What exactly is ID?

Why would the "first" living cell require even amino acids, never mind just left-handed ones? The complexity of the first-living cell, or the complexity of modern cells? What do you know of the first living cell, and how do you know it was "complex"?

you really think that those working in abiogenesis suggest that the first "cells" came ready prepared with advanced "machinery" such as aquaporins??? No wonder you have no ability to understand how abiogenesis could be naturalistic. The first cell membranes would have been permeable to small molecules, impermeable to large molecules. That is all. Do I really need to explain how this could be possible?This is as basic and confused as creationists asking for evolution to show new limbs appearing in a generation, completely failing to appreciate that the terapodal bodyplan hasn't significantly changed in 400 million years

1) The early cell membranes almost certainly were not made from the chemical constituents of proteins;and2) what "elegant machinery inside the cell"? The first cells would have had no machinery at all. The next cells would have had rudimentary machinery. You could say that modern cells have "elegant machinery". No idea - Aquaporins probably arose long after the first cells.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

For what? In reply to accusations that abiogenesis is not possible, all I need to do is provide plausible hypotheses for how it could be possible. If the first cells were to be found to have complex ready-made chemical machinery, then I would be the first to subscribe to the idea that some intelligent agent had made them... The first cells were most likely simple lipid vesicles - empty shells. Replication is simply an overly large shell pinching off into two vesicles, prompted by turbulence in the supporting medium. Any polymers trapped inside the vesicle would be randomly divided between the new cells. Polymers that aided vesicle growth, by for example catalysing the production of new lipids, would be selected for. And thus rudimentary "machinery" begins...

Hi Nuggin, good to see you around. You do realise that Smooth Operator does not believe that the Earth does travel around the Sun???

oh, I smell one massive assumption of front-loading Please guys, surely this troll is long past his sell-buy date? I can smell the stink from here.

So if point mutation 1 decreases genetic information, what happens with point mutation 2, the inverse of point mutation 1?

so, what exactly do these "scientists" believe happened to magic a cell into existence with 250 genes? No wonder ID is so easy to believe if this is how scientists and science are mischaracterised.Long ago in this thread I gave you a reply which you missed or conveniently ignored: The most simple cells would have had NO genes. Then follow the stages of polymerisation of useful chemicals, protein manufacture, RNA, and then DNA. And this over a time measured in fractions of a billion years. Is this proof of how life began? Of course not. Is it a plausible origin of life - yes. Is it sufficient to laugh out of court any suggestions that "non-life" cannot possibly beget "life" - absolutely.

Just to add that I agree 100% with Straggler on this. Of course we know the origins of ID, but there are sufficient exceptions (>0) to the rule that IDists are creationists to make it dishonest of us to claim that they are one and the same.

Sure you can. If we find encoded into our DNA the blueprint for a wormhole generator, then I'll be fairly convinced of the evidence of design without considering the mechanism of how it was done.

Aghhh, what have you done??? You've broken ***EVERYTHING***

In Firefox 3.5.7 it gives up halfway through your nesting, and everthing that follows including the following posts lose their formatting

Given that the word "intelligent" has such a loose definition, surely what you mean to say is that CSI has only been observed coming from a human? So, what you are suggesting is that as you think that biological systems exhibit csi, a human (or humans) must have been involved in their design?If you don't mean to conflate "intelligent source" with human, can you give evidenced examples of non-human intelligent sources?Furthermore, we still have all these at-best extremely loosely defined terms such as "complex", "specified" and "information". Can you give various examples of things designed by humans that exhibit csi, and show us the algorithm by which we determine that they do indeed exhibit csi. Then can you show us the same algorithm demonstrating other human designes that do not exhibit csi?I'm sure that you will agree that without the above, we all just throwing unspecified terms around and talking nonsense.Thanks

But I have a huge problem agreeing with you simply because you have not defined CSI, nor given a method or algorithm for detecting csi. Would it not? What are you defining as random processes? Would the formation of say the Amazon and its delta be considered random? Is the complexity exhibited by the Amazon delta not greater than that of a bird's nest? Why would one have csi and not the other? Nonsense - the DNA molecule is actually very simple. It is made up of four basic blocks. Each block has a level of complexity, but none more so than many naturally occuring organic molecules that we see floating through space. As a code, it is far less complex than many man-made codes that we use in IT and communications technology. And so my conclusion here is that if there is any design, it is design that could be accomplished by far less intelligence than we currently exhibit. Perhaps you meant to discuss something more than just DNA?(It should be stressed that it cannot be wholey regarded as a code, as there are (I believe rare) instances where the chemical structure of the bases have an affect beyond their base representation - this is entirely to be expected in an evolutionary paradigm, yet as design it stinks - as any competent programmer would tell you) Please describe the algorithm by which you come to this conclusion regarding the complexity and the specificity. What process must I go through to determine that "hi" is more specific than "gbdxuvms,", and how much more specific is "hi" than "he" or "ho" or "hu"? So it is impossible to measure the specificity of a piece of information? Specificity requires the entire system of sender, information sent, and receiver? Excellent. So what is this system in the case of the bird's nest, and again, how do we measure the specificty? But I still do not know how you are measuring specificity. So I cannot agree with you. How complex is the Amazon delta? And how specific is it? Does amount relate to complexity? Or to specificity? Or to neither? Do you have the definitions that they are using to measure this complexity and specificity?ThanksEdited by cavediver, : No reason given.