Is ID Scientific? (was "Abusive Assumptions")

We look forward to learning from you. Please post as often as you are able. Pull up a stump and set a spell. Keep your feet to the fire and the smoke will never get in your eyes.At the bottom of this message are some links to threads that may make your stay here more enjoyable.

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Having laid out an ID hypothesis, predictive element, falsification element and having received no cogent reply, I propose the following as being an ICS and accoutable for only by ID.Proposition: Carbon is ubiquitious and essential throughout life as we know it in every form. In fact there is no life that does not contain carbon. The carbon atom is an irreducibly complex system which is essential to every aspect of biological evolution and embedded in every form of life of which we are aware and without which no form of life could exist neither past nor present.Corollary: A IC system is one which cannot be envisioned as working in any useful way and is natualistically accounted for by a series of small changes from less and less complex systems over long time periods principally bt random mutation and natural selection.Corollary: Every form of life at the system or subsystem level is then irreducibly complex because one cannot remove carbon from it and still have any semblance of life.Corollary: Since no naturalistic explanation for the essentiality of carbon in life there is no viable alternative other than supernatural and the scientific complexity of the carbon atom makes it logically an ID system. Neither is there any scientific demonstrable basis for a non-carbon form of life at any point in the history of lifeConclusion: Evolution is a falsified theory because no scientific inquiry has ever demonstrated the development of the carbon atom from simpler "things" in a step by step process and carbon is a subsystem of every living entity without which all such entities cease to be alive. Life is an Ireducibly Complex System in every form for all time and inexplicable from other than an ID since the removal of one subsystem Carbon renders life to be non-life and cannot be built from simpler forms step by step.Evopeach

False.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Are you serious? Do you really think that carbon cannot be created by processes we already understand? I suggest a definite lack of knowledge of astrophysics here.

This just suggests taht you don't understand Ireducible complexity. This is an example similar in idiocy to that of removing the cell wall. None of these are good cases for irreducible complexity if their existence predates that of the system you are talking about.Therefore your argument about cell membranes would be flawed if we allow that membrane like structures, such a micelles, can exist without cellular machinery to produce them.In the case of cell membranes you might be able to make some semblance of an argument but in the case of carbon you are just showing a total failure to engage with the fundamental concepts involved in the debate. Carbon atoms predate the origins of life by a considerable span of time.This sort of argument simply reduces irreducible complexity to idiocy.TTFN,WK

Off topic remark about astrophysics is not responsive. Carbon 12 is about 98.8 % of all carbon extant and occupies that role in life forms. No life exists without carbon 12 although carbon 14 and 13 in trace amounts will be in life though 14 of course disappearing.Carbon 12 is irreducibly complex and thus life is, in that, in the context of this forum one cannot demonstrate life being built from other forms of carbon in those trace amounts as we see in life and functioning as life in any respect if the subsystem, carbon 12, were removed. The amounts of carbon 13 and 14 in life are miniscule.Not a single form of life can be shown reducible by the elimination of carbon 12 and maintain life functionality. No sequence of carbonless precursors at any stage in a supposed development sequence of living organisms can even be scientifically imaginable, let alone demonstrable.

Given that a basic astrophysical process is the immediate refutation of your second statement above, I do not see it as off-topic. Try looking up the triple-alpha process for starters...[Edit to add last evopeach quote for clarity]This message has been edited by cavediver, 08-09-2005 01:21 PMThis message has been edited by cavediver, 08-09-2005 01:24 PM

Your My hero!Serioussly, I have been reading your books since I was a kid. Heck, my whole fammily has I was fascinated with dinos and my first ideas of them came from illustrations in your books (I was too young to read at the time). Are you really The Rob T. Bakker?Welcome to the EVC! I hope you stick arround. It would also be interesting to have some theological debate with you since you seem to have strong opinions on the matter.

Sorry but your team has removed abiogenesis from any topic of discussion in this forum.. it being totally disassociated from evolution which only has meaning after abiogenesis has occured, first life form extant, from which evolution is the explanation for lifes diversity and functionality. Abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution accoriong to this forum.Every type of atom involved in life existed prior to abiogenesis so you are defining away the substance of the forum debate arbitrarily and without a scientific context whatsoever. IC is precisely concerned with the removal of any component of a life system and having removed it the result is that the system ceases to function... you don't get to define which subsystem can or can't be removed.Please feel free to pick any living organism or subsystem there of and demonstrate its operability absent carbon and I will demonstrate a fe hundred thousand that can't operate. Neith can they be built up from simpler carbonless forms or simpler forms of carbon that serve the purposes equally well.Thus life is irreducubly complex respecting carbon and there is no demonstrable alternative but to suppose a non-natural source for all carbon and all life forms and their design.

Well, essentially you are saying the Big Bang is the beginning of life in this case. Are you suggesting that god kickstarted the big bang? I guess if you NEED to push him back that far that's ok.Untill of course, we find the cause of the Big Bang in which case God will retreat somewhere else we can't get to him.

I am not pushing anything back... remember your team declared the big bang off limits .. no evolution theory prior to first life.I think its safe to assume however that currently here on earth we don't consider fusion temperatures as being any naturally occuring setting for biological discussions such as evolution, ID or IC ... granted star formation and all that on rare circumstances see triple collision processes in play.

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Thus life is irreducubly complex respecting carbon....

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So now we are using a non-standard meaning for "irreducibly complex".-

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...there is no demonstrable alternative but to suppose a non-natural source for all carbon....

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Except that there is a demonstrable alternative, namely nucleosynthesis in the interiors of stars.

What happens rarely .triple collision processes... so rare as to haave been excluded at the big bang.. thus no carbon has nothing to do with the terrestrial based life process called evolution which by definition deals only with what happened in the chain of life post abiogenesis... star formation processes are not on topic by definitionas being unrelated to the definition of evolution herein.

rare circumstances? Just what are you talking about?

Was that reply really meant for me? I can't really tell, since it doesn't seem to make any sense.