Religion and Science!

[StAnastasia]

That is not Behe’s view. His view is not that they wouldn’t work, but that they couldn’t appear all at once without being designed. They obviously could not evolve because these structures were not yet alive to evolve! How then did they get organized if there was no mind to intelligently organize them?

It’s like supposing that a watch could evolve itself into existence without a designer. And a watch can’t even replicate itself, which power the first life forms had or they could not have survived.

Behe’s view is bankrupt. He’s had 20 years to come up with a demonstration of irreducible complexity in nature, and has failed spectacularly!

 

[StAnastasia]

Anastasia, There were no pre-conditions, since God created the universe, which you have already noted.

Charlie, your claim is a non sequitur. The fact that God created the universe in no way rules out there having been preconditions to the Big Bang.

 

[tonyrey]

The point is that nature can produce organisms that appear to our brains, which evolved a highly efficient pattern-recognition function, to be designed from outside according to a purpose imposed from outside, when both the design and the designer are imaginary.

Do you believe your reasoning process is simply a highly efficient pattern-recognition function?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Anastasia
**
Behe’s view is bankrupt. He’s had 20 years to come up with a demonstration of irreducible complexity in nature, and has failed spectacularly! **

Behe’s view is based on logic. The evolutionists have had about 60 years to prove abiogenesis without intelligent design, and have failed spectacularly.

And it can’t even be done anyway, since if you designed an experiment to prove it possible, you would have only produce life by an intelligently designed experiment.

 

[tonyrey]

Behe’s view is bankrupt. He’s had 20 years to come up with a demonstration of irreducible complexity in nature, and has failed spectacularly!

Is the irreducible complexity of your mind scientifically explicable (in principle)?

 

[SGWessells]

SGW
**
Eventually, modifications built on other, now vanished, modifications result in an organism where complex parts all work together, and Michael Behe comes along and writes a book claiming that the structures could not have evolved all at once because they wouldn’t work. **

That is not Behe’s view. His view is not that they wouldn’t work, but that they couldn’t appear all at once without being designed. They obviously could not evolve because these structures were not yet alive to evolve! How then did they get organized if there was no mind to intelligently organize them?

It’s like supposing that a watch could evolve itself into existence without a designer. And a watch can’t even replicate itself, which power the first life forms had or they could not have survived.

Structures that performed a different function became modified into a prototypical form of the particular feature. Incidentally, Behe’s irreducible structures aren’t as irreducible as he claimed. Students have removed parts from the mousetrap example he used and it still worked.
Half a wing is better than none; a quarter of an eye is better than blindness. Half an eye is better still. A watch is not an organic living being, and did not evolve, so it is not analogous. In fact, you have to build your conclusion into it. You can’t choose an obviously designed artifact as comparison with an organism without assuming your conclusion as a premise.

 

[tonyrey]

Anastasia
**
Behe’s view is bankrupt. He’s had 20 years to come up with a demonstration of irreducible complexity in nature, and has failed spectacularly! **

Behe’s view is based on logic. The evolutionists have had about 60 years to prove abiogenesis without intelligent design, and have failed spectacularly.

And it can’t even be done anyway, since if you designed an experiment to prove it possible, you would have only produce life by an intelligently designed experiment.

Intelligence is used to demonstrate that intelligence is produced by that which lacks intelligence…

 

[SGWessells]

That is a wonderful circle of truth. Not one lie in it.

Nevertheless, it is a logical fallacy, therefore invalid.

 

[SGWessells]

Quite apart from the historical record of the Church there is also the teaching of Christ that cannot be dismissed as totally insignificant (from the point of view of any civilised person…)

It is vastly significant. That doesn’t make it historically accurate.

 

[SGWessells]

Do you believe your reasoning process is simply a highly efficient pattern-recognition function?

Not “simply”, as if there’s nothing more to reason than that, but certainly part of the reasoning process. Haven’t you ever thought a stick was a snake for an instant, or seen faces in clouds or leaves?

 

[tonyrey]

Anastasia
**
Behe’s view is bankrupt. He’s had 20 years to come up with a demonstration of irreducible complexity in nature, and has failed spectacularly! **

Behe’s view is based on logic. The evolutionists have had about 60 years to prove abiogenesis without intelligent design, and have failed spectacularly.

And it can’t even be done anyway, since if you designed an experiment to prove it possible, you would have only produce life by an intelligently designed experiment.

I’m sorry to correct you, Charles, but the experiment was ultimately produced by non-intelligent molecules which had no idea of what they were doing! It hardly reinforces faith in the conclusion…

 

[tonyrey]

Not “simply”, as if there’s nothing more to reason than that, but certainly part of the reasoning process. Haven’t you ever thought a stick was a snake for an instant, or seen faces in clouds or leaves?

What other mechanisms participate?

 

[SGWessells]

Intelligence is used to demonstrate that intelligence is produced by that which lacks intelligence…

Why not? Intelligence is a quality more gradual in nature than your dogma allows you to see. There are gorillas who have mastered a vocabulary of 500 words. Individual monkeys and dolphins can distinguish themselves from other monkeys or dolphins in a mirror. Magpies can use tools. Maybe we’re not as unique as we flatter ourselves that we are.

 

[buffalo]

Structures that performed a different function became modified into a prototypical form of the particular feature. Incidentally, Behe’s irreducible structures aren’t as irreducible as he claimed. Students have removed parts from the mousetrap example he used and it still worked.
Half a wing is better than none; a quarter of an eye is better than blindness. Half an eye is better still. A watch is not an organic living being, and did not evolve, so it is not analogous. In fact, you have to build your conclusion into it. You can’t choose an obviously designed artifact as comparison with an organism without assuming your conclusion as a premise.

Ahh, but because something can happen doesn’t mean it does. But this is standard evo fare. Yup the odds may be 1 in 10 to the 500th power but that is good enough. Man, that is fantasy land.

Which parts were removed? For every part removed what the % of mice caught?

So why did any part of a wing start to evolve?

 

[StAnastasia]

Behe’s view is based on logic. The evolutionists have had about 60 years to prove abiogenesis without intelligent design, and have failed spectacularly.

You misunderstand. Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory explains the development of biodiversity.

 

[buffalo]

Nevertheless, it is a logical fallacy, therefore invalid.

\

If one is walking down the beach and sees left footprints as far as he can see what should he conclude?

 

[StAnastasia]

So why did any part of a wing start to evolve?

How and Why Did Wings Evolve?

"Before we can answer how and why flight evolved, we must understand how and why wings evolved; without wings there can be no flight. How did wings evolve? Scientists generally agree that wings must have been exaptations; they were used by the ancestor for one function, and became useful for flight among the descendants (if they weren’t exaptations, then they were adaptations, which would mean that they were wings already used for powered flight; a circular argument).

"A comparative study of the functional morphology of the wings of the earliest known flying members of the lineage with the “pre-wing” structures of likely ancestors and close relatives provides the best evidence for how wings evolved. Why wings (and hence flight) evolved from this point is a matter of contention among scientists; various hypotheses proposed include:

1. Wings evolved from arms used to capture small prey. (This seems rational, so we can ask whether the ancestral forms were actually doing this.)
2. Wings evolved because bipedal animals were leaping into the air; large wings assisted leaping. (This is possible; any amount of wing could assist leaping. Remember that we first need phylogenetic evidence for a bipedal running or leaping origin.)
3. Wings were used as sexual display structures; bigger wings were preferred by potential mates. (This is a non-falsifiable evolutionary hypothesis — we cannot test it.)
4. Wings evolved from gliding ancestors who began to flap their gliding structures in order to produce thrust. (This is reasonable and possible, but only with phylogenetic evidence for an arboreal gliding origin.)

“It seems that #1, #2, and #4 are the best hypotheses to use for the origin of wings because they can be tested by bringing in other lines of evidence. Move on to consider these origins, but remember: the issues of the evolution of flight and the origins of flight are inextricably linked.”

ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/evolve.html

 

[buffalo]

Perhaps is it time to look at Darwin’s failed predictions:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I am going to pick on this one:

“PBS urges viewers to believe that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Such a statement reverses the scientific process by putting conclusions ahead of empirical observations of nature. PBS also quotes evolutionary paleontologist Niles Eldredge, stating, “Nothing that we have learned in the intervening 175 years has contravened Darwin’s basic description of how natural selection works,” and asserting that the data “unequivocally” support Darwin’s view. Such dogmatic statements fly in the face of the scientific spirit, which opposes dogmatic attachments to theories and promises to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.”

But, now we know NS is a conservative process not a creative one.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW
**
Students have removed parts from the mousetrap example he used and it still worked.**

Which part did they remove? The cheese? Obviously that part would work without cheese, if you can find a mouse dumb enough to be interested.
**
A watch is not an organic living being, and did not evolve, so it is not analogous. In fact, you have to build your conclusion into it. You can’t choose an obviously designed artifact as comparison with an organism without assuming your conclusion as a premise. **

But the first living organism was an obviously designed artifact.

Anastasia

Did God design the universe and everything in it?

 

[tonyrey]

Why not? Intelligence is a quality more gradual in nature than your dogma allows you to see.

Intelligence is a more fundamental reality than your naturalist dogma allows you to see.

There are gorillas who have mastered a vocabulary of 500 words. Individual monkeys and dolphins can distinguish themselves from other monkeys or dolphins in a mirror. Magpies can use tools. Maybe we’re not as unique as we flatter ourselves that we are.

In that case your tool-using ability doesn’t allow you to flatter yourself that your interpretation of reality is superior to that of any other tool-user - unless you have accidentally acquired a unique method of manipulating it!