the self replicating watch argument

[bhsmte]

it seems to be to a lot of antagonistic people here. surely you would have encountered that already. its called scientism!

This is the science portion of CF. You will be asked to present evidence to support your claims.

 

[Speedwell]

it seems to be to a lot of antagonistic people here. surely you would have encountered that already. its called scientism!

Antagonistic to what? Pseudoscientific Dominionist propaganda? You bet!

 

[MaudDib]

This is the science portion of CF. You will be asked to present evidence to support your claims.

Exactly, I've asked for evidence of flagellar intermediaries and got NONE!

Case closed.

 

[MaudDib]

Antagonistic to what? Pseudoscientific Dominionist propaganda? You bet!

Antagonistic to philosophy being interwoven with science. ID doesn't come with an agenda as you claim, nowhere is the definition of Intelligent or Design in ID hinged on any particular doctrine. Its like Leibnizian argument arguing for a monotheistic God as a first step and then taking it through to its conclusion with more evidence in a second step.
But hey, we both Christians, these little nuances aren't tests for orthodoxy. God isn't going to chide either one of us for liking or disliking ID theory.

 

[bhsmte]

Exactly, I've asked for evidence of flagellar intermediaries and got NONE!

Case closed.

Your case, never opened.

 

[VirOptimus]

first: the burden of proof is on evolutionists side, so i dont nened to explain anything.

second: if a flagellum can evolve by 10 steps: and every one of these steps need about 100 amino acids: its still a big step in every step.

That you dont understand the science does not mean that its refuted.

The ToE is incredibly robust and well-supported.

 

[VirOptimus]

Antagonistic to philosophy being interwoven with science. ID doesn't come with an agenda as you claim, nowhere is the definition of Intelligent or Design in ID hinged on any particular doctrine. Its like Leibnizian argument arguing for a monotheistic God as a first step and then taking it through to its conclusion with more evidence in a second step.
But hey, we both Christians, these little nuances aren't tests for orthodoxy. God isn't going to chide either one of us for liking or disliking ID theory.

ID isnt a scientific theory. Its just religion.

 

[Speedwell]

Antagonistic to philosophy being interwoven with science. ID doesn't come with an agenda as you claim, nowhere is the definition of Intelligent or Design in ID hinged on any particular doctrine. Its like Leibnizian argument arguing for a monotheistic God as a first step and then taking it through to its conclusion with more evidence in a second step.
But hey, we both Christians, these little nuances aren't tests for orthodoxy. God isn't going to chide either one of us for liking or disliking ID theory.

What I am suggesting is that the discussion you are having here is not primarily about God. It doesn't matter if ID is an idea about how to get God into the works--it's a bad idea. It's only got two premises:

1. The living things we see around us look like they might have been designed.
2. Evolution can't produce functional complexity like that.

Ergo, ID is true.

But what is ID, besides the notion that both nature and man can produce functional complexity and an incredulous rejection of evolution?

 

[doubtingmerle]

Seriously, IC and the origin of biological information, you can't bring yourself to postulate agency?

Been there. Done that.

We humans had once postulated that agents moved the planets, caused rain, and caused lightning.

Then we realized that we better understood all those things without postulating agents.

It's not that the idea of agents was never considered. We just found that they do not help us understand what is happening.

 

[pitabread]

You are walking on a deserted beach and come across the words “hi there how are you?”
Do you proceed to explain how the wind and waves did it?

No, my inherent pattern recognition would recognize the words based on previously acquired knowledge.

This actually drives home a salient point about how we detect design. It's based on learned pattern recognition and an understanding of the mechanisms by which things are assembled.

The current ID movement, however, doesn't have a mechanism to go by which a designer would have created life and therefore cannot predict any patterns of manufacture. Consequently they are stuck trying to figure out other ways to 'detect' design, thus far with no success.

 

[doubtingmerle]

. Showing potential intermediaries is not enough. You all need to provide actual intermediaries of the flagellum to refute ID. You all have not done such a thing.

Wrong. We provided one and you ignored it.

The flagellum probably evolved over a billion years ago. It is unreasonable to think a long string of ancestors would still be alive. We are fortunate to have one that has a design that is probably close to the ancestor millions of years ago.

 

[pitabread]

first: the burden of proof is on evolutionists side, so i dont nened to explain anything.

Sure. And here it is: Evolution of the bacterial flagellum

second: if a flagellum can evolve by 10 steps: and every one of these steps need about 100 amino acids: its still a big step in every step.

I'm not sure where you are getting this 100 amino acids thing from? Did you look at the link? Here it is one more time: Evolution of the bacterial flagellum

 

[pitabread]

so a tree that cant grow (or cant respond to external stimuli) isnt a living thing?

Correct. A tree that is not growing and no longer responding to stimuli would likely be a dead tree. And dead is the opposite of alive.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Hi Merle,..

MaudDib, you made a couple of mistakes in this post.

Science uses logic and math. Science does not have that same proofs as in logic or math. Science is "proved" by theories matching evidence. Thus your "proven" and "unproven" statements about science are incorrect. It is the body of evidence matching theory that shows that special relativity, evolution, etc. are correct.

This is the speed of light postulate of special relativity

The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source.

A postulate is not quite an assumption. It is a statement that is agreed by everyone to be correct. In this case we had Maxwell's equations that shows that electromagnetic waves travelled at a constant speed c.

Science tests postulates. There are tests of the constancy of the speed of light: What is the experimental basis of Special Relativity?

 

[RealityCheck01]

Ok ok I’ll help out:

12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is ignorance of biology that is the fatal flaw in irreducible complexity: Function is not a constant.
Note that this is Behe's example and he does not say that we knowing a mousetrap is designed means that any biological example is designed. It is an analogy to explain his irreducible complexity fantasy.

Mousetrap components that start with different functionality can "evolve" to become a mousetrap.

In his 2008 book Only A Theory, biologist Kenneth R. Miller challenges Behe's claim that the mousetrap is irreducibly complex.[51] Miller observes that various subsets of the five components can be devised to form cooperative units, ones that have different functions from the mousetrap and so, in biological terms, could form functional spandrels before being adapted to the new function of catching mice.

Likewise, a structure that evolved to inject proteins can be incorporated into flagella.

It is a lie that the few examples given by Beth and others are definitely irreducibly complex: Stated examples
12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is a lie that the eye did not evolve: Evolution of the eye.
12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is a lie that the flagellum did not evolve: Evolution of the bacterial flagellum.
12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is a lie that the blood clotting cascade did not evolve.
12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is a lie that the mousetrap example is definitely irreducibly complex.
12 June 2018 MaudDib: It is a probable lie that cilium motion is definitely irreducibly complex.
Bethe or other IDers have to first show that the "microtubules, connectors, and motors" do not have functional parts and that they could not have had other functions (the basic bit of biology that they were ignorant of).

 

[RealityCheck01]

Their position is that God designed life, .....

You cannot now the beliefs of every Christian scientist who worked on evolution !
Christians who believe the Bible is literal are not the only Christians in the world. The range of Christian beliefs includes those who say that God created the first life 3.8 billion years ago on Earth. There are Christians that believe that Genesis is recorded oral myths and it is the later OT and NT that are relevant to today. There are Christians who separate religion and science entirely so that both the Bible and evolution are true.

 

[MaudDib]

ID isnt a scientific theory. Its just religion.

ID postulates agency, something observable that exists on our planet, something that you refuse to postulate which detracts from your doing objective science.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Their position is that God designed life, which is contrary to the those evolutionists who are atheistic naturalists - the theory that life came about purely by stochaistic processes without divine intervention.

If you are going to argue against science you need to first learn about the science: evolution.

Abiogenesis is the science about the fact life used to not exist on Earth and came into existence. The scientific explanation is chemical processes. We start with the observation that the chemical building blocks of life are common and created just by chemistry. We have detected an amino acid in space. Then things get complex. What kind of environment? Was it DNA or RNA first.

Some problems with claiming the God designed life and continues to do so.
There is an implication that God at least misleads us by designing life as if it evolved over billions of years.
There is possible "straitjacketing" of God by seeming to not allow God to have powers that he should have, e.g. where are the non-DNA based animals on Earth?
It contradicts the Bible because there is no mention of animals created after the first few days. But we have examples of new species that God must have created.
In theory this allows us to somewhat control God's actions. Look at the Long term E coli evolution experiment. We can rerun evolution from a previous generation in the experiment before the new species evolved. God will have to decide whether to create a new species or not.

This can all be avoided by a God who intervenes in human affairs but has decided to let the universe mostly run itself (miracles excluded). Or we can make up excuses. God works in mysterious ways, it is a test, etc.

 

[MaudDib]

Been there. Done that.

We humans had once postulated that agents moved the planets, caused rain, and caused lightning.

Then we realized that we better understood all those things without postulating agents.

It's not that the idea of agents was never considered. We just found that they do not help us understand what is happening.

Do not confuse mythological gods with the biblical God. Adults don’t come to believe in Zeus when they get older, nor the tooth fairy, they come to believe in the biblical God.
Like C.S. Lewis did for instance.
The difference between God and the gods is that the former has a cosmogony whereas the other only have a theogony, a genesis of the gods.

Also, you are hinting at a God of the gaps avoidance, which is a good thing when applicable.

None of the above should be a show stopper when it comes to postulating agency at all though?

Information has not been demonstrably shown anywhere to come from the bottom up, only top down(the mind).
Consider that in the context of the origin of biological information.

You even have atheists moving away from Darwinism because of its contrivances. Take THOMAS Nagel and his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

What now?

 

[Speedwell]

None of the above should be a show stopper when it comes to postulating agency at all though?

You can postulate agency all you want, but there is no evidence of agency. Moreover, the ID folks have given us no idea whatever how that agency might be imposed on the material world, so we don't even know what to look for.

Information has not been demonstrably shown anywhere to come from the bottom up, only top down(the mind).

That is blatantly false, and worthy of a thread in itself. It should start with your definition of "information."


What now?