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ID in a Wiley Math Textbook

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Granville Sewell is a mathematician on the faculty of Texas A&M University who has just published the second edition of a book on differential equations: The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations (2005). Appendix D of that book is titled “Can Anything Happen in an Open System?” and is pure ID. Consider the following quote:

The development of any major new feature presents similar problems, and according to Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, who describes several spectacular examples in detail in Darwin’s Black Box [Behe 1996], the world of microbiology is especially loaded with such examples of irreducible complexity. Although I cannot imagine any uses for the components of this airtight insect trap before the trap was almost perfect, a good Darwinist will imagine 2 or 3 far-fetched intermediate useful stages, and consider the problem solved. I believe you would need to find thousands of intermediate stages before this example of irreducible complexity has been reduced to steps small enough to be bridged by single random mutations — a lot of things have to happen behind the scenes and at the microscopic level….

The entire appendix is available online here.

Comments
I read the appendix. Very nice. Mikey likes it. My stock reply to the evolutionist's stock reply about violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (2Lot) is that you cannot willy-nilly swap heat entropy for information entropy which is what they do when they argue that the earth is an open system with heat from the sun powering information buildup on the planet's surface. Sewell seems to be saying the same thing in several places. It's nice to see agreement from an authoritative source. Anyhow, I think Sewell's inspired me to come up with a corollary to 2LoT as follows. Springer's Evo-Creo 2LoT Corollary: As ID arguments get more organized, evolutionist arguments must become less organized. The end result is that ID becomes a completely coherent explanation of the facts while the Darwinian narrative decays into a vast state of disarray. :-) It's all a simple matter of physics you see. DaveScot
May 30, 2005
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