look up the old article, Ken Miller's book also goes over the diverse patterns of cilium construction.

Denton discusses the bacterial flagellum on page 224-5; this has been discussed to death in numerous places but the short version is that in 1994 it was discovered that a subset of flagellar components can serve as a transport system (a 'Type III secretion system'), and in addition other components have homologs outside of flagellar systems, so evolution is looking pretty good even here. Searching the web and newsgroups at <a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">http://www.google.com</a> will bring up numerous discussions.

Right after his flagellum discussion, Denton switches to, I kid you not, complex plant adaptations like the traps of carnivorous plants (p. 226). We have just been discussing how these evolved right over on this thread, "<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000967" target="_blank">The Venus Flytrap - Irreducibly Complex, or Just Plain Weird?</a>".

On page 225 Denton discusses the complex adaptations of orchids, basing his description on Darwin's description no less (Darwin wrote a whole book on the complex adaptations for pollination of orchids) but somehow misses Darwin's Main Point about orchids which was that all of the complex adaptations were the result of modification of the much simpler parts of regular-old flowers, e.g. pistils and stamens and sepals and such.

Later, nic

HRG

For Mightily_Oats:

My main objection to the ID movement is that it reminds me of the old one-line joke:

"How does one quickly make a small fortune? - By starting with a large one!".

How do ID proponents explain the complexity of living organisms ? By postulating an even more complex designer .....

Regards,
HRG.

Mightily_Oats

The point being that a mousetrap either works, or it doesn't. Natural selection can't favor a half-made mousetrap.

Again, the point of the argument is that an "irreduceably complex" system can't evolve gradually. It either works, and will be selected for, or it doesn't, and won't. I well understand the idea of natural selection, I'm just very, very skeptical of the idea that it could produce the sort of interlocking codependent systems that make up the living world.

Methinks you may want to brush up on your history of science and philosophy. The relative autonomy of the natural world featured largely in greek thought, and was transfered into Christian Theology. It was Aquinas (1255-1274) I believe, who wrote of the book of nature and the book of grace?

I well know it. I would hardly be able to doubt, no matter how unlikely the idea might seem to me, such a popular idea as Darwinian theory if history wasn't full of instances where the educated majority was flat wrong.


And the official dogma challenged was: Aristotle. Galileo's main oponents were the conservative scholars of the universities. In fact, several of Galileo's counter-aristotealean ideas (like the nature of floating bodies) were supported by the church where the universities would have liked them condemned.

As for the issue of heliocentricity, Cardinal Belarmine (head thought policeman) had this to say: "If it could be proven that the earth is in the third sphere and the sun in the center, we should have to carefully reconsider the scriptures that seem in opposition and say rather that we had misinterpreted them than that something which was false could be proved. But I do not believe such proof exists, because none has been shown to me." Galileo is told that he may teach his theory but only as a theory, not as a fact.

In fact Galileo's final censure does not come until the publication of "Dialogue on two world systems" in which he ridicules Pope Urban's thoughts on the matter into the mouth of "Simplico" almost word for word.

His ultimate punishment is to be placed under house arrest in a Cardinal's mansion.

Once again, perhaps a history brush up is in order?

Nope, I can't see it. What's your point?

Bill

I would like to toss into this mess my own personal observation that, going back a ways, the ID folks were promoting the idea that the human eye was an example of "irreducible complexity." However, the biological community came up with a huge amount of evidence demonstrating gradual evolution of eyes with increasing levels of functionality over time. In other words, the eye examples strongly favored evolutionary theory!

One of the best refutations of Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, and one of the most readable by the average person, is on <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html" target="_blank">this page of the Talk.Origins archive</a>. It clearly demonstrates just exactly why Behe and his ilk can't get any respect from the scientific community.

The real problem with this whole business is that "complexity theory" is in its infancy (giving science too few clues as to which approaches are valid and which are invalid), and the statistical mathmatics of Bayesian probability analysis are too esoteric for the uninformed reader (even the professional PhD reader from some other field) to wade through with a critical eye. The resulting mind-numbing confusion tends to snow those who are predisposed towards believing in a "Creator" to also believe that Behe, Dembski, and the rest have a valid argument to make about science and scientific methods. THIS IS A TOTALLY UNSUPPORTABLE CONCLUSION!

As an agnostic who has written <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bill_schultz/crsc.html" target="_blank">an essay showing that the idea of a real "Creator" isn't excluded by a worldview grounded in Metaphysical Naturalism</a>, I like to feel that I'm ready to be convinced by anything that qualifies as "real scientific evidence." However, as many reviewers have noted, the actual scientific evidence in favor of "Intelligent Design" is totally lacking. All that does exist is a set of surmises that are grounded in subjective views of reality (Dembski admits this in his latest book, <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/" target="_blank">No Free Lunch</a>).

So, as things stand now, the state of scientific views on "Intelligent Design" is roughly equivalent to the old saw about the really small town: there is no THERE there!

== Bill

copernicus

Originally posted by Mightily_Oats:
<strong>
The point being that a mousetrap either works, or it doesn't. Natural selection can't favor a half-made mousetrap.</strong>

Correct. But natural selection can favor a spring-loaded clipboard and a trigger that both might come in handy as components of a mousetrap at a later stage of evolution. This is the essence of the argument. All parties agree that random mutation and natural selection operate to create *some* level of complexity. Nobody is denying the validity of evolution. The argument of IDers is not that evolutionary theory is false but that it can't account for all types of complexity. The argument of darwinians is that nothing more is needed--i.e. Occam's razor rules out alternatives to evolution.

And remember that evolution takes place gradually over geologic time. Hence, Dawkins used the title Climbing Mount Improbable. Over geologic time, events that are hard to grasp in human dimensions become less and less improbable

<strong>
Again, the point of the argument is that an "irreduceably complex" system can't evolve gradually. It either works, and will be selected for, or it doesn't, and won't. I well understand the idea of natural selection, I'm just very, very skeptical of the idea that it could produce the sort of interlocking codependent systems that make up the living world. Nope, I can't see it. What's your point?</strong>

My point is that "irreducible complexity" turns out to be "reducible" to less complex systems. That was what Miller argued in the lecture that you don't have time to download. Your skepticism is contradicted by the facts.