Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

Tusko, The problem here, as you acknowledge, is finding an IC structure that absolutely, definately, could not have arisen by the addition & subtraction of sub-structures. Since we cannot know that any given IC structure is not potentially unevolveable, it's moot.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Take the example of a watch. If we were Martians visiting Earth, we could probably find something about its design. We would first see how it is used. Then we would see how it is acquired. We could probably discover that the watch user acquired it at a store. Then we could see where the store acquired it. The trail might be long, but it should lead us back to the designer. That's the "follow the money" approach.If we tried similar methods with a bee hive, or a birds nest, we again should be able to find the designers.Suppose we tried this with the mouse (as a species). It seems to me that all trails would lead back to the mouse species. The only reasonable conclusion would be that it is self-designed. I would see being self-designed as the evidence of something that has evolved.In the case of symbiotic species, you might reach the reasonable conclusion that they were co-designed, which would be evidence of co-evolution.

A computer chip is a genius invention. It is relatively small yet it can store vast amounts of information. This invention showcases complexity: small object containing vast amount of information.Whoever invented the modern computer chip designed something tiny that holds a lot of information.Using this as a standard or gauge lets compare the computer chip with a single human cell: Only a Deity could invent a object infinetly smaller than a chip and have it contain infinetly more information.Complexity is measured in contrast to the best and most complex any intelligent person can produce. Identify these complexities wherever they are and the complexities in created/living things are infinetly more complex. IOW, the brilliance of an IDer is best seen and understood next to the second best anyone can find.Can any Darwinist describe or re-phrase the Dawkins quote without using terminology inferring design ?It takes the most brilliant men in our society to figure out nature and biology, it takes intelligence to communicate the findings, but it didn't take intelligence to produce creation. IOW, blind dunces called Chance and Accident are stumping the scientific community.No, what is apparent is that the status quo refuse to credit a Creator lest they give what they hate any legitimacy.Has anyone ever wondered why there are 60,000,000 definitions of Natural Selection ?If you put 10 Darwinists in a room they will produce 16 different definitions of Natural Selection. The REASON there is no one universal defintion of Natural Selection is because of the awesome complexity of nature.We now know complexity is the mark and m.o. of the Divine - which is logical. The brighter You/you are the increased capacity to understand and produce complexity. IC systems showcase Divine complexity.The inability to produce one coherent and universal definition of Natural Selection is because nature is extremely complex, IOW God has produced a cosmology so complex He has confused Darwinian ranks attempting to define the mechanism which produced the complexity.IOW, the infinite definitions of Natural Selection prove the IDer.HereptonThis message has been edited by Herepton, 09-14-2005 08:28 PM

Hello, Herepton.Your subtitle says, "How to Measure Complexity", but I don't see any methods for this measurement.

Hi Chiroptera:You have a funny way of admitting your inability to refute. The methods were explained. I evidenced two: computer chip v. human cell and the complexity of nature contrasted next to the inability of Darwinists to produce one universal definition of Natural Selection.HereptonThis message has been edited by Herepton, 09-14-2005 08:51 PM

You seem to be hinting that information carrying capacity implies complexity. But you never actually define complexity, and you certainly do not provide any indication on how to measure it. "Infinitely smaller than a chip" implies size 0. Where is the information in something of size 0? Measured how? Dawkins' own wording will do. I already fail to see any basis for inferring design. We see ordinary biological processes creating new organisms. We don't see a creator doing it, except to the extent that biological processes can be considered creative. Do we? Are you implying that the Divine has been operating my paper shredder? There sure is a lot of complexity in the shreds of paper in its bin.

Which is not alive. Computers are not even comparable to the complexity of even the simplest living thing.Which proves that living things cannot be the product of intelligence. No intelligence has the capability to create life. The complexity of life proves evolution - it's too complex to have been designed.

Well, the first computers were the size of rooms and couldn't do much more than add. Computers and chips have gotten smaller and more powerful over time. So, your analogy is spot on -- only it's disproving your point.Just as computer components have become more complex, each step building on the steps that came before it, so to have organisms. Of course this sentence also applies to the Intel team that put together the 4004 in 1971, seeing as today's chips are unthinkably smaller and process unthinkably more information, then the current employees of Intel must be Gods amoung men. Sure, here we go
The quote: My quote: DNA's length and size allows it to store a lot of information within a very small space.Sure, I've trimmed it down a bit, but if Dawkins is so sure of himself, have him store just 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica in an amoeba. That's gotta be pretty easy considering. Okay, if there are 60 million definitions, care to give us just 100 of them? Should be easy. Blah, blah, blah. Look, just because you are motivated by alterior motives doesn't mean that the rest of us are. So, sea coral is vastly more intelligent than pigs. Snails are vastly more intelligent than dogs. I see where you are going with this... do you? Let's flip the script shall we? Why is there no single consensus on religion? If you take 10 "Christians" and put them in a room, you come out with 8 different denominations and 6 different Holy Wars. God has so confounded the religious that there is absolutely no agreement, not only on what method of worship, but who in fact this divine being is.If you are saying that Thor has tricked us with the incredible complexity of life he has created, then I think Faith has a few choice words for you. Just as the infinite number of deities prove the atheist. Which in turn disproves you IDer.

Thanks for your post.As someone else has already noted, it would be inaccurate to consider that the modern microchip was designed and lo! it sprang into being. The modern microchip is instead the product of decades of refinements that have allowed for ever greater efficiency and processing power. Evolutionists contend that it is equally misleading to point to a human cell and claim that its complexity is somehow "impossible" or "miraculous". Rather, they contend that the human cell is the product of billions of years of slight modifications that have enabled something nothing more complex than a bunch of chemicals to become something as convoluted as a human cell.I'm also wholeheartedly in agreement with the person (perhaps the same person) who said that if disagreement within a belief is an indication of its weakness, then Christianity with its, Coptics, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Mormons, etc... is looking decidedly shaky.

Let's also compare the entire stack of volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica with an elephant. By your standard of complexity, although it contains vastly more information than the encyclopaedia, the elephant is not nearly as complex on account of the fact that an elephant is a rather large object, larger in any case than the stack of books.Another funny thought experiment just entered my head: let's compare the Encyclopaedia Britannica with itself. Let's put the books next to the DVD version. Both contain the same amount of information, yet the DVD version is decidedly smaller than the stack of books. So by your standard, the DVD version must be the more complex, even though we cannot extract more information from it. Curious.You may want to rethink your standard of complexity, or better still, listen to what people have to say about it, who actually know something about information theory. What for? There's no reason to avoid references to design, since there clearly is design in living nature. It's the implication of an intelligent designer that's unwarranted. ID is a house of cards that's based on a single flawed idea, namely that the presence of design implies an intelligent designer.Apart from the obvious logical objections (an intelligent designer must be complex itself, hence designed, so who designed the designer?), computer models have shown that mindless repetition of a relatively simple algorithm can produce elaborate design. So one might say there is a designer of sorts, but it's a process, and it's not intelligent.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 15-Sep-2005 02:02 PM

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Hello, Herepton.Your deprecation of my post is curious. As others have pointed out, you did not at all explain any methods of measuring complexity. You mentioned two items: a computer chip and a human cell. But you did not explain how one measures the complexity of either.Measurement implies that there is a number associated with these items, called its "complexity". What is the complexity of the computer chip? This should be a number. What is the complexity of a human cell? This, too, should be a number. You are claiming that the first number is less than the second, but unless you actually supply these numbers I'm not sure why I should believe you.

As Dembski himself says:I say maybe it does. However, the onus is on the IDers to demonstrate that this specified complexity is not a feature of any design rather than just intelligent design. So far all they are doing is saying "Everything that is designed by humans has an intelligent designer. Therefore everything that is designed through some process must have an intelligent designer".Its one hell of a leap of logic.

Tusko,
It will take some time for me to "unpack" my personal investment in the short hand terms I use ("n!" and "sphere").
The b&w pick below is the closest I can come to representing (albeit discontinuously ( dont say how the marks "one" and g "zero" are to be rotated and drawn with respect to fill areas and text as well as inductions from putting the "bio" back in geography ( Stoddart(the book is older than this bio"")) but suspend judgement pending creation of imagined sphereically representable technology diplayed (furtherst below). The fact that you said something assuming a reduction I suspected did happen shows that you would be able to understand what I had meant by the substractions. If you read EVC well you might have seen Mark24 speak of additions or substractions. I think he would understand the particularity as I unpack the darkest regions of thos diagram in the future.Some creationists might question that the use the technology I imagine will afford the particulars but in general no one can know, unless the economic restraints were loosened and the constraints were refined and implemented. I doubt that the sphere will always be the representable result and thus i conclude against irreducible complexity but as the technology does not exist I could be wrong about what will happen if and once it is used.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 09-16-2005 12:37 PM

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For ID, no one has ever formulated a way to disprove it. So, although ID is a logically possible hypothesis, it is not a scientific one until some test has been proposed that could prove it false. And such a test would have to be concerned with the defining tenet of ID, namely that life is too complex to have arisen without the help of an intelligent designer.

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This is from message two of this thread by Parasomnium. I am happy to see some one else state one of the fundamental theories of ID in that same manner that I see it. Now that this has been said, I have a test of this theory.In my words, the IDs and Creationist say that life (to include all if the universe, atoms, quarks, etc) is too WONDERFUL and complex to have evolved by itself. Call this the wonderful theory.One method of testing a theory it to see how it holds up when applied to others subjects. Lets apply this wonderful theory to god with the assumption that the theory is valid. God is indeed too wonderful and complex to have evolved by itself or his-self if you prefer.Lets make the obvious explicit. According to the wonderful theory, god had to have been helped along by his own god. Well where did that god come from? The answer is that when the wonderful theory is applied to god, it shows that god cannot exist. So something is wrong here.I see two possibilities:1. The wonderful theory is right and god cannot exist. It is not possible for there to be creator of god.2. The wonderful theory is wrong. The basic premise of ID and creationism is wrong. To say that our wonderfulness and complexity imply a god is patently false.So which is it?Finally: I am not a genius and I see that this analysis is so obvious it begs to be used. Why have I not seen its use anywhere? I expect that the answer will be forthcoming. And probably in no uncertain terms.BTW: This is my own personal theory and I have not read of it anywhere or anytime. Rightly or wrongly, I lay claim to being its author.

One thing struck me from the "Schmevolution Panel" where Jon asked Dembski about the scrotum design - Dembski said that {not all things need to have been designed}(paraphrased).This denies testability of any aspect of ID, for every item where evolution is shown to be sufficient mechanism is just another instance where design was not needed.The ultimate moving goal-posts, because it is automatic.

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