A thought on Intelligence behind Design

What they keep trying to say is that somethings can [q]not[/q] arise through evolutionary steps. You know, the "irreducible complexity".The obvious clue to what they are up to is the name. If they really were interested in science they would talk about the "problem of complexity in evolutionary theory" without jumping to the solution so fast. Obviously they're jumping to the solution and trying to find something that can be used as support.If they had a different agenda they would be trying to find solutions for any apparent "irreducible complexity". If they did this they wouldn't be getting caught over and over again with things with are not irreducibly complex. They'd figure it out themselves before publishing.

What does he mean by "incorporating the solution". That is not what is done?the "from scratch" might mean he wants an algorithm to start with nothing and arrive somewhere specific. How is that a sensible disagreement. The GA's show how a design can come about without intelligence. That's all we are analogizing here.

The ID argument seems to have two approaches:
1) "You don't know exactly how it evolved." This is just an argument from ignorance I guess. Not very convincing when we keep learning new things. (see my post in the book nook)
2) "It can not evolve in steps because it is irredicably complex". This is the arguement around the flagellum. Apparently it has been demonstrated that the flagellum is not "irreducibley complex".The flagellum argument was that it COULD NOT have evolved. Thus showing that it could is enough to demolish that.

Uh, no it didn't.http://barsoom.msss.com/education/facepage/face.html

This is not an example of a genetic algorithms. The design is a human one aided by tools but not replaced by tools as is the case with genetic algorithms.

Is the impression mistaken?I don't actually know. But I would be astonished if it had been done. The type of designs being evolved with genetic algorithms hasn't reached this level yet.There was work done on wing design some years ago it may have been incorporated into real aircraft design but that's not the same as the whole plane.Maybe someone else actually knows something about this. All I have is a TV show on the building of the plane. It didn't mention this and what was shown looked like conventional engineering.

You right, I think, if the mousetrap was like mousetraps here. But if the mousetraps had sex and produced little mousetraps with wee little differences they might well infer that they evolved.Any reference to things which don't reproduce as an analogy to things which do is a meaningless analogy. Mousetraps don't f**k!

We were talking about evolution of living things.I think you've made the jump to the origin of life. That isn't a settled issue yet. But it does appear that self catalyzing chemicals can be fairly simple. If so it isn't hard for them to arise. If they self catalyze imperfectly you have the basis for the evolutionary process.Since that area isn't in this topic maybe you'd like to revive one of the threads on it. There is lots of interesting research being done there so it might be interesting to discuss.Meanwhile we were talking about the "design" of living things. So we need to stay on topic don't we?

It is clear that many complex structures can arise without ID. The evidence is very strong for a lot of evolution.Now the ID'ers want to say, ah, but what about this very specific thing? Well, they don't show anything to distinguish those things from all the others (which ID'ers mostly agree did evolve).The statment was made that, for example, the bacterial flagelum could not evolve my any natural means. As soon as any plausible natural means is shown that argument is gone. The ID'ers have no other argument.It is not reasonable to note that many, many things have evolved some of them rather complex and then pick on a few somewhat more complex things and state that they could not have without anyway to know if that is true or not nor any way to distinguish those things from others.

Another one would be something that has a clear disconnect from everything around it. That might be explainable with other ideas but would be hard. For example, if humans weren't so obviously just more of the same.edited to change to the same to of the same.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 07-20-2003]

I'm afraid that there is an emotional component involved. And some polarizing and hardening of views. This is just human.Lets entertain the idea of some designer (space aliens or whatever). If any real evidence now arose there would be a greater struggle to get it looked at because of the poor science of the ID'ers to date. That's not what should happen but, as I said, we are humans.

MrH, like others have said, I haven't seen anything from an ID'er that denies evolution. They seem to agree with almost every single thing on the scientific side except they want to have a few places where and intelligence 'must' have intervened.
But it appears that those places vary all over the map. Only abiogenesis for some. The rise of humans for others. And only some specific biochemical details for others.I haven't read all that much of their stuff so I could easily be wrong. Can anyone correct this?