Where are all the missing links?

Spoken like someone who doesn't design machines for a living. As someone who is well-placed (for once) to comment, machine design is an exercise in untilising a multitude of previously existing element in order to arrive at a completely new device.The fuselage of an aeroplane won't differ in essence from that of a submarine: various layers of skins, bulkheads, suitable for operating under different conditions of external pressure whilst maintaining interior pressure at reasonably constant levels. Similar design thinking employed: metallurgy, joining techniques, analysis of stress, factors of safety. In fact I would imagine a submarine fuselage engineer would have no difficulty finding a job in the aerospace industry should.Utilisation of similar design elements for quite different functions. I know of no designer who, on requiring a rotational function which is well-served by the standard roller bearing, would go to the trouble of figuring out some other way of doing it. Similarity of function is a ace in the ToE hand which points to common descent. It points equally well to an efficient designer.You pays your money....

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Nonsense. The differences are legion and fundamental. For instance, an airplane needs to maintain a pressurized environment against low pressures outside; the submarine needs to protect a low pressure interior, while still having its support members be internal.Not to mention that submarines have double-walled hulls for the boyancy tanks. Largely ireelevant to this discussion, as the "design methodology" is not only unavaliable to us, but ID proponents loudly resist any attempt to get into the "mind" of the designer - probably because otherwise they have no defense against evolutionary examples of really crappy design. Well, then maybe you can find someone who has. Tell me - was the first submarine designed by a flight engineer or a boat builder? Why would a designer unlimited by space or time care about efficiency of design? I mean, how long do you see the designer working on each design? Isn't the designer you propose the one designer for whom time constraints are not an issue? The one designer for whom designing each organism from scratch wouldn't be beyond feasability?

I understand that species means that two distinct animals (for the purposes I was discussiong) that cannot mate to produce an offspring. If this is how you understand it too then it appears this has not been observed in nature but has only been induced under conditions which were designed to have that occur. Unless I've got it wrong, it is ONLY evolution which says one species became two species. Think about the conditions that would cause the world to be flooded so that the highest mountains are covered over by 6 metres of water then re-evaluate this presumption. Think of the pressures involved and what that would do to the surface layers of the earth. Where would that water come from? The bible says simply, from above and from the depths. It wasn't a Tsunami we're talking here. That the geologic column is a neat, layer on layer story is a uniformist presumption. That's all None of which say anything certain about evolution. That was what I asked for. Something definitive - not inferred. What you describe is a process of life/death and extinction. The arrangement of these in the pattern evolution arranges them age/hierarchy is a presumption of evolution/uniformatism

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

What is the best way to form a fuselage to withstand pressure differences between outside in inside walls - irrespective of how the pressure difference arises ? A cylinder. What your talking about is details. A cylinder is a common design for such vessels for one reason - intelligence has figured that out to be the best design Hardly. One of the fascinations is to see how Goddidit and to admire the work'mans'ship involved. What you percieve as crappy design is your entitlement - but as it appears to becoming known, the appendix is not the useless organ it was once thought to be. Crap design as far as you percieve. But then you ain't the designer It's no secret that God didn't intend that we in our current state would live forever. Just like any good designer (who has an eye on survival of the fittest - commercially anyway) God ensured that the design wouldn't avoid obsolesience.(is that how you spell it?) Me, I work in the 'food' industry (by food I mean that which people consume with their mouths in the understanding that it may nourish them - often it won't). Could I get a job in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, computer, argricultural equipment etc industtries? No problem. Why? Design is common all over the place It is inefficient to go looking for a solution to something when you have a solution already available which will meet the needs you intend for the design perfectly. It doesn't matter how much time or ability you have. If you already have an answer why look for another one. Modify the wheel by all means but why reinvent it.God was designing with a purpose and the purpose only had to meet one criteria for perfection. His own. Could he have made us with twice the strength, 1000 times the duration of life, eradicated baldness, made us all (as the aftershave ads are wont to fool us into thinking)irresistable to the opposite sex? Sure. But if that wasn't his purpose whats the point is critizising it. Get to know God CF, then you understand that his way was spot on. Jaw-droppingly so.(And you can use reason by the way - you just got to point the ability in an other direction s'all)This message has been edited by iano, 12-Sep-2005 01:41 PM

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

I write little computer programs for fun. I am constantly, constantly, constantly 're-inventing the wheel'.Why? For fun. That's the only reason I do it in the first place.It's fun to see how many ways I can figure out to do something. Kludging one 'design' to do a lot of different things is not fun.The same principle applies to all forms of 'creation'. I also do wood carving and acrylic painting. I don't modify the same old design over and over again. I look for whole new ways to do things.You're really forcing your 'Designer' into a boring little box.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Hey, notice the title is "re: RE: Archaeopteryx"?Let's get back to that. I've been waiting all weekend for you to come back Did you read my post 250? We were discussing the appearance of downy feathers before the appearance of flight feathers.

Why would machine design have anything to do with living things?

A sphere is best suited to withstand pressure, if you don't believe me, blow a bubble.

No, this is observed in the wild, as well.And remember that species is not defined as an inability to mate but as a cessation of significant gene flow. Hybridization is often possible between members of different species; but it generally only occurs when forced by humans. Members of different species do not, for the most part, recognize each other as mates, even if they have a genetic compatibility that would make hybridization possible. An example is lions and tigers - different species that do not hybridize in the wile, but can be made to hybridize. Not even a global flood is going to allow you to violate the laws of gravity and insert one sedimentary layer beneath another. It's just not physically possible, flood or not. Nonsense. If you accept that these things occur then you accept the fundamental accuracy of evolution, since you've just accepted natural selection: random mutation: and the corroborating evidence of the fossil record: I'm not trying to trick you, Iano, but it's pretty obvious that you don't know what you're talking about if you weren't able to recognize the fundamental processes of evolution from my simple descriptions of them.

Once again you come to the exactly opposite conclusions supported by the evidence. The truly stupefying thing is that people like you can observe a universe ruled by randomness at every level, from the randomness that governs the very fundamental levels of matter to the senseless tragedies that inflect our lives, to the scattering of stars across the sky - and come to the conclusion of order.Everywhere we look we find chance and randomness governing our lives. And we're supposed to believe an orderly designer is able to employ intelligence to do something that intelligence has never been able to do - design living things? Why would anyone accept such a ludicrous conclusion aside from being too scared and arrogant to accept a universe devoid of a nosey, legalistic keeper of order?

A sphere. Well, apparently your intelligence couldn't figure it out... Why build a whale with useless hind limbs and a pelvis? Why modify a terrestrial mammal skeleton when the fish or shark skeleton was already present? And you didn't even come close to addressing my question, so I'll repeat it - why would the creator who can create with but a word, invent with but a thought, and bring into being in an instant, need to cut corners?Already we see that your "intelligent" designer is kind of an idiot - cutting unneeded corners, modifying the wrong "wheels", etc - and you only defense of his creativity is the tired old 'The Lord works in mysterious ways"?How do you expect to be taken seriously with this stuff?

The answer is oddly funny. Evolution.Early man faced a harsh world without the massive muscles, the sharp claws, the power venom, the long fangs of so many of the other animals.What Early man excells at is finding patterns:Birds circle in the sky - there is meat on the ground.The yellow birds have disappeared, it's going to get cold soon, we better start saving food.I eat this plant, my headache goes away.Sometimes our pattern seeking fools even us. If I find a 4 leaf clover, good things happen to me.Want a real time example? Clouds are random collections of water molecules under the influence of heat, wind and gravity.Look at a cloud and tell me what you see.You don't honestly believe that you see a fire engine in the cloud. You are picking up bits of random information which you are interpetting as a fire engine.

Bat sonar screams ID.No way it could of evolved unless you assert so anyway.Migratory birds screams ID.Here is a little diddy of evolutionary falsification from Muslim creationist Harun Yahya: Herepton

The quote from Denton is interesting.You might want to check out this link
http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho29.htm
for a more recent view of Denton's thoughts.

I have read the book.Dawkins accepts Paley's observation that living things appear designed.Dawkins asserts it is an illusion, that the living thing was produced by random blind evolutionary processes. Dawkins delusional conclusions seem to have no boundaries as he ends his book by asserting the "miracle" of life was produced by evolution.The adoption of supernatural terminology in support of Naturalistic conclusions is confusing and senseless. The very title (Blind Watchmaker) says it all: design is an illusion produced by a blind process. IOW, face value observations are voided and explained away when they contradict evolutionary starting assumptions and theory.YEC do the same with the fossil strata in regards to opponents using it to assert a great age of the Earth: it is an illusion created by catastrophistic events. Experiments conducted by Berthault may support this explanation.Herepton