Career Opportunities AttackingID

_{William Dembski

October 9, 2005

Intelligent Design

1}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

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Attacking ID has become an academic growth industry. See, for instance, here. Where would Rob Pennock’s career be without ID?

Comments

2perfection thats absurd. body parts that the organism doesnt need can evolve and just sit around (for no telling how many thousands of generations) before theyre needed. then, all of these useless parts that are just sitting around can come together almost as if there WERE a master blueprint for the organism. yet, NS (which has been shown to do little in nature) and RM evolved all of these parts, not having any plan or purpose or goal, and not knowing that any of it would ever be needed. its like a car with a bunch of parts it doesnt need, just sitting around under the body. one day, MAYBE these various parts can be hooked up together to form a complex mechanism- that doesnt make sense if the process is purposeless, goal-less, and meaningless outside of mere survival. your idea makes no sense. theres no advantage to having parts just sitting around. NS wouldnt, even in theory, work on evolving a part (or parts) that have no advantage and "just sit around until it becomes useful." the only things are going to evolve are parts that help the organism better function, better reproduce, better deal with environmental factors, etc. but, as others have mentioned (linking to SJ Gould information and info. from many others)- NS has been shown to have little to no affect. it hasnt been shown to add meaningless parts, mutations that help survival, etc. so, even if we posit the absurd (that NS can evolve thousands of parts an organism DOESNT need, and they can just sit around until needed in a interconnected complex system), NS couldnt even do any of it to begin with.jboze3131_{October 17, 2005
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"The cooption theory is certainly possible. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s possible a tornado could blow through an automobile junkyard and manage to assemble an aircraft from the parts." The irony of this statement is, of course, obvious. Tornados are order arising from disorder. The ignorance of this statement is, of course, that molecules constantly self-assemble and there is nothing random about it, they follow the deterministic laws of chemistry. I do constantly wonder where these people get their ideas.2perfection_{October 17, 2005
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"why would an organism have parts it didnt need if the mechanism is a blind, purposless process without any ultimate goal in mind. " you have answered you own question, thoug like most creationists miss out the aspect of natural selection. A part can evolve and just sit around until it becomes useful. The part is only eliminated if it impairs reproductive success incomparison to members of the same species, or other species. It does pay to know something about evolution before trying to knock it down.2perfection_{October 17, 2005
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thanks davescot. rather confusing issue overall if youre not that familiar with science in general, let alone the complex science involved with these sorts of topics. the way you explained it- it sounds absurd. to even theorize that a random mechanism coupled with NS could accidentally form the parts to begin with is insane in my eyes. then to go further to claim that all those parts could somehow work like a construction crew overseen by some protein foreman to construct a brand new complex system, having to put all the parts in their exact locations at the exact times in a specified manner (all without any blueprints or plan at all) is even more absurd. im telling you. i dont know of any other area of study where chance and accidents would be claimed as the main mechanism that can create anything, let alone all the beauty of life around us. even if you add NS to the mix, the reasoning just isnt there for me.jboze3131_{October 10, 2005
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"They" are saying that component parts evolved through RM+NS for one purpose can accidently find themselves employed for another useful purpose. In the case of the flagellum a number of the component proteins are used in unrelated structures. The type II secretory system for instance, is built with large subset of them. However, the type II secretory system is well understood to have appeared in nature long after the bacterial flagellum and other proteins in the flagellum are not found in any other structures so there's really nothing at all yet to dispute the irreducible complexity of flagella. There's an excellent argument to be made that the type II secretory system DEVOLVED from a flagella but none supporting the converse. But even if every single protein in the flagella were found to have a function in an unrelated structure it wouldn't be sufficient to show reducible complexity. The assembly instructions for taking those 30 proteins and assembling them in such a way that forms a flagella is, in an of itself, an irreducibly complex specification. One has to show that a series of structures with high survival advantage (so the structures became fixed in the genome) composed of subsets of those proteins had to lead up to the flagella. This is how RM+NS has to work. If they can't show it then Darwin's own criteria for falsifiability has been met. Darwin hisself said that his theory is bogus if any such irreducible structure is found. It looks as if more than one has been found. It took 150 years to find it but that's just tough luck for the theory. Science is a harsh and unforgiving mistress.DaveScot_{October 10, 2005
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davescot- theyre supposedly preexisting parts that have a function but a simple one as compared to the parts coming together with other simple parts to make an IC system? is that what they theorize? i thought the point was- you cannot reduce the complex systems parts down to anything simpler, because the parts alone wouldnt be advantageous in any way, or they wouldnt work to do any job alone. and since there is supposedly no ultimate goal or purpose, the organism wouldnt know that it needed the simpler parts to build a complex system to begin with. little of this makes sense in my opinion. im still grasping with the fact that these changes supposedly are made by mere accidents (working with NS, tho there is no purpose or goal, and ive read 2 papers that show that NS does very little in the wild) in the dna which somehow magically performs trillions of happy accidents, and somehow trillions of accidents somehow transform mud into mathematician. so the theory goes, of course. i dont care how many times i accidentally drop all the scrabble letters, theyre never going to randomly form into a novel. even with a mechanism that works to keep the fittest elements of the novel intact. it just defies all reason to assume that one could sit in a room for a hundred, thousand, or even 10, 000 yrs and do this and ever get ANY part of a novel composed by accident.jboze3131_{October 10, 2005
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"Attacking ID has become an academic growth industry" Well why doesn't the ID-ers take or create a growth industry going the other way ?. Obviously Evo - is the prevailing / predominant theory [oops meant to say fact ] But why cant "we" not strike first, like they've been doing ?. Have some Id'ers immediately go out and tackle the newest headline from the evo-world that come out like clock work ? i think we should have the 1-2 punch hiding in the bushes, and whether they are looking or not BAAAMMMM! CharlieCharliecrs_{October 9, 2005
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jboze Nobody's talking about preexisting parts that have no function. Evolutionists aren't quite that stupid. What they don't seem bright enough to comprehend is that parts used for other things must be assembled for a new function. A mousetrap might be reduced to a paperweight, tieclip, keychain, and whatever other clever thing was mentioned but that hardly addresses the problem of how all these different parts happened to assemble themselves together for a completely new and unrelated function. Now that's probably unfair of me to say that evolutionists aren't bright enough to figure out that assembly instructions are required for cooption. The ones bright enough to figure that out for themselves are dishonest and refuse to admit what they know. Personally I prefer stupid to dishonest but that's just me.DaveScot_{October 9, 2005
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higgity The cooption theory is certainly possible. It's possible a tornado could blow through an automobile junkyard and manage to assemble an aircraft from the parts. Please describe how evolution creates the assembly instructions for parts coopted from disparate systems with unrelated functions to bring them together for a new function.DaveScot_{October 9, 2005
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"why would an organism have parts it didnt need if the mechanism is a blind, purposless process without any ultimate goal in mind." It has them in part because it is, as you put it, a blind process with no ultimate goal. Remember that most mutations are neither harmful nor beneficial to an organism. The parts that it doesn't need can result from those neutral mutations. These useless parts (they don't necessarily have to be physical; this could be on a genetic level) can later interact with other mutations to bring about change in a species. A "happy accident," if you will?higgity_{October 9, 2005
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about parts that were already there- that doesnt make much sense. why would an organism have parts it didnt need if the mechanism is a blind, purposless process without any ultimate goal in mind. why would that organism have the parts for any future plans, when there is no goal or purpose, so future plans dont exist. random events that supposedly take advantage of better mechanisms to make organisms better fit equals complex systems that, when a part is taken away, dont work makes no sense. a mindless, purposeless, goal-less process has none of these things in 'mind' at all.jboze3131_{October 9, 2005
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yeah, but with the mousetrap, its not truly IC. if you take on part off, its a tie clip? thats ridiculous. ANYTHING can become a tie clip. i could use a part of a space satellite as a tie clip, then bam- no longer is a space satellite so complex afterall. youd have to reduce each step down to complex mechanisms that serve a purpose, and a tie clip and paper weight dont cut it. pennock has never refuted behes IC claims (as he claims to have done...then again, his website makes it obvious that honesty isnt a forte- he continually misinforms readers with many of his comments on ID alone. so, his dishonesty with this claim of refuting behe isnt too surprising to begin with). its all theoretical what-if mechanisms that may or may not have ever existed. you cant empirically test the way hes refuted the complexity, you can reduce the complexity in the real world- only in what-if scenarios of what MIGHT HAVE happened at some POSSIBLE time in some HYPOTHETICAL situation. there are a list of mechanisms in nature that cannot be reduced down to a simpler form without becoming pointless or outright broken. pennock and others can claim theyve solved the problem, but their just-so what-if stories of hypothetical mechanisms that MIGHT have existed at some possible point in time dont cut it.jboze3131_{October 9, 2005
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The mousetrap example was referring to how IC systems can evolve because they incorporate parts that already had a purpose (or maybe didn't have a purpose but were there already) and when the organism evolved to take advantage of the system, all the parts were already there. I'm not an expert on it, but that's essentially a crude explanation. About a month back, I read a really really great blog post somewhere that illustrated how IC didn't work in very easy terms... but I don't remember where it was and I'd butcher it if I tried to restate it. "well this chemical component COULD HAVE MAYBE done this, and this part her COULD POSSIBLY have AT SOME UNKNOWN POINT been used for this purpose, etc." Scientists rarely, if ever, deal in absolutes. That's why they talk like that. :-phiggity_{October 9, 2005
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that said, the stuff ive read that claims to refute IC is fairly absurd for the most part. it gets really silly when they claim that even a mousetrap itself ISNT IC. why? well, if you remove the trap part, you can use it as a paper weight or tie clip! if you remove all the metal parts, you can use it as a paper weight! i actually read that on a site the other day (forget what site, but i think it was a well known evol. prof. who made the comments. the theoretical steps of the flagellum are just as silly. well this chemical component COULD HAVE MAYBE done this, and this part her COULD POSSIBLY have AT SOME UNKNOWN POINT been used for this purpose, etc. heck, i can do this sort of thing myself. i can take my computer apart, take out all the important parts (the drive, the processor, the memory) and its devolved into a complex foot stool. or maybe even a coffee table. if i take out a metal piece somewhere, i can use it as a tie clip or maybe a simple cutting tool. if i take out out the hard drive, i can use the spinning mechanism to serve really tiny cocktail weenies at for parties! the way they "refute" IC is by claiming this and this MAYBE, POSSIBLY, COULD HAVE, MIGHT HAVE been capable of this and that. and at one point PERHAPS its POSSIBLE that this was used for this purpose, and on and on.jboze3131_{October 9, 2005
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Irreducible Complexity is a monster of a hurdle for evolutionary theory, but I don't think it's quite the death blow that Specified Complexity is. I'm unfamiliar with Pennock's critique, but I doubt that it does much damage to IC. Each case of IC must be taken into account individually; and a plausible, step-by-step, true-to-life model of the structure's origin is necessary to refute it. Unless Pennock has done this, his critique fails. Davidcrandaddy_{October 9, 2005
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Mark Sprengel wrote: "He also claimes Behe has not overcome his critique of Irreducible Complexity for 4 years. Is that true?" Good question. I'm sure there is an answer out there. Can somebody provide a reference pointing to it?dougmoran_{October 9, 2005
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According to his website, Pennock has campaigned not only against "intelligent design" but "intelligent bills." This is what his website states (http://www.msu.edu/~pennock5/research/DICE_PennockVsIDC.html): "Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ Michigan Citizens for Science. I founded this citizens' action group together with Ed Brayton in 2001 to help respond to two intelligent bills that had been proposed in the Michigan legislature...." (emphasis added) Who knew?fbeckwith_{October 9, 2005
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Did Pennock get a flagellum to evolve in a test tube while I wasn't looking? If not he hasn't done jack diddly squat to refute Behe's assertion of irreducible complexity. I'm afraid Pennock and those like him can't just say Behe's assertion is wrong. They have to demonstrate, methodically, via experiment and observation that flagella are not irreducibly complex. Pennock and his ilk are hoist by their own scientifically methodological petards! I love it! :-)DaveScot_{October 9, 2005
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That don't mess with textbook tshirt is pretty stupid. He also claimes Behe has not overcome his critique of Irreducible Complexity for 4 years. Is that true?mark_sprengel_{October 9, 2005
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No where!Benjii_{October 9, 2005
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