Irreducible complexity- the challenges have been rebutted (if not refuted)

This analogy is just a variant of the "watchmaker" analogy. The basic watchmaker analogy goes:"If you walked across the beach, and ran into a watch, you wouldn't just assume that it, with all of its complex interworking parts, just 'evolved'. You would assume that a watchmaker made it."However, the watchmaker analogy has several critical flaws.1) To make it like real life, if you dug down in the soil beneath the watch, you'd find millions of other watches. The deeper you got, the simper they'd get. They'd have less precise timing mechanisms, simpler gear trains, etc. Plus, watches that we already saw would need to be breeding, and have observable differences in their "baby watches", including, but not limited to, additional gears, size and shapes of gears, additional or missing shafts, slightly different sized/shaped casings, different amounts of power, etc. Most of these would happen very rarely, but they would happen.2) If you walked along the beach, and found an atomic bomb, would you assume that a watchmaker made it? Of course not, you'd assume that a team of nuclear scientists made it. This argument argues for polytheism. Yet, the known processes of natural selection account for things as different from each other in the natural world as a watch is different from a bomb.

That would be a good argument - if you were arguing against spontaneous generation. You're not. You're arguing against evolution, and as a consequence, you need to have an argument not about a complex organism just appearing, but instead you need an argument against progressive changes. The fossil record does not indicate sudden appearences - that's where the very concept of evolution came from. Early geologists (who were creationist, like everyone else) had trouble explaining what they kept encountering. In fact, the first explanation that they began to use to explain things was that there were "many creations", each at successive times, with God destroying everything between each creation and starting again.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

there can be no compelling explanation for the fact that for a spider to make a web there needs to be all the aparatus and substances in place as well as the program in the spiders brain

---

You aparently are unaware of the current day in-betweens. There are a number of spiders which ,in fact, do not make webs, such as jumping and wandering spiders. Jumping spiders in particular do use their silk, but as an *assist*. They dangle from it to try and get to prey, or to be able to get back to an earlier position. Thus, your argument about the brain is completely irrelevant. As for the silk itself, there's a clear evolutionary path back to weaker silks, which would have still been useful, but less useful than the strong silk. It would merely have taken larger quantities. You can trace this all the way back to a simple sticky waste product.

quote:

---

consequently the genetic information in the spider has to be added to in many varied spheres for web making to be possible

---

Again, not true. There are many more primitive web makers in existance, ranging from silkworms onward. Many simple webs are little more than clumps of fiber. Modern skilled web makers already have to be able to adapt to their situation (i.e, they don't follow a preset program), so it's merely a situatuation of greater adaptability. A likely progression was from lumps of silk, to strung lines of silk between two objects, to making a single intermediary line before stringing cross sections, to making multiple intermediary lines before cross sections, to angular lines (which would make the cross sections angular), in a modern web fashion.Again, just looking at modern species alone completely diffuses this. Ignoring the whole "instinct to bite" part (as if any carnivorous reptile doesn't already have that), look at the coral snake. The coral snake cannot inject poison effectively, and so has to repeatedly bite its prey. It has a transitional toothline - its teeth are more like simple calcified growths that have encompased what was initially a simple, non-injecting poison gland. An example of an animal with no focusing of its poison would be the gila monster. These glands, in turn, likely were initially just salivary glands which produced digestive juices that just happened to be particularly dangerous to living prey, making for an easier kill and thus a selective advantage. You can go beyond the standard snake injection system by looking at the progression to spitting cobras. The poison glands get larger and have stronger injection muscles. The teeth elongate, and the hole for injection begins to point more forward, steadily making it easier for the poison to have range.The need for the ability to swallow the prey whole only becomes more necessary as the fangs become larger, and is not needed in the beginning. As it progresses to a more effective injection system, biting becomes harder, and the ability to swallow prey whole becomes more advantageous.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I also would like to point out that, notice how there are very few animals with "poison claws", while there are plenty with "poison teeth", to so speak? This is expected in evolution, while is not a prediction of creationism. The mouth begins with liquids that are designed for digestion (and thus more easy to make into a poison), while sweat and sebaceous glands in skin do not (quite the opposite actually). Thus, it is a much easier transition to poison fangs than it is to poison claws, even though poison claws would be incredibly useful in some animals.I actually can only think of one poison "claw" - the duckbill platypus. Also note that the structure of its poisons ("defensins") are utterly different than those of venemous reptiles (there are none that even resemble any other animal poisons in the world), another prediction of evolution (poisons derrived from very different types of proteins will likely be very different in structure, even when they converge on the same purpose). In fact, it is likely that the toxins from platypuses are developed from blood proteins (unlike the salivary proteins of snakes) - they bear many similarities with immune-system proteins, and likely initialy were part of simple adaptation that made their immune system cause pain in other animals when it got into wounds during fights.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Seing how you didn't respond to my previous post, let's do a visual:A) A spider takes a standard "bagworm" approach, simply running lines between two leaves/branches/etc. Lines are fairly irregularB) The crossing of random lines increases its strengthC) The lines take a more organized crossing approach, maximizing strength while saving silkD) When running between two branches that are too far apart, the spider, instead of going all the way up when attaching its point to string, starts only partway up, and stops partway down. It treats this as its new stopping point.E) Now that the spider is climbing on its own threads, it occasionally doesn't go all the way up either, but does the occasional cross thread instead simply by taking a different route.F) the pattern of cross threads becomes more ordered, and more occur at different angles.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Yes, spiders do need to be able to adapt to their situation. As a consequence, they follow rules, and not preset designs. However, the rules that they follow are inhereted, and are mutable. Insect brains often have clusters of neurons that perform a complete task - for example, a recent Japanese experiment involved hooking up electrodes to a cockroach's brain. Just by stimulating one part, they can make it walk forward - even though walking is a complex task involving several muscles. They made the roach able to walk and turn by remote control.If the timing were to change on the nerve cells that control that walking, it may walk in a different manner. It may race, stride, sidestep, or whatever. The same thing can apply in the length a spider is willing to travel down a thread before it decides to attach a new string there and head off in a different direction. Also affected could be things such how the spider reacts to being on different kinds of materials; the thickness of its thread that it is walking across; whether it encountered an intersection of threads; how long it has been walking on thread as opposed to leaves/branches; etc. Reactions could involve stimulating a part of the brain that codes for "walk until you reach the next intersection, then turn right". Yes, such studies (to the best of my knowlege) have not been conducted on spiders. But, given how other insect brains work, it seems quite likely that this is how they function.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Ah, thank you for that lesson in thermodynamics, Gemster! So, when I stand in the wind after sweating and let some water evaporate, the sweat still on my skin is utilizing a program (information) to direct growth in organized complexity, right? Hey, it's at a lower entropy state, so it must be!------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

This statement is only true because of complex biological systems on earth.

---

Gemster, I know this is really hard on you... but that is not true. Even creationists who teach physics acknowlege this. A person who has been vaporized by a laser has a higher degree of entropy than a normal person. If you were to freeze that gas from our vaporized person into ice, they would have a lower entropy state. It has nothing to do with human concepts of "order" and "disorder". It is simply the formula: S = k ln W. S is the degree of entropy, k is Boltzmann's constant, ln is the natural logarithm, and W is the quantity of "disorder".Picture a glass filled with a gas. Each particle has a velocity and a state. The "microstate" of the gas has two constraints: all of the particles lie within the container, and each particle's velocity determines its energy. The sum of the energies of the particles equals E, the total energy of the gas. 'W', in this context, is the number of microstates that can match the energy and volume constraints - this is colloquially referred to as "disorder", but is actually not represented by the same context that humans use the word.This number is not infinite, as it first might seem; Heisenberg's uncertainty principle puts a limit on it, but it still is a huge number. Now, as you'll realize, the gas is constantly changing which microstate it is in - particles bump into each other, fly off, etc. The higher W is, the more unlikely it is that, if observed at any split second, you will observe a specific microstate.The second law of thermodynamics, in short, says that W will only increase in a closed system.That's what the 2nd law of thermodynamics says. That's all it says. I'm sorry, Gemster. A volume of gaseous DNA is actually be more disordered than table salt.BTW, you should take more time to think about it before you post. If thermodynamics did prevent one region from becoming more ordered while others become more disordered as a consequence, nothing would ever freeze Among a whole host of other problems.P.S.: Check out your quote. You'll find that it is what is known in the world of logic as "proof by ghost reference".------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 09-24-2003]

Gemster, you're dodging the issue. "Order" and "disorder" in thermodynamics are not the way you're using them. Pick up a physics textbook some time. You are so far out in left field it's not even funny. Please, Gemster - pick up a physics book and look it up. As I stated, a large container of gaseous DNA is more "disordered" (higher entropy) than a pile of table salt of the same mass, by entropy. Do you understand this? If you're going to use references to thermodynamics, you have to understand this. Also, you need to understand that a bucket of ice is in a lower entropy state than the same bucket of water. If you are claiming that an open system cannot move to a lower entropy state, then water could never freeze. You need to realize how unintelligent you make yourself look when you refer to a fairly simple physics law in a patently incorrect way way. To anyone who has taken a college-level physics course, they're going to look at you like you're an idiot, just as you would me if I had tried to claim that Pythagorean Theorum means that the volume of all cubes are the same. You might actually create a reasonable debate if you talked about something like polonium haloes or rates of helium leakage from zircon. But here, you might as well just say that a talking frog told you so - you are misusing an common formula in obvious ways. Again, refer to the gaseous DNA example, and water freezing in a bucket example, and respond. And look at a physics book, for God's sake.P.S. - Before you keep putting more ghost reference and misquoted quotes on the forum, I suggest you take a look at the typical accuracy of your typical creationist quote. Here's two links:Quotations and Misquotations
Quote Mine Project: Examining 'Evolution Quotes' of CreationistsPlease don't degrade the conversation further. Unless you've seen the quote yourself, don't post it. The level of accuracy of typical creationist quotes ranks somewhere between dismal and nonexistant. Please don't this interpret this as implying that creationists are stupid, deceptive, or whatever; the fact remains that the majority of the quotes that we've gotten are minimally way out of context, and are almost always in contradiction of what the author was actually claiming; a good number also have been tweaked, and sometimes even flat-out made up.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

This quote is very easy for a layman like myself to understand, I need no formal training in the sciences to understand it

---

Yes, Gemster. And that is the problem. The quote is completely and utterly unrelated to physics. It is completely and utterly unrelated to the second law of thermodynamics. It is as connected to the second law of thermodynamics as is parmesian cheese.I strongly recommend that you do not post another post on thermodynamics until you've:A) read the relevant chapter of a physics book
B) addressed the issue of gaseous DNA being more "disordered" than table salt, and
C) addressed the issue of how water can freeze (become more ordered) if things supposedly cannot become more ordered at all in an open system.If you feel we're being condescending, I am sorry. But again, you need to understand that you appear to anyone who knows page one about thermodynamics *in a scientific context* as if someone who'se never seen a car before came up to you and told you that they need some parmesian cheese to put in their car's gas tank, and they're insistant that the only way to make a car run is to fill the gas tank with parmesian cheese. You are completely and utterly misusing a simple concept because you never once bothered to learn what the concept is actually about from the very people who discovered and who apply the concept.Again, until you can address the 3 things that I posted above, I would recommend that you not post on this subject again. Otherwise, you might as well just ask us for parmesian cheese to put in your gas tank; it'll have the same effect.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Gemster:You haven't responded to any of the three conditions I put forward to get a response. I'll simply repeat them. Before you can get further discussion on this issue, you must have:A) read the relevant chapter of a physics book
B) addressed the issue of gaseous DNA being more "disordered" than table salt, and
C) addressed the issue of how water can freeze (become more ordered) if things supposedly cannot become more ordered at all in an open system.If you are not speaking about entropy as scientists use it, and instead your alternative concept of "information entropy", you need to realize that this is not thermodynamics, and is not used in, or evidenced by, any mainstream science.There are two types of "information theory" which are used in science, which you may be confusing this with. One is more related to quantum mechanics, and has no concept of entropy at all. The other is related to communications, and has its own "entropy", but this is related to pattern matching. Again, I repeat: neither have anything to do with thermodynamics, as scientists use it.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 09-26-2003]