Intelligent Design

[Charlemagne_III]

And here’s some info on the evolution of the pre-cursers of life. Or maybe you class them as being alive. Perhaps not. Maybe you can give your definition of life. Should be easy.

Haldane: the first molecules constituting the earliest cells “were synthesized under natural conditions by a slow process of molecular evolution, and these molecules then organized into the first molecular system with properties with biological order.”

Irene A. Chen and Jack W. Szostak (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009) amongst others, demonstrated that simple physicochemical properties of elementary protocells can give rise to essential cellular behaviors, including primitive forms of Darwinian competition and energy storage. Such cooperative interactions between the membrane and encapsulated contents could greatly simplify the transition from replicating molecules to true cells.

…findings suggests that metabolism predates the origin of life and evolved through the chemical conditions that prevailed in the worlds earliest oceans. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Sorry to burst your bubble here, but there nothing you’ve cited that is definitive. Just a bunch of “coulds” and “suggests.”

Even if these statements were applicable and true, there is nothing to argue that the conditions they describe were not intelligently designed to develop as they did. There also is nothing to argue that these conditions developed according to some inevitable blind laws of chance. They are just givens that may or not have been intelligently designed to happen. I believe that the appearance of design is more convincing than the appearance of being undersigned **(there certainly is no appearance of being undesigned.) **The organizing of the first living cell had to be a stupendous feat of organization. Stupendous feats of organization don’t just happen by accident.

 

[Bradski]

Argue the paper, not who wrote it.

You’re not paying attention. I’m not working the who. I’m arguing the why.

Science is not as pure as the driven snow.

Nobody has suggested any such thing. But thanks for pointing it out.

What’s this fascination you have with avoiding mousetrap logic?

Afraid of being trapped in your own logic?

A piece of wood with bits of metal is as relevant to this discussion as a chocolate teapot, Charles. And about as much use. Inanimate objects are, well, inanimate. They don’t evolve (I can’t believe I’m having to type this). How about you try something that has evolved to do such a thing? You seem to think it can’t be done.

And do you have any thoughts on why 99.9% of designs fail if God is the brains behind them? How does God fail? Or do we put that down to: ‘who can know the mind of God’.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The journal Bio-Complexity is an online, open-access, pro-intelligent design journal that claims to incorporate peer review. However, peer review doesn’t mean much when all your peers are highly sympathetic to your hypotheses and conclusions.

All the editorial board members of this journal are ID supporters. I wouldn’t take this publication seriously, unless you want to see your beliefs confirmed with some scientific-looking lingo.

At some level, everyone’s beliefs are either confirmed or dismissed with scientific sounding lingo. That would include Newton and Einstein.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You’re not paying attention. I’m not working the who. I’m arguing the why.

So it would make a difference if the proponents were silent on their motives? That, in itself, would make their experimental findings more correct and would make them credible, in your opinion? So it isn’t the case they are presenting that you find objectionable, just their motives.

So how about ignoring the motives completely, then, and addressing the paper?

You do realize, by the way, that appeal to motive is a form of an ad hominem corcumstantial, correct?

 

[Hans_W]

At some level, everyone’s beliefs are either confirmed or dismissed with scientific sounding lingo. That would include Newton and Einstein.

Yes, Newton and Einstein had beliefs and they confirmed those beliefs with hard evidence. Scientific sounding lingo wouldn’t have got them anywhere.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yes, Newton and Einstein had beliefs and they confirmed those beliefs with hard evidence. Scientific sounding lingo wouldn’t have got them anywhere.

And both were ultimately surpassed or found inadequate.

 

[Bradski]

So it would make a difference if the proponents were silent on their motives? That, in itself, would make their experimental findings more correct and would make them credible, in your opinion? So it isn’t the case they are presenting that you find objectionable, just their motives.

So how about ignoring the motives completely, then, and addressing the paper?

You do realize, by the way, that appeal to motive is a form of an ad hominem corcumstantial, correct?

I said earlier how fractured the sciences have become. You need an excellent schooling and a good number of years in uni just to get a decent degree before you even start thinking about the area in which you are going to specialise. So add a few more years study and then an indeterminate amount of work before you can be considered expert in your field.

Unless you have done a good number of years studying molecular biology and how it pertains to evolution then you are in the same position as I am when you read papers such as the one to which you linked.

And that is, you need to trust that the person or persons who have written it can themselves be trusted. That they don’t have an agenda. That they have approached their work with open minds. That they are not associated in any way with anyone who would prefer a particular result.

But your guys work for an organisation that is not simply associated with a tent full of clowns and charlatans and liars whose aim is not just to peddle their risible beliefs. Their stated aim is to change the education system so that my children and their children will be forced to sit in classrooms and listen to their farcical, iron age, fundamentalist crud being taught as fact. No siree. They work for an organisation who actually funds their work!

So if you want to call that appraisal of their credentials as an ad hominem, then be my guest…

 

[Hans_W]

And both were ultimately surpassed or found inadequate.

That’s right. In science there is always improvement based on new evidence. Nothing is cast in concrete. Very different to religion.

 

[rossum]

What’s this fascination you have with avoiding mousetrap logic?

Afraid of being trapped in your own logic?

Flytraps have evolved. They are irreducibly complex by Behe’s definition and they evolved. The Venus Flytrap evolved.

We can even see how they evolved, and by a route which avoids Behe’s problem with a direct evolutionary route to IC systems. They evolved from a more complex, non-IC system and lost a part. Only after the loss of a part was the system IC.

Behe’s idea was correct in that IC systems cannot evolve by direct routes. He was wrong to say that they cannot evolve by indirect routes. IC systems can and do evolve by indirect routes.

rossum

 

[Hans_W]

I said earlier how fractured the sciences have become. You need an excellent schooling and a good number of years in uni just to get a decent degree before you even start thinking about the area in which you are going to specialise. So add a few more years study and then an indeterminate amount of work before you can be considered expert in your field.

Unless you have done a good number of years studying molecular biology and how it pertains to evolution then you are in the same position as I am when you read papers such as the one to which you linked.

And that is, you need to trust that the person or persons who have written it can themselves be trusted. That they don’t have an agenda. That they have approached their work with open minds. That they are not associated in any way with anyone who would prefer a particular result.

But your guys work for an organisation that is not simply associated with a tent full of clowns and charlatans and liars whose aim is not just to peddle their risible beliefs. Their stated aim is to change the education system so that my children and their children will be forced to sit in classrooms and listen to their farcical, iron age, fundamentalist crud being taught as fact. No siree. They work for an organisation who actually funds their work!

So if you want to call that appraisal of their credentials as an ad hominem, then be my guest…

I fully agree. And I find it sad that an atheist (no disrespect Bradski) has to tell us what we Catholics should have accepted long time ago.

The Catholic Church has fully accepted the theory of evolution and rejects ID as a scientific theory. I don’t know what this discussion is all about. Are you guys telling our Pope that he is wrong when he says that the Catholic Church has no problems with the theory of evolution?

 

[Al_Moritz]

I fully agree. And I find it sad that an atheist (no disrespect Bradski) has to tell us what we Catholics should have accepted long time ago.

The Catholic Church has fully accepted the theory of evolution and rejects ID as a scientific theory. I don’t know what this discussion is all about. Are you guys telling our Pope that he is wrong when he says that the Catholic Church has no problems with the theory of evolution?

That’s right.

 

[GaryTaylor]

The traits and characteristics of any particular human are determined in large part by the inherited “humanity” that has been determined by the “information” derived from the genealogical ancestry of that individual.

The coming together of that information occurs at conception, hence the individual soul is formed at conception. The unique form of each individual is immaterial, and this aligns well with the Thomistic view (hylemorphic dualism) of the physical world being comprised of form and matter. In a sense, everything in the physical universe is immaterial to some degree, to the extent that it has intelligible form. In fact, our capacity to apprehend the immaterial forms of things is used by some Thomists to argue for the immateriality of the soul. For Thomists, matter is pure potentiality, actualized by being in"formed."

It is key to understanding my point that you understand the Thomistic metaphysic behind hylemorphic dualism and not view “information” in the watered down sense it connotes to modern thinkers.

As to God acting at the moment of conception to form the immaterial soul, I would content that God ONLY acts in the NOW for he is eternal. There is no past time for him, so determining the forms (souls) of every individual human at some moment (that is in the past time for us) is not, for God, a different “time” than doing such a thing in the present. For God all is done in the eternal now - it is all done e-ternally (without the constraints of time.)

An insistence, by the way, of some kind of mind-body dualism, as if the human soul is a disembodied entity in its own right, is not exactly Catholic thinking. Remember that the Church’s great Creeds speak of the resurrection of the body and Jesus took on a human body and glorified it. I don’t think it is helpful to separate out body and soul as if they are two distinct entities.

Does that mean that under hylemorphic dualism the soul cannot exist without the body. No, but disembodied existence is not the normal state of existence for a human being.

I also suspect the reason genealogies are carefully tracked through the Old Testament relates specifically to this point. Jesus’ body has a particular provenance and genetic origins are crucial even though the reasons were not understood then, nor properly understood now.

It also goes a long way to explaining original sin and how that state is “contracted” and transmitted and not committed. If God simply makes new human souls holus bolus at conception, why does he not just make them pristine and immaculate?

By the way, I am not claiming thus is the correct view, merely that it shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.

This is a good point which came up in Augustines dialogue with Platonism. And it still comes up today.

 

[tonyrey]

I fully agree. And I find it sad that an atheist (no disrespect Bradski) has to tell us what we Catholics should have accepted long time ago.

The Catholic Church has fully accepted the theory of evolution and rejects ID as a scientific theory. I don’t know what this discussion is all about. Are you guys telling our Pope that he is wrong when he says that the Catholic Church has no problems with the theory of evolution?

A false dilemma! Evolution by Design is the most rational explanation of the complex development of life and immense value of existence.

 

[tonyrey]

Flytraps have evolved. They are irreducibly complex by Behe’s definition and they evolved. The Venus Flytrap evolved.

We can even see how they evolved, and by a route which avoids Behe’s problem with a direct evolutionary route to IC systems. They evolved from a more complex, non-IC system and lost a part. Only after the loss of a part was the system IC.

Behe’s idea was correct in that IC systems cannot evolve by direct routes. He was wrong to say that they cannot evolve by indirect routes. IC systems can and do evolve by indirect routes.

rossum

Has your insight evolved by an indirect route?

 

[tonyrey]

That’s right. In science there is always improvement based on new evidence. Nothing is cast in concrete. Very different to religion.

You are obvously unaware of theological development - described in the book *An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine *by Cardinal Newman - now beatified by the Catholic Church.

 

[tonyrey]

I said earlier how fractured the sciences have become. You need an excellent schooling and a good number of years in uni just to get a decent degree before you even start thinking about the area in which you are going to specialise. So add a few more years study and then an indeterminate amount of work before you can be considered expert in your field.

Unless you have done a good number of years studying molecular biology and how it pertains to evolution then you are in the same position as I am when you read papers such as the one to which you linked.

And that is, you need to trust that the person or persons who have written it can themselves be trusted. That they don’t have an agenda. That they have approached their work with open minds. That they are not associated in any way with anyone who would prefer a particular result.

But your guys work for an organisation that is not simply associated with a tent full of clowns and charlatans and liars whose aim is not just to peddle their risible beliefs. Their stated aim is to change the education system so that my children and their children will be forced to sit in classrooms and listen to their farcical, iron age, fundamentalist crud being taught as fact. No siree. They work for an organisation who actually funds their work!

So if you want to call that appraisal of their credentials as an ad hominem, then be my guest…

Yet another example of the false identification of Design with Creationism and Fundamentalism which seems oblivious of the scandals in the Scientific Establishment…

 

[rossum]

Has your insight evolved by an indirect route?

No. There is a reasonably obvious feasible indirect route.

There is another carnivorous plant, the Sundew. This has sticky filaments on its leaves. When an insect is caught on some filaments the leaf rolls inwards to enfold its prey, but slowly; taking an hour or so for the leaf to fold around the insect. The glue at the end of the filaments also acts to digest the insect, the rolling in of the leaf acting to bring more filaments to bear. The sticky filaments hold the insect in place so it can be slowly enveloped and digested.

Is there a possible evolutionary path from something like a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap? If the assertion that IC cannot evolve is correct then there is no possible path. If there is a possible path then the assertion that IC cannot evolve is incorrect.

So, starting from a Sundew we can slowly increase the speed of movement of the leaves. Say they now take half an hour to close. Nothing new is added, just the kind of small improvement in an existing system that evolution is well capable of doing. Since the speed of closure is faster, the glue does not have to be as strong. The plant needs less of it, so it can reduce the number of filaments and the glue can be optimised more for digestion than for stickiness. Keep increasing the speed of closure and keep reducing the number of filaments and the strength of the glue commensurately. Any plant whose glue gets too weak for the closure speed will die, so the two are kept in step.

Eventually the speed of closure is such that the plant does not need any glue at all. The secreted fluid can be completely specialised for digestion and only needs to be produced when there is something to digest. The number of filaments can be reduced to the minimum needed to trigger the closure of the trap. This is a Venus Flytrap. DNA sequencing indicates that Sundews, Venus Flytraps and Aldrovanda (a simlar snap-trapping species) are closely related genetically.

So there is a possible evolutionary path from a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap. The IC state of the Venus Flytrap was reached by removing the glue. The IC is the result of the removal of a part, in this case the glue.

So, in summary:

1. A Venus Flytrap is Irreducibly Complex, like a mousetrap.
2. There is a possible evolutionary path from a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap.
3. Therefore it is possible for an IC system to evolve by an indirect path.

This example breaks the logical link between “X is Irreducibly Complex” and “Therefore X cannot have evolved”. The Venus Flytrap is Irreducibly Complex and it could have evolved.

rossum

 

[tonyrey]

Flytraps have evolved. They are irreducibly complex by Behe’s definition and they evolved. The Venus Flytrap evolved.

We can even see how they evolved, and by a route which avoids Behe’s problem with a direct evolutionary route to IC systems. They evolved from a more complex, non-IC system and lost a part. Only after the loss of a part was the system IC.

Behe’s idea was correct in that IC systems cannot evolve by direct routes. He was wrong to say that they cannot evolve by indirect routes. IC systems can and do evolve by indirect routes.

rossum

Have all IC systems evolved by the loss of a part? If not it needs to be explained how purposeless phenomena succeeded in accidentally becoming purposeful…

 

[tonyrey]

No. There is a reasonably obvious feasible indirect route.

There is another carnivorous plant, the Sundew. This has sticky filaments on its leaves. When an insect is caught on some filaments the leaf rolls inwards to enfold its prey, but slowly; taking an hour or so for the leaf to fold around the insect. The glue at the end of the filaments also acts to digest the insect, the rolling in of the leaf acting to bring more filaments to bear. The sticky filaments hold the insect in place so it can be slowly enveloped and digested.

Is there a possible evolutionary path from something like a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap? If the assertion that IC cannot evolve is correct then there is no possible path. If there is a possible path then the assertion that IC cannot evolve is incorrect.

So, starting from a Sundew we can slowly increase the speed of movement of the leaves. Say they now take half an hour to close. Nothing new is added, just the kind of small improvement in an existing system that evolution is well capable of doing. Since the speed of closure is faster, the glue does not have to be as strong. The plant needs less of it, so it can reduce the number of filaments and the glue can be optimised more for digestion than for stickiness. Keep increasing the speed of closure and keep reducing the number of filaments and the strength of the glue commensurately. Any plant whose glue gets too weak for the closure speed will die, so the two are kept in step.

Eventually the speed of closure is such that the plant does not need any glue at all. The secreted fluid can be completely specialised for digestion and only needs to be produced when there is something to digest. The number of filaments can be reduced to the minimum needed to trigger the closure of the trap. This is a Venus Flytrap. DNA sequencing indicates that Sundews, Venus Flytraps and Aldrovanda (a simlar snap-trapping species) are closely related genetically.

So there is a possible evolutionary path from a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap. The IC state of the Venus Flytrap was reached by removing the glue. The IC is the result of the removal of a part, in this case the glue.

So, in summary:

1. A Venus Flytrap is Irreducibly Complex, like a mousetrap.
2. There is a possible evolutionary path from a Sundew to a Venus Flytrap.
3. Therefore it is possible for an IC system to evolve by an indirect path.

This example breaks the logical link between “X is Irreducibly Complex” and “Therefore X cannot have evolved”. The Venus Flytrap is Irreducibly Complex and it could have evolved.

rossum

The transition from one (or some) to **all **is not convincing nor does possibility amount to probability…

Has our power of insight emerged from insightless processes?

 

[tonyrey]

And both were ultimately surpassed or found inadequate.

Indeed. All scientific theories are provisional…