INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

I think you actually mean "kind", not species. We've already created new species through artificial selection in laboratories, and also through genetic manipulation.The significant problem in creating new "kinds" is not a scientific one but a semantic one. "Kind" is not a scientific term and so does not have a scientific definition. Without a proper definition it isn't possible for scientists to tell when they've created a new "kind."Creationists usually talk in terms of the dog "kind", which includes dogs and wolves and so forth, and of the horse "kind", which includes horses and donkeys and zebras and so forth. This makes "kind" a rather broad category, and given the slow reproductive rates of mammals I think most scientists would concede that creating new "kinds" as part of any reasonable laboratory experiment simply isn't possible because of the long time periods (centuries at least) that would be required. Laboratory experiments require organisms with short generation periods, and so a definition of "kind" that applies to bacteria would likely be required.--Percy

Actually, natural selection applies more visibly and directly to bacteria than to sexually reproducing organisms. Its rapid generation time makes it a prime candidate for investigations into natural selection mechanisms. Of course, some types of natural selection can't be studied with bacteria, such as sexual selection, but that shouldn't be a problem.The problem is to ask the question in such a way that a clear answer is possible. In other words, an experiment must be devised that has the potential for clear outcomes.--Percy

For many people, accepting evolution doesn't mean turning away from God, benevolent or otherwise.--Percy

Sorry, you've lost me...--Percy

I didn't say. But many people who accept evolution have not turned away from God. As to their conception of God, I'm sure that's as varied as the people themselves.--Percy

[deja vu from Message 96]
I think you actually mean "kind", not species. We've already created new species through artificial selection in laboratories, and also through genetic manipulation.The significant problem in creating new "kinds" is not a scientific one but a semantic one. "Kind" is not a scientific term and so does not have a scientific definition. Without a proper definition it isn't possible for scientists to tell when they've created a new "kind."Creationists usually talk in terms of the dog "kind", which includes dogs and wolves and so forth, and of the horse "kind", which includes horses and donkeys and zebras and so forth. This makes "kind" a rather broad category, and given the slow reproductive rates of mammals I think most scientists would concede that creating new "kinds" as part of any reasonable laboratory experiment simply isn't possible because of the long time periods (centuries at least) that would be required. Laboratory experiments require organisms with short generation periods, and so a definition of "kind" that applies to bacteria would likely be required.
[/deja vu]--Percy

Sorry, you've lost me again. Could you maybe try to pick up the thread of the discussion instead of resetting to square one?--Percy

Fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be! --Percy

Co-evolution precisely explains the compatibility between penis and vagina. Any evolutionary pressures for incompatibility are always effectively countered by inability to copulate. In other words, characteristics that make copulation impossible are never passed on to progeny. Characteristics that make copulation more difficult are less likely to be passed on than those that don't. Such a discussion is unnecessary. We already understand the point you're trying to make. You're arguing that the design is so intricate and complex and amazing that evolution could not possibly have produced it. You're forgetting that we agree with you about how intricate and complex and amazing all facets of life are, including the anatomical elements involved in the reproductive act of mammals.When one looks at life from the standpoint of science one notices two outstanding characteristics. The first is particularly noticeable in the more complex lifeforms such as mammals, and that is that evolution often takes a "make do with what's available" approach, combined with a "that's good enough" attitude. (Don't read anything into the anthropomorphisms, it's just a style of presentation.)The second is that the designs also reflect considerable experimentation, zillions of trials over thousands and millions of years. The result is designs that in complexity are far beyond the abilities of human engineers and that contain the kind of surprises we often find in life: unexpected and unanticipatable solutions, ones that human designers would never have thought of. In fact, nature produces the same sort of unexpected surprises that genetic algorithms produce (genetic algorithms simulate the process of evolution in order to produce design).This is why the approach you're taking is so far off the mark. You draw an analog between the appearance of design in nature to human design in our own sphere. The reality is that there is no analog at all. The appearance of design in nature is a superficial one at best.--Percy

Hi NJ,Arguments from personal incredulity combined with a lack of familiarity with evolution continue to permeate your posts: It only seems highly implausible to you because you're unaware that this issue has already been investigated and found consistent with evolutionary theory. Measured mutation rates of living organisms are consistent with a) the genetic separation between living organisms as measured by DNA analysis; and b) the amount of time that has passed since the organisms diverged from each other as recorded in the fossil record. Obscurantist argument? You're going to have to explain that one. We're happy to explain evolutionary theory to any level of detail you're happy with. No one is obscuring anything. Unless you're barking up the "Were you there? No, you didn't see it happen, therefore you couldn't know!" tree again, the evidence is massive. The same evolutionary processes that play out in creatures with relatively long reproductive cycles can be observed in real time with shorter lived organisms, like bacteria in petri dishes. DNA analysis shows that the same kind of copying errors observed to take place in bacteria and other organisms with relatively short life cycles also occur in longer lived species. Your argument is that the perceived design in nature is similar to human design. The reply is that it isn't similar at all because it contains characteristics not seen in human design: a) incredible intricacy and complexity that seems the result of huge amounts of trial and error over long time periods; b) a large element of "making do with what was already there", like the panda's thumb, and an equally large contribution of "just good enough".Your view on design also fails to take into account what Jar earlier noted about the propagation of design innovations. One of his examples was windshield wipers on cars. After their first appearance they quickly they propagated to all cars of all manufacturers, which is not a pattern we see anywhere in the fossil record. One can draw another example from the computer world. After memory caches first appeared, they quickly propagated to all computers of all manufacturers everywhere.In other words, the pattern of change seen in the fossil record is consistent with evolutionary change, and completely inconsistent with the what we would see for promulgation of design innovation.--Percy

Hi NJ,You've ignored Schraf's rebuttal. You said, "The penis and the vagina are perfectly suited for one another." Schraf pointed out that the sheep vagina is perfectly suited for the human male penis. How does that affect your conclusions about design?Your argument still boils down to declaring that the integration of form and function throughout the natural world could never have come about through natural processes, and could only have come about through design. Citing specific examples like penis and vagina does nothing to change the form of your argument, which is merely: Look how amazing this is, it must have been designed!As has been pointed out, most of how amazing it appears to you is due to your lack of understanding of just how amazing natural processes can be. Thunder and lightning, as amazing as they are, are not the designer at work, though they were once thought so. The changing seasons, as amazing as they are, are not the designer at work, though they were once thought so. The planetary orbits, as amazing as they are, are not the designer at work, though they were once thought so.And so the diversity of life, as amazing as it is and if history is any guide, is not the designer at work.--Percy

Hi Jaywill,Here's the full text of Behe's article: A True Acid Test: Response to Ken Miller"Behe begins by playing semantic games: Behe has somehow misinterpreted what Miller said, even though he quotes him verbatim. Miller never said that the intent of the experiment was to "wipe out" multiple components of a multipart system. Behe's claim about irreducible complexity is that removing just a single component of an irreducibly complex system will "wipe out" the function of the system. It is precisely this claim that Miller is addressing, and how Behe could misinterpret Miller to be saying that the experiment was intended to wipe out multiple components, given that this is not a claim of irreducible complexity and that it was Miller's specific intention to address the claims of irreducible complexity, is hard to understand.Behe goes on to quote from a paper that is closely related to the one Miller is talking about: This has nothing to do with Miller's argument about irreducible complexity. Miller pointed out that the supposedly irreducibly complex system was not actually irreducibly complex, because mutations had little difficulty finding alternative pathways to accomplish the original function. Behe replies by completely changing the subject from irreducible complexity to purposeful mutations, pointing out that Hall found that the necessary mutations happened far too fast to have occurred randomly. Perhaps Hall is onto something, I'd have to follow the literature trail which would be time-consuming, and you've already indicated you don't understand the technical side anyway, so I won't invest my time there. But Hall's paper was written in 1997, and had it eventually yielded results that supported ID then it would have been trumpeted from the rooftops, not only at the Dover trial last year but everywhere. That it wasn't indicates that Hall eventually found more mundane explanations for the unlikely mutations.Behe concludes this portion of his rebuttal with more misdirection: But Miller wasn't arguing for Darwinian evolution in this part of his book. He was arguing against irreducible complexity. The Hall experiment is strong experimental results against irreducible complexity, and Behe never actually addresses Miller's argument.As I read through Behe's response to Miller he says something that provides me an opportunity to make an important point about Behe: It's the last portion that's significant: "...apparently diverged by gene duplication more than two billion years ago."Many creationists and IDists don't realize that Behe fully accepts descent with modification and natural selection. He fully accepts common descent of all life today from one or a few organisms a few billion years ago. He fully accepts the geologic column, the 4.56 billion year age of the earth, and the 13.7 billion year old universe. Where he differs with other biologists is in his belief that certain microbiological structures are irreducibly complex and could only have come about by purposeful design and not by the process of evolution that he otherwise accepts for all else in life.In other words, and just to be absolutely clear, Behe accepts that the process of evolution produced most of what we see in life on earth today. It's just that he also believes some aspects of that life could only have been designed.While Behe's argument against Miller's argument is somewhat technical, he's basically saying that redundancy in the bacteria's genetic code reduced the size of the evolutionary task, and this is, of course, true. The presence of redundancy made it possible for only a couple of small mutations to enable the bacteria to recover it's lost lac function. But that fact means the lac function is not irreducibly complex, since the process of evolution was able to reconstruct this lost function.Behe also notes that Hall kept the bacteria alive by providing nutrients in the growth medium that would keep the bacteria alive, since it was no longer capable of sustaining itself without the lac function. This is absolutely true, but it also has nothing to do with irreducible complexity.The problems with Behe's ideas about irreducible complexity are fatal. He's been unable to provide any research supportive of the idea, and those of his colleagues who have examined the idea by responding to what he has written in the popular press (e.g., Darwin's Black Box, et. al.) have found all his examples of supposed irreducible complexity wanting, from blood coagulation to eye evolution.--Percy

My previous reply to you about Behe anticipates just this response. You apparently accept Behe on irreducible complexity, but reject Behe on macroevolution. Behe has good reasons for disagreeing with you. Behe's analytical skills may be compromised by his religious beliefs when it comes to a tiny area of biology concerned with microbiological processes (which in a wild coincidence (:rolleyes just happens to be his research specialty), but his grasp of the evidence for evolution is sound. The question isn't so much whether it happens, but how in the world you would stop it from happening. Speciation is not a step function where one day a pheasant hatches a duck. It's a continuous process made up of many, many tiny steps. Ring species, which is the term used for a series of species across adjacent geographic regions whose change is slight between adjacent regions and so can almost be considered the same species, but species at opposite ends of the geographic chain are not at all similar, are an excellent example of this. This gradual change of a species across geography is analogous to the gradual change of a species over time. There is no precise point at which one species becomes another.Almost every reproductive act is imperfect. In other words, almost every offspring contains mutations that make its genetic makeup slightly different from its parents. There is no way to prevent this. Over time these changes accumulate and the genetic makeup of a species *will* change. The degree of that change is a function of environmental stability. If the environment is very stable and the organism is already well adapted, then mutations that are expressed will likely be selected against and disappear, but some mutations will accumulate anyway, which is a factor in genetic drift. This is a common misconception among creationists. Put simply, the evidence for macroevolution is apparent by combining the evidence from a) the nested hierarchy of existing life; b) the nested hierarchy of life recorded in the fossil record that is completely consistent with existing life; c) dating of the fossil record; d) comparative DNA analysis of current life that finds consistency with all the evidence from the areas already mentioned.Besides having no positive evidence, ID is contradicted by the existing evidence in a couple important ways. First, but only for those who believe the designer is God, the fossil record of changing life over time indicates that God is learning as he goes along, gradually developing new designs that he periodically releases into living form. A God who learns as he goes is probably not consistent with most evangelical's view of God.And second, but more importantly, the propagation of design innovations would create a completely different history from the one we see in the fossil record. The fossil record reflects a nested hierarchy in that innovations from one branch of life do not find their way over into other branches of life. This is completely different from the record that would be left by design innovation, where new innovations would be expected to propagate helter-skelter throughout all of life. For example, warm-bloodedness is a wonderful innovation that enables creatures to prosper in wider extremes of environment, but somehow this innovation did not find its way into the reptiles. Evidence of innovation crossing branches of life would be strong evidence for ID, but such evidence is completely absent.--Percy

Well, now you're just casting unsupported aspersions. I wish you and Dr Adequate would drop out of "one-liner" mode.This is not the place to get into a discussion of the nature of science. Suffice to say that this thread is about an engineering approach to ID, and engineering is the practical application of scientific principles, and science is based upon evidence. If you're unaware of the evidence for evolution then in the appropriate thread we can describe it to you at any level of detail you feel comfortable with. But... Given the indispensable role science plays in engineering, this isn't a view consistent with claiming that ID reflects engineering principles. You're in essence arguing against the premise of this thread.--Percy

Please, anyone out there with cancer or concerns about cancer, be sure to seek professional medical help. Do not waste time on folk or quack remedies, the consequences of delay are too drastic to consider.--Percy