Biased accounts of intelligent design

Thanks. I like to think that Deism is the only rational belief when all is said and done.Enjoy

You have no clue what steps we envisage and your "assessment" of their possibilities is meaningless.Perhaps some kind of calculations could demonstrate something, but nobody knows the numbers needed to do the calculations. So IDists make unjustified and/or obviously false assumptions to feed into the calculations. It's BS.Nothing in the various proposed possible evolutionary sequences is arbitrary. There are logical and scientific reasons for each proposed step.

I'm glad you say the calculations are BS because nobody knows the numbers needed." That's how it hit me too but since I'm no mathematician there's no point in my saying it.But I think I DO "have a clue what steps [you] envisage." They have to involve mutations, right? In which case any claims of getting functional advantageous steps don't fit with any biological/genetic principles I've ever heard of. But of course perhaps you can enlighten me.I do suspect that if you spelled out those "logical and scientific reasons for each proposed step" in one of those sequences that are envisaged to show how developmental stages can be constructed from wildly unrelated biological systems, they WOULD be arbitrary. What else could they be? You are depending on your imagination to define how some very complicated structures must fit together. You're bound to leave out a lot of elements if nothing else, but just the procedure itself is whimsical.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What happens if a mutation actually makes a critter better able to live in its environment?

I'd say that's a one in a million or zillion pleasant outcome, and of course I'd doubt it was a mutation, but more likely a beneficial combination of existing genetic stuff that happened to come along.

What you think is irrelevant. Whether or not it is a mutation can be determined by examining the DNA. Whether or not it helps can be checked by seeing if the critter has an advantage.So the question remains; "What happens if a mutation actually makes a critter better able to live in its environment?"

Not sure examining the DNA is always reliable for determining whether a given allele or combination is a mutation or not.Also I did answer the question: "I'd say that's a one in a million or zillion pleasant outcome...."

What you are not sure of is irrelevant, particularly since you have never shown any sign that you even know what a mutation is. Okay, so you agree that would make the critter better able to exist in its environment.Now what happens in that critter breeds and the mutation is passed to the next generation?

Yes, they involve mutations. You've made it abundantly clear over the years that you are incapable of understanding what kinds of effects mutations can have. Nobody can enlighten you.You can suspect whatever you want. That doesn't change the fact that the proposed stages are not arbitrary. I don't know if anyone has published a graph of a path for the flagellum mutation by mutation, but there's one for chloroquine resistance in mosquitoes (which Behe claims is not possible for evolution). Here's two proposed pathways (click to make the image much bigger}: Full paper at Diverse mutational pathways converge on saturable chloroquine transport via the malaria parasite’s chloroquine resistance transporterLet us know when you've identified arbitrary elements. Until then, don't make any claims about arbitraryness.

My point was that my post to JonF does not apply to me , since he has expressed trust in the scientific community ( see e.g., his post of 8-18-2019, 1:05 PM) whereas I have expressed no trust in the ID people, merely disdain for bad characterizations and evaluations of ID.

Would you care to explain that seeming? I think you will be unable to support that seeming with a single quote from what I have posted.

Are you ever going to specify what those alleged bad characterizations and evaluations are?

Fine, so you are either ambivalent or don't trust ID ... so why the outrage at the Wiki coverage?Meanwhile you have yet to answer questions: Curiously, I am more interested in answers to these questions (this is a debate thread), than I am about your level of trust in ID.Enjoy

That's what I began by doing. See the post that started the thread. My point was not that the evidence for ID was overwhelming but that Wikipedia's beginning its article on ID with the term "pseudoscientific' was biased and juvenile. The discussion of whether ID is science should have appeared ( as it did , in addition , to an inadequate degree ) in a separate section such as "Reaction form the scientific community."

You can edit Wikipedia.So you have no problem with the many scientific evaluations that have found ID to be unscientific twaddle?