IC challenge: Evolve a bicycle into a motorcycle!

Buz, This is what it boils down to really:Non-ID view: ID view: The first statement is tentative and scientific ie backed up by evidence. The second is unfalsifible, and totally unsupported by evidence. It is so unsupported that even qualified biochemists like Behe have to resort to argument by analogy^* How is that equal? ^*If you don't agree with this statement then please explain how a mousetrap/motorbike bares any resemblence to the world of cells and proteinsCheers

I know you creos are in the minority here and you do have to get around to answering loads of posts (especially in topics like this one), but is this a bit unnecessarily dismissive. A sentence explaining what you were talking about would have been nice.Besides which, I don’t actually think that what I said was completely out of left-field in the first place. I’ll try and make myself clearer. For example: You were stating that because of the use of the words could have, ID should automatically be accepted as a proper scientific theory. I was pointing out that it demonstrates what I see to be the clear difference between the two approaches.Science uses evidence to make statements like This could haveID uses incredulity to make statements like This could never haveBecause ID’s position is so difficult to support with positive evidence (ie it is unfalsifiable), whenever it is discussed ID proponents will always fall back on an analogy to describe how unlikely they think it all is and then precede to argue from that analogy. This is exactly the type of thing you’ve been doing, when you say things like this: I think this particular point is most definitely ON-topicSo please can you explain how a bike making factory is anything like a protein making cell. Start with the fact that all of the different parts of the bike have to be made up of the same material, and then go on to explain how the blueprints for the bike (and everything else the factory makes) are stored and copied.I hope this makes my position clearer.

Buz,First off, thanks for replying.There are a few things I’d like to pick up on: Aside from the obvious omission of selection (which has-ahem- already been mentioned once or twice), no one is saying that proteins of 50-odd amino acids had to spring out of nothing. I won’t labour the importance of selection, but I will ask you what you think is being selected for in the first place. Once any type of protein has been produced and selected for then (as Jacinto so aptly demonstrates in Message 24 ), the twin forces of evolution have a tendency of shortening the odds — climbing mount improbable, as Dawkins puts it.Creationists like yourself are very fond of quoting these amazing odds, but what effect would these two factors have on the numbers?1. What if the first proteins were much shorter than the 50aa that you propose?In the fragile ‘RNA world’ that is postulated by many popular abiogenesis theories, any protein would give some kind of advantage to stability and structure. Once a successful protein sequence was produced then you’re away — life has no need to produce another protein de novo, it’s already got something to work with and duplicate. When you look at the way that proteins are made up you find that they are quite obviously modular.There are surprisingly few basic structures made when proteins fold and you see them repeated in all of the different types of proteins. Even more complicated motifs (made up from maybe two or three of these basic modules) are seen repeated throughout nature, and in many cases within the same protein. It is clearly not a matter of starting from scratch, it’s a case of making do with what you’ve already got.2. What if the number of amino acids wasn’t so large?There is evidence that the early proteins were made from a genetic code with as little as 4 amino acids, and that these provide enough flexibility for a wide variety of simple structures. That would lead to a lot smaller figure too.And before you pick up on the various ifs coulds and postulateds within this reply remember that in order to rebut the It’s just not statistically possible! argument, all that I have to do is show that it could reasonably be possible — I think I’ve done that.Which leads me to this This is (as Schraf points out), based purely on personal incredulity. You’re claiming that because you don’t believe some thing is possible then it is fair game to come up with an example of something you think is equally unlikely and then argue from that second example! People could just as easily say that it is very unlikely that I will spontaneously turn into Kylie Minogue, but I don’t see too many creationists picking apart the steps required to go from slightly overweight, scruffy Brit to stunning Aussie songstress.It is a very deliberate ploy by the ID movement because bikes and mousetraps can be easily demonstrated to be designed. The argument boils down to: a motorbike is designed, and therefore so is life — but the way a motorbike is produced bares no resemblance to how life works.