In The Beginning...

[Mallon]

Where have you been getting your (mis)information about strange attractors from?

I blame this guy:

 

[busterdog]

I blame this guy:

And they should have let the T Rex eat him off the toilet, not the lawyer. Bloody scientist creeps.

 

[random_guy]

And they should have let the T Rex eat him off the toilet, not the lawyer. Bloody scientist creeps.

How can you tell if someone is a Creationist? They would sacrifice a scientist so a lawyer could live

 

[shernren]

I'm a poor student. I don't go to the movies. Who's the guy with the horrible hairdo and the atrocious smile? That can't be James Gleick right?

 

[Citanul]

I'm a poor student. I don't go to the movies. Who's the guy with the horrible hairdo and the atrocious smile? That can't be James Gleick right?

Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, where he played a mathematician.

 

[Assyrian]

That's Jeff Goldblum explaining Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park

 

[Mallon]

I'm a poor student. I don't go to the movies.

That's a shame. You are missing out on the best movie ever made (according to me).

RRRRRRRAAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRR!!!!!

 

[busterdog]

How can you tell if someone is a Creationist? They would sacrifice a scientist so a lawyer could live

Oh please. What happened to survival of the fittest?

 

[busterdog]

I am going to re-read this when I have time and then respond.

 

[shernren]

Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, where he played a mathematician.

Ahh. I thought he looked familiar (especially with the T-Rex reference) but I just couldn't place him.

Do take your time, busterdog.

 

[Ben johnson]

The only faith that science dictates is the faith that as facts are gathered and discoveries made theories will be honed and changed over time. It's not like the faith of creationism which states you already have the answer and want to prove it to everybody else.

Hi, Crawfish. In the absence of any hypothesis of "beginning", the entire construct becomes built on faith. What evolutionist is there who does not assert, "We don't know HOW it began, we just believe"?

....and as such, it is the greatest faith of any belief system, ever....

(To those who will respond with "theistic evolution", please read the next couple of posts before responding...)

 

[Ben johnson]

I don't buy your argument. First off, the theory of evolution does not depend on a theory of the origin of life. They are independent theories. Disproving abiogenesis has no effect on evolution. Therefore, your argument isn't against evolution, rather abiogenesis.

Hi, Random Guy. What has no beginning, has no substance. And the same "irreducible complexities" which prevent spontaneous-generation, propogate throughout the view. Each supposedly "environmentally-beneficial-mutation" benefits only in combination with others. A flighted bird has feathers (which themselves incorporate MANY specific design characteristics), hollow bones, steerable tail, aerodynamic profile, metabolism, etcetera. Which of these things benefits, unless the beast flies? Evolution demands the occurrance of "multiple-mutative-events".

Hopeful-Monster, in other words...

Also, enough with Urey-Miller. It did show (as later revised experiments also showed) that organic molecules can arise from inorganic molecules, the first precursor to the building blocks of life. Why don't you discuss recent science in abiogenesis, or is it because Creationists prefer to only pick on an old experiment 505 years ago, and avoid new research in the area.

I welcome your opinion (or news of) a sequence that will accomplish replicative life. How does DNA assemble itself into replicative code, and how does it function apart from cellular walls?

 

[Ben johnson]

faith in fact finding? Gravity is a fact. What am I having faith in to believe that I am being held to the earth by gravity?

Hi, Phil. Gravity is a fact?

What, specifically, is gravity? I'm betting you have no clue --- I certainly don't. I can describe what it does, but I have no idea its source, its carrying-particle ("graviton"?), nor why it is influenced by relativistic principles. Nor why IT influences OTHER variables in relativity.

So --- what is gravity? What is inertia? If you reply "spin wave", please be prepared to explain exactly what that is...

Your forgot to mention that God may have used evolution as His tool for creation. We observe that everything in the world happens according to natural laws in the present, and we still believe God is at work, why would God have needed to do things differently in the past? I believe He has made a self sufficient universe to give us the independence we need to make our own choices and to truly be free.

I suppose I did (overlook "Directed Evolution"). Let's discuss this.

The Bible is credible. In a legal sense, it is an accurate recording of Jesus' words. 25,000 copies survive time, many datable to within 50 years of Christ. There is "the testimony of the witnesses". There is archeology, and other points. In a "court of law", it is very credible to accept that "Jesus really said what they wrote".

...so those who embrace "God-Directed-Evolution", deny Jesus' words (such as, "He created them from the beginning male and female, for this reason a man shall cleave a wife, and the two shall become one").

It is not reasonable to assert "what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, Jude, and Paul wrote, is wrong/mis-translated/corrupted".

Forgive this for sounding harsh; it cannot be said any other way --- because of Biblical credibility, if God "used evolution" in populating the world, the Bible is wrong, and Jesus is a liar. Again, I don't mean to sound harsh nor offensive; either what they wrote is wrong (errored/mis-translated), or Jesus is wrong.

...or we are not evolved (but created as Jesus said, "male and female from the beginning").

It's quite all right if someone wishes to embrace "theistic evolution" --- but understand that is not by the God of the Bible; unless there is some basis on which to assert "errors/mistranslations in Scripture". The Biblical God is reported to have made man, complete. Not "evolved in stages".

To be specific, Adam and Eve, were real. Evolution asserts "Adam and Eve were just a myth, an allegorical story told to children..." Per evolution, there is no "first-man" (nor "first-woman"), but a gradual transition from a common simian/human ancestor into two branches.

So --- on what basis can we throw out the Christian Bible, and adopt a religion of "a god who creates mankind through gradual, directed mutative events"? Is Scripture credible, or not? What's the point?

Far more than a "rhetorical question" --- what's the point?

 

[Ben johnson]

Why is chance a better explanation than Goddidit? I understand why science requires a certain formality, but this is about TE, not pure science.

Hi, Buster. As we discussed in the prior post, "Theological Evolution" diverges completely from Christianity and Scripture. That's fine if a person believes in such a divine being who "used evolution to create biodiversity". I am questioning the credibility of such a position, over the credibility of history as recounted in the Bible.

 

[shernren]

Hi, Crawfish. In the absence of any hypothesis of "beginning", the entire construct becomes built on faith. What evolutionist is there who does not assert, "We don't know HOW it began, we just believe"?

....and as such, it is the greatest faith of any belief system, ever....

(To those who will respond with "theistic evolution", please read the next couple of posts before responding...)

And yet you said:

Hi, Phil. Gravity is a fact?

What, specifically, is gravity? I'm betting you have no clue --- I certainly don't. I can describe what it does, but I have no idea its source, its carrying-particle ("graviton"?), nor why it is influenced by relativistic principles. Nor why IT influences OTHER variables in relativity.

So --- what is gravity? What is inertia? If you reply "spin wave", please be prepared to explain exactly what that is...

You do not know where gravity came from and how it is created. But if I were to say to you, "In the absence of any 'beginning', the entire construct of gravity is built on faith", you would write me off as hopelessly unattentive. If I challenged gravity on the grounds that "What gravitationist is there who does not assert, 'We don't know HOW it began, we just believe'?", you would answer that it does not negate the reality of gravity one bit. And if I said therefore "I am allowed to believe gravity doesn't exist, watch me jump off the tenth storey!" you'd start writing my epitaph.

You don't have any idea where gravity began, but you believe it exists.
Evolutionists have some idea where evolution began, and they believe it exists.

I could rightly say your faith is blinder than theirs, right?

Hi, Random Guy. What has no beginning, has no substance. And the same "irreducible complexities" which prevent spontaneous-generation, propagate throughout the view. Each supposedly "environmentally-beneficial-mutation" benefits only in combination with others. A flighted bird has feathers (which themselves incorporate MANY specific design characteristics),

... which insulate the body.

hollow bones,

... which allow faster movement per unit muscle mass and hence per unit energy spent.

steerable tail,

... which allow better balance when running faster.

aerodynamic profile,

... which allow less energy waste when running faster. (Does the fact that cars don't fly mean they needn't be aerodynamically designed?)

metabolism,

... which allow faster energy release per unit food eaten at the cost of requiring more food.

etcetera. Which of these things benefits, unless the beast flies?

All of them, brother.

Evolution demands the occurrance of "multiple-mutative-events".

Hopeful-Monster, in other words...

Or so you thought.

I welcome your opinion (or news of) a sequence that will accomplish replicative life. How does DNA assemble itself into replicative code, and how does it function apart from cellular walls?

People do in vitro DNA replication all the time. It's called PCR amplification. Have you ever heard of CSI? (No, not complex specified information, but Crime Scene Investigation - although both essentially involve a fair load of nonsense.)

I suppose I did (overlook "Directed Evolution"). Let's discuss this.

All evolution is directed by the environment. But I know that's not what you mean.

The Bible is credible. In a legal sense, it is an accurate recording of Jesus' words. 25,000 copies survive time, many datable to within 50 years of Christ. There is "the testimony of the witnesses". There is archeology, and other points. In a "court of law", it is very credible to accept that "Jesus really said what they wrote".

And no TE here tries to deny that.

...so those who embrace "God-Directed-Evolution", deny Jesus' words (such as, "He created them from the beginning male and female, for this reason a man shall cleave a wife, and the two shall become one").

It is not reasonable to assert "what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, Jude, and Paul wrote, is wrong/mis-translated/corrupted".

Forgive this for sounding harsh; it cannot be said any other way --- because of Biblical credibility, if God "used evolution" in populating the world, the Bible is wrong, and Jesus is a liar. Again, I don't mean to sound harsh nor offensive; either what they wrote is wrong (errored/mis-translated), or Jesus is wrong.

...or we are not evolved (but created as Jesus said, "male and female from the beginning").

You must be referring to:

And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."
(Mark 10:5-9 ESV)

You are going to get in trouble if you try to use that passage to support creationism. As I recently posted:

1. Does the Bible tell us which "creation" is "beginning" here? Since Jesus refers exclusively to man, is it not at least self-consistent to assume that Jesus refers to the creation of man?
2. The Bible clearly describes divine decisions made before the beginning of creation, even though those decisions could only clearly come into effect when their participants began to exist. Could God not have decided to make man male and female long before He actually did?
3. Will you take the rest of the passage literally as well? The last I checked, husbands and wives normally have two different bodies with different DNA, cheesy sci-fi flicks notwithstanding. "One flesh" is a metaphor. Why not "the beginning of creation"?
4. Jesus in this passage rebukes literalism and repudiates the moral authority of a commandment in the Torah. If even a moral guideline in the Torah, which was after all a moral codebook, was not infallible but was given subject to the social norms of the time, what does that say about the supposedly scientific facts of the Torah, which is after all not a scientific textbook?

It's quite all right if someone wishes to embrace "theistic evolution" --- but understand that is not by the God of the Bible; unless there is some basis on which to assert "errors/mistranslations in Scripture". The Biblical God is reported to have made man, complete. Not "evolved in stages".

In the same way that the Biblical God is reported to have stopped the sun (not the earth), hurled lightning from His hands, and kept rain and hail in storehouses.

To be specific, Adam and Eve, were real. Evolution asserts "Adam and Eve were just a myth, an allegorical story told to children..." Per evolution, there is no "first-man" (nor "first-woman"), but a gradual transition from a common simian/human ancestor into two branches.

Take a look at this thread where some TEs end up exploring just what it means to have Adam, Eve, and original sin in an evolutionary framework.

So --- on what basis can we throw out the Christian Bible, and adopt a religion of "a god who creates mankind through gradual, directed mutative events"? Is Scripture credible, or not? What's the point?

Far more than a "rhetorical question" --- what's the point?

The point is simply that evolution as a theory best explains the origins of today's observed biodiversity. There is no theological or philosophical motive to say that - just mountains of evidence.

 

[random_guy]

Hi, Random Guy. What has no beginning, has no substance. And the same "irreducible complexities" which prevent spontaneous-generation, propogate throughout the view. Each supposedly "environmentally-beneficial-mutation" benefits only in combination with others. A flighted bird has feathers (which themselves incorporate MANY specific design characteristics), hollow bones, steerable tail, aerodynamic profile, metabolism, etcetera. Which of these things benefits, unless the beast flies? Evolution demands the occurrance of "multiple-mutative-events".

Well, according to your logic, chemistry is useless as a theory because we can't explain the origin of atoms and electrons.

As for your second comment, I don't think you get evolution. You don't need all those characteristics to be beneficial. Some fish have a modified swim bladder that can exchange oxgyen. In a way, it can act as a primative lung. You might ask, what good is half a lung/gill, well there's your answer. A primative lung may be helpful in low oxgyen waters. Likewise, hollow bones may be helpful in reducing weight for running, feathers may be useful for temperatur control. Things add ontop of each other.

Even more important, transitional fossils with evidence of these parts help support the theory.

Hopeful-Monster, in other words...
I welcome your opinion (or news of) a sequence that will accomplish replicative life. How does DNA assemble itself into replicative code, and how does it function apart from cellular walls?

Well, start with most theories don't have DNA in early life. There's theories that the first information system might have been RNA, since it's shown to be self catalytic. As for your other question, there's also research in protocells, and how a bipolar membrane can arise. Sure, we don't have all the answers yet, and we might never have it, but it doesn't mean that Creationism is right by default. The fact that we can study other theories while Creationism seems to rely on gaps in our knowledge seems to point more towards science and less to Creationism, especially as time marches on. That's why Creationism is such a minority position now, there's no debate in the academic world whether it's correct or not. Creationism is the same level as a Flat Earth in the scientific community.

 

[Ben johnson]

You do not know where gravity came from and how it is created. But if I were to say to you, "In the absence of any 'beginning', the entire construct of gravity is built on faith", you would write me off as hopelessly unattentive.

Hi, "Shernren". Gravity, defined by its effect, is measurable. Is there any such measurability for life's beginning? No.

If I challenged gravity on the grounds that "What gravitationist is there who does not assert, 'We don't know HOW it began, we just believe'?", you would answer that it does not negate the reality of gravity one bit.

Yet, the term "gravity" conveys the propensity for one mass to attract another. MMg/r[sup]2[/sup]. Even if I "cease to believe in gravity", one mass still attracts another.

And if I said therefore "I am allowed to believe gravity doesn't exist, watch me jump off the tenth storey!" you'd start writing my epitaph.

Depends --- someone jumped off a local building (much more than ten stories) a few years back; he flew his parachute to an awaiting getaway car. They never caught him. Her? Whatever...

You don't have any idea where gravity began, but you believe it exists.
Evolutionists have some idea where evolution began, and they believe it exists.

I could rightly say your faith is blinder than theirs, right?

Gravity is a measurable phenomena; I can precisely calculate "g". What is there about the assembling into replicative DNA (the beginning) is there measurable? Have we ever actually seen non-living protiens, assemble into life? Is there even a suggested mechanism how it COULD happen? I haven't heard of one...

... which insulate the body.

Sorry --- feathers are extremely complicated. The barbs interlock like a "zipper", clearly presenting an efficient low-weight barrier to high-speed air ("flying"). Fur does not progress into feathers without direction.

... which allow faster movement per unit muscle mass and hence per unit energy spent.

And making the creature more fragile and susceptible to injury.

...unless it can fly away...

... which allow better balance when running faster.

No, squirrels do not have feathers or steerable tails. But their tails do utilize air flow for balance. Precise "steering" is only necessary when flying.

... which allow less energy waste when running faster. (Does the fact that cars don't fly mean they needn't be aerodynamically designed?)

Inverse cube law; at low velocities, air resistance is negligible. Besides, fast-running lizards are "streamlined".

I'm speaking of an air foil. Bernouli's equation. Pressure inversely proportional to fluid velocity. A running lizard does not develop "lift".

... which allow faster energy release per unit food eaten at the cost of requiring more food.

You really think that, across the environment, "high food intake individuals" have a competitive edge against more efficient ones? The highest energy conumers, fly. With a few exceptions; a shrew has a high metabolism, but is enslaved to its food.

All of them, brother.

Ya' haven't convinced me.

Or so you thought.

Still do. "Irreducible Complexity". A chicken hatches from a lizard egg. Etcetera...

People do in vitro DNA replication all the time. It's called PCR amplification. Have you ever heard of CSI? (No, not complex specified information, but Crime Scene Investigation - although both essentially involve a fair load of nonsense.)

Oops --- you overlooked the fact that there is no CONSTRUCTION of complicated DNA. Amplification exploits the natural replicative process of DNA. Certain building blocks (a, c, t, and g) will only pair with certain other blocks; naturally, the strand splits down the center, and the cell becomes replicated as each torn half gets its former counterpart, replaced. Thus --- two strands, identical.

"Replication" is not "origination". (Say, that's almost as catchy as "phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny", or something like that...)

And no TE here tries to deny that.

Then how do you respond to Jesus' words, "God created them from the beginning male and female..."? Matt19:4

You must be referring to:

And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."
(Mark 10:5-9 ESV)

You are going to get in trouble if you try to use that passage to support creationism. As I recently posted:

1. Does the Bible tell us which "creation" is "beginning" here? Since Jesus refers exclusively to man, is it not at least self-consistent to assume that Jesus refers to the creation of man?

Did He make them "fully Human male and fully Human female"?

2. The Bible clearly describes divine decisions made before the beginning of creation, even though those decisions could only clearly come into effect when their participants began to exist. Could God not have decided to make man male and female long before He actually did?

Yet --- all life (per evolution) began as one single cell. NOT "male, and female".

3. Will you take the rest of the passage literally as well? The last I checked, husbands and wives normally have two different bodies with different DNA, cheesy sci-fi flicks notwithstanding. "One flesh" is a metaphor. Why not "the beginning of creation"?

"One flesh", denotes physical union.

4. Jesus in this passage rebukes literalism and repudiates the moral authority of a commandment in the Torah. If even a moral guideline in the Torah, which was after all a moral codebook, was not infallible but was given subject to the social norms of the time, what does that say about the supposedly scientific facts of the Torah, which is after all not a scientific textbook?

How does He "rebuke literalism"?

In the same way that the Biblical God is reported to have stopped the sun (not the earth), hurled lightning from His hands, and kept rain and hail in storehouses.

In saying "stopping the sun", it is the same effect as saying "stopping the earth". We see the sun move, so if the earth is stopped the apparent movement of the sun across its course in the sky, ceases.

God does not technically have "hands"; though He uses "theophanies", such as when He wrote on the wall.

The point is simply that evolution as a theory best explains the origins of today's observed biodiversity.

No, it doesn't; there is zero evidence of one "kind" becoming "another kind". Adaptibility explains certain sub-species; but offers nothing beyond conjecture of how "reptile" became "mammal". No offense intended.

There is no theological or philosophical motive to say that - just mountains of evidence.

"Mountains" --- of how all mammals (for instance) slowly diversified into many branches? Of single-celled-animals slowly becoming multi-peds and sighted descendants?

No evidence, Shernren, just "hand-drawn-charts". And lots of supposition....

 

[Ben johnson]

Well, according to your logic, chemistry is useless as a theory because we can't explain the origin of atoms and electrons.

If I build a boat out of bricks, I need not explain the nature OF those bricks, to fully describe how the boat rides on the ocean. Likewise, having certain atoms and molecules, I can speculate about "string theory" and "quantum vibrations" --- but I can still fully describe the interraction between known atoms and molecular configurations.

...and there is no way that simple protiens will assemble themselves into a "floating boat". Errr, I mean into "a living, replicating orgainism".

As for your second comment, I don't think you get evolution. You don't need all those characteristics to be beneficial. Some fish have a modified swim bladder that can exchange oxgyen. In a way, it can act as a primative lung. You might ask, what good is half a lung/gill, well there's your answer. A primative lung may be helpful in low oxgyen waters. Likewise, hollow bones may be helpful in reducing weight for running, feathers may be useful for temperature control. Things add ontop of each other.

And "feathers were the end result of lizards growing long scales, the longer scales perhaps giving the creature an advantage in catching prey --- eventually longer-scaled-lizards gained the ability to glide short distances." So read my high school biology book. There is no record of "scale-lengthening", nor of "scales slowly changing into barbed feathers".

It occurs to me that evolutionists may miss two important points; first, in designing a biological system to operate in a changing environment, a quantity of adaptibility is necessary for survival (as the environment changes). Second, as an engineer, I often exploit the principle of "building blocks". If a design works in one application, I may use parts of that design in another; people who see my work may recognize repeated features.

God is an engineer.

Even more important, transitional fossils with evidence of these parts help support the theory.

.....such as, perhaps, teeth and claws in "Archeopteryx"? Show me fossil evidence of one kind becoming another. A fish becoming a mammal, fur instance.

(...pun intended...)

Well, start with most theories don't have DNA in early life. There's theories that the first information system might have been RNA, since it's shown to be self catalytic.

What is "self-catalytic"?

As for your other question, there's also research in protocells, and how a bipolar membrane can arise. Sure, we don't have all the answers yet, and we might never have it, but it doesn't mean that Creationism is right by default.

But it does damage the propensity to say "evolution is a proven fact". No disrespect intended.

The fact that we can study other theories while Creationism seems to rely on gaps in our knowledge seems to point more towards science and less to Creationism, especially as time marches on.

What "other theories"?

That's why Creationism is such a minority position now, there's no debate in the academic world whether it's correct or not.

Plenty of debate. And plenty of scientists who are Creationists. They are forced into the "closet" because of the achievement of "anti-creationism" attitudes. Anyone in any "scientific institute" who even THINKS of "Creationism", will have his or her carreer RUINED, regardless of whatever evidence he/she is considering.

Creationism is the same level as a Flat Earth in the scientific community.

That's quite offensive to Scientific Creationists.

Do you know how many scientists, throughout time, have been Christian? Newton (most of his writings were sermons), Faraday, Boyle, to name a few. Thousands of CURRENT scientists (from biology, physical sciences, every area of scientific study) believe in "intelligent design". That's the sense I got even from Hawking, as I read his "Brief History of Time" --- he does not discount the existence of an intelligent designer.

Einstein of course fully believed that "physics reveals the elegant design of an intelligent God".

 

[Ben johnson]

Entropy is driving the universe toward "heat death" --- Jesus is the force behind the Strong Nuclear Force that keeps the protons together

I've wondered about that myself. Perhaps we cannot perceive "gravitons", because they travel outside of time. We are limited in what we can perceive; because we are "four-space beings". Heaven, and Hell, exist in "five-space". What if we solve the Unified Field, and discover --- there is not a "natural balance" of all forces?

What if a constant energy input is required?

How arrogant we are, thinking of our lives in terms of what we understand. Just as a "sphere" was not really perceived in the novel, "Flatland", how are we to understand hyperspace?

The shortest distance between two points, is not a straight line. Even the concept of "straight line" is meaningless in a curved Universe. Just as the concept of "time" is meaningless for a photon*. Sometimes we get so sure of what we "know", that we have forsaken reality itself.

I see creation, biology, geology, astronomy, dimensional physics, as the elegant chords of a supreme violinist. It is a concert of thought and purpose. I came to God when I asked Him if He was real, and if He wanted me; he answered me, "yes".

It is a matter of faith that I follow Him; faith, and reality. I find no conflict in the sciences, and I feel the reality of His gentle presence in my heart and spirit.




* A photon, by definition, travels at the speed of light. Now, we experience relativistic variance by:

T' = T[sub]0[/sub] (1 - v[sup]2[/sup]/C[sup]2[/sup])[sup]1/2[/sup]

As V => C, time approaches zero. For a photon, time IS zero --- yet it exists from moment to moment.

 

[random_guy]

If I build a boat out of bricks, I need not explain the nature OF those bricks, to fully describe how the boat rides on the ocean. Likewise, having certain atoms and molecules, I can speculate about "string theory" and "quantum vibrations" --- but I can still fully describe the interraction between known atoms and molecular configurations.

...and there is no way that simple protiens will assemble themselves into a "floating boat". Errr, I mean into "a living, replicating orgainism".

Likewise, to talk about adapation, mutation, speciation, we don't need know how the first organism came about, only that there was life. You basically showed my point.

And "feathers were the end result of lizards growing long scales, the longer scales perhaps giving the creature an advantage in catching prey --- eventually longer-scaled-lizards gained the ability to glide short distances." So read my high school biology book. There is no record of "scale-lengthening", nor of "scales slowly changing into barbed feathers".

It occurs to me that evolutionists may miss two important points; first, in designing a biological system to operate in a changing environment, a quantity of adaptibility is necessary for survival (as the environment changes). Second, as an engineer, I often exploit the principle of "building blocks". If a design works in one application, I may use parts of that design in another; people who see my work may recognize repeated features.

And if a design works in one area, would you use a completely different inferior design in the same area? That's the problem with common designer. Similarity is explained by common design, then how do you explain differences? Evolution has a way, but Creationism doesn't. Creationism has an answer for everything but explains nothing.

Second, show me any man-made designs that fall under a nest heirarcy. My guess is you can't, but yet all of life can be categorized neatly in a nested heirarchy. This is because evolution works off of existing structures where as in design, we use module components.

.....such as, perhaps, teeth and claws in "Archeopteryx"? Show me fossil evidence of one kind becoming another. A fish becoming a mammal, fur instance.

Which shows me you don't understand evolution. Evolution says nothing about a fish->mammal. It suggests that fish and reptiles/mammals share a common ancestor, the tetrapods.

(...pun intended...)
What is "self-catalytic"? But it does damage the propensity to say "evolution is a proven fact". No disrespect intended. What "other theories"? Plenty of debate. And plenty of scientists who are Creationists. They are forced into the "closet" because of the achievement of "anti-creationism" attitudes. Anyone in any "scientific institute" who even THINKS of "Creationism", will have his or her carreer RUINED, regardless of whatever evidence he/she is considering. That's quite offensive to Scientific Creationists.

My guess is you really don't understand evolution. Evolution is a fact, since we observe allele frequencies changing in a gene pool over time, much like gravity is a fact, that we observe masses exerting a force upon each other. There's also theories in evolution and gravity that explain why.

As for you second point, that's bull that a scientific conspiracy is at work. Show me Creation scientists that actually do scientific research in Creationism. All you have to do is show me a reject letter from a submission to a scientific journal. We can read through the letter to see if there is a conspiracy, or more likely, Creation scientists don't do Creationist research. There's none. That's why they go through political channels rather than scientific channels.

Do you know how many scientists, throughout time, have been Christian? Newton (most of his writings were sermons), Faraday, Boyle, to name a few. Thousands of CURRENT scientists (from biology, physical sciences, every area of scientific study) believe in "intelligent design". That's the sense I got even from Hawking, as I read his "Brief History of Time" --- he does not discount the existence of an intelligent designer.

Einstein of course fully believed that "physics reveals the elegant design of an intelligent God".

Sure, there might be 1000's of scientists that believe in intelligent design, but until it's actually tested and researched like evolution, it'll remain just an idea. Also, did you know there are more scientists named Steve from biological fields that accept evolution over intelligent design? 99.9% of biologists accept evolution, and they're the ones that count.

All of this is irrelevant until we see real research, though. I'll give ID a fair shake once there's real publications on the research in ID in major scientific journals.