Does complexity require intelligent design?

I'm not such a proponent, but it's not hard to see why ID is so sedutively compelling. Think about it - setting aside biological systems and living things for a moment, how often do you see complex, interrelated, high-functioning systems arise through any mechanism besides people putting them together?Now, of course that's begging the question. But its a difficult argument to refute - framed as simply as it is, the scientific response is so much more complicated that it fails to be compelling. A simple question demands a simple answer; audiences are likely to view a complicated answer as simply an attempt at a smokescreen.

He's nitpicking you, Buz, which I personally would never support, but he is correct. An adverb is never the gramatically correct answer to a "where" question. It would, however, be gramatically correct if you had asked "How does the information etc...[/i]

Still gramatically incorrect. As I said an adverb never answers "where", it answers "how" or "to what extent." It's not so much that "randomly" is gramatically incorrect, it's that you asked a gramatically incorrect question. You used the wrong interogative pronoun for the context. The question to the answer "it came randomly" is not "where did it come from?" but "how did it come"?But it's a nitpick because everybody understood what you meant. Why Para chose to pick on you about it is totally beyond me. You really shouldn't have to be put in the position of defending your word usage if everybody knew what you meant in the first place.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-15-2005 12:28 AM

There is no distinguishable difference between design resulting from reproduction with modification and design resulting from intelligent intervention, especially because intelligence can employ reproduction with modification to design. Certainly a human could design something to look evolved; evolution obviously results in designs that many people mistake for being of intelligent origin.So no, creation is not an entirely different process than reproduction. That's hardly a significant admission given that no evolutionist proposed that life formed by "chance" in the first place.

Which is different from the idea of God creating himself - or being eternal, which is the same thing - only in the fact that nature actually is known to exist.

Gosh, what do you suppose would happen if you combined a process that resulted in random modifications, some better but most neutral or worse, with a process that eliminated all but the neutral or better modifications? What do you suppose you would have left? Human resistance to HIV is another that comes to mind.

You don't find that incoherent? To insist that God must have caused, because everything has a cause, but then to also insist that nothing caused God?If you're comfortable with an uncaused event called God, why not an uncaused event called the Universe?

Does that make sense to you? That if you have 5000 of one thing, and 1 of another, and you take away all 5000 of the first thing, you're saying you have nothing left? You need to check your math. If it was, we all would have it. Since we don't, we know that its a function of individual variety, and the source of that variety is known to be mutation. The evidence is in your genes, and in the fossils. It's in observations of mutation and selection in real populations. There's more than enough evidence to substantiate random mutation and natural selection as processes that cause non-random allele change in populations. Documented already.

Atomic decay has no cause (pedantic alert). Atoms decay absent of any stimulus that causes them to do so. So that justifies an arbitrary end to the loop? I don't see how. If you're getting infinite loops it means you need to change your premises, not introduce a new term.You can't both assert that every effect has a cause, and then resolve that by contradicting your premise. If anything you've proved that every effect doesn't have a cause, not that there has to be some First Cause. I believe that, like all theology, you're just making it up as you go along. Which is fine, but lets not pretend like you're doing science or actually finding anything out about the universe, ok?

How does that make any sense? Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

He thinks that 5001 - 5000 = 0.I wouldn't put too much stock in his logic.

Oh, there's plenty. The transition from synapsid reptiles to proto-mammals and from there to the three branches of mammals is one of the best-represented transitionals in the record: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 1BThe highlights:

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Protoclepsydrops haplous (early Pennsylvanian) -- The earliest known synapsid reptile. Little temporal fenestra, with all surrounding bones intact. Fragmentary. Had amphibian-type vertebrae with tiny neural processes. (reptiles had only just separated from the amphibians)

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Haptodus (late Pennsylvanian) -- One of the first known sphenacodonts, showing the initiation of sphenacodont features while retaining many primitive features of the ophiacodonts. Occiput still more strongly attached to the braincase. Teeth become size-differentiated, with biggest teeth in canine region and fewer teeth overall. Stronger jaw muscles. Vertebrae parts & joints more mammalian. Neural spines on vertebrae longer. Hip strengthened by fusing to three sacral vertebrae instead of just two. Limbs very well developed.

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Dvinia [also "Permocynodon"] (latest Permian) -- Another early cynodont. First signs of teeth that are more than simple stabbing points -- cheek teeth develop a tiny cusp. The temporal fenestra increased still further. Various changes in the floor of the braincase; enlarged brain. The dentary bone was now the major bone of the lower jaw. The other jaw bones that had been present in early reptiles were reduced to a complex of smaller bones near the jaw hinge. Single occipital condyle splitting into two surfaces. The postcranial skeleton of Dvinia is virtually unknown and it is not therefore certain whether the typical features found at the next level had already evolved by this one. Metabolic rate was probably increased, at least approaching homeothermy.

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Cynognathus (early Triassic, 240 Ma; suspected to have existed even earlier) -- We're now at advanced cynodont level. Temporal fenestra larger. Teeth differentiating further; cheek teeth with cusps met in true occlusion for slicing up food, rate of replacement reduced, with mammalian-style tooth roots (though single roots). Dentary still larger, forming 90% of the muscle-bearing part of the lower jaw. TWO JAW JOINTS in place, mammalian and reptilian: A new bony jaw joint existed between the squamosal (skull) and the surangular bone (lower jaw), while the other jaw joint bones were reduced to a compound rod lying in a trough in the dentary, close to the middle ear. Ribs more mammalian. Scapula halfway to the mammalian condition. Limbs were held under body. There is possible evidence for fur in fossil pawprints.

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Oligokyphus, Kayentatherium (early Jurassic, 208 Ma) -- These are tritylodontids, an advanced cynodont group. Face more mammalian, with changes around eyesocket and cheekbone. Full bony secondary palate. Alternate tooth replacement with double-rooted cheek teeth, but without mammalian-style tooth occlusion (which some earlier cynodonts already had). Skeleton strikingly like egg- laying mammals (monotremes). Double jaw joint. More flexible neck, with mammalian atlas & axis and double occipital condyle. Tail vertebrae simpler, like mammals. Scapula is now substantially mammalian, and the forelimb is carried directly under the body. Various changes in the pelvis bones and hind limb muscles; this animal's limb musculature and locomotion were virtually fully mammalian. Probably cousin fossils (?), with Oligokyphus being more primitive than Kayentatherium. Thought to have diverged from the trithelodontids during that gap in the late Triassic. There is disagreement about whether the tritylodontids were ancestral to mammals (presumably during the late Triassic gap) or whether they are a specialized offshoot group not directly ancestral to mammals.

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Adelobasileus cromptoni (late Triassic; 225 Ma, west Texas) -- A recently discovered fossil proto-mammal from right in the middle of that late Triassic gap! Currently the oldest known "mammal." Only the skull was found. "Some cranial features of Adelobasileus, such as the incipient promontorium housing the cochlea, represent an intermediate stage of the character transformation from non-mammalian cynodonts to Liassic mammals" (Lucas & Luo, 1993). This fossil was found from a band of strata in the western U.S. that had not previously been studied for early mammals. Also note that this fossil dates from slightly before the known tritylodonts and trithelodonts, though it has long been suspected that tritilodonts and trithelodonts were already around by then. Adelobasileus is thought to have split off from either a trityl. or a trithel., and is either identical to or closely related to the common ancestor of all mammals.

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Eozostrodon, Morganucodon, Haldanodon (early Jurassic, ~205 Ma) -- A group of early proto-mammals called "morganucodonts". The restructuring of the secondary palate and the floor of the braincase had continued, and was now very mammalian. Truly mammalian teeth: the cheek teeth were finally differentiated into simple premolars and more complex molars, and teeth were replaced only once. Triangular- cusped molars. Reversal of the previous trend toward reduced incisors, with lower incisors increasing to four. Tiny remnant of the reptilian jaw joint. Once thought to be ancestral to monotremes only, but now thought to be ancestral to all three groups of modern mammals -- monotremes, marsupials, and placentals.

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Steropodon galmani (early Cretaceous) -- The first known definite monotreme, discovered in 1985.

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That's a lot to read but I trust the point is clear - there are plenty of precursors to monotremes. And this is the kind of rebuttal we usually see from creationists - personal incredulity substituted for reason. Absolutely incorrect. Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 2BI'll spare you another cut and paste but there's a remarkably smooth transition there. I'm sorry that you get this dogpile effect. There's no need for you to respond to this post; all I ask is that you bear in mind the information I've presented to you in your future posts.

How would such a mutation spread through a population? It's quite obviously selected against.We know, from the fact that only a few people related by ancestry have this resistance, that the resistance stems from a beneficial mutation.People are asking you to perform a kind of "thought experiment", like "hey, hypothetically, what if you had a source of both good and bad mutations and a mechanism that would favor the good ones by eliminating the bad ones." But here's the thing - it's not hypothetical. You've already agreed that there's a source of mutations that provides both good and bad ones, in unequal proportions; now unless it's your assertion that no organism ever dies, or that death is always a random occurance that has nothing ever to do with an organism's traits, then you agree that we have that selective mechanism, as well.And apparently you see the truth in the idea that if you have all and take away most, you still have some. So what's the hold-up? We've come to an agreement that the basic mechanisms of evolution favor beneficial mutations and eliminate the negative ones.

What is that, exactly? That's because it's a made-up word.You've made it pretty clear that you think adaptation is "microevolution", whatever that is, but I'm curious what "macroevolution" is to you. What's the least amount of change that would represent macro-, not microevolution? It's difficult to refute this statement since I don't know what "macroevolution" is, exactly. But there is this page: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent"29+ evidences for macroevolution" How is that anomolous, exactly? It's a direct and obvious consequence of the fact that water is a polar molecule. That's not a particularly unique or unusual situation. It's only "anomolous" in a kind of saturday-afternoon Mr. Wizard sort of way.

One of many would be the network of homologous errors we can use to establish phylogenic trees; diagrams of species heredity that match the independantly derived diagrams develped from fossil taxonomy to a degree that simply can't be explained by chance. Why? Because its a polar molecule. In fact all polar molecules act this way; water is not unique in this regard. (Didn't I cover this once before?) Water's polarity is also the reason its such an efficient solvent. That's your evidence? That, because intelligence cannot create life no matter how hard it tries, that life must be the product of intelligence? Does that really make sense to you? There are. Like all the old life forms, they appear as decendants of life forms that came before them.