Irreducible Complexity.

[bozo]

Bozo, you said:
'CR, I'm mixing threads here but I need to ask you something.
You introduced yourself to the forum as a " doubting christian ".
On the " Is faith a cop-out " thread, given 3 choices you picked " God has always existed ".
My question is this, you appear to WANT to believe in " God ", so how are we atheists any help in fulfilling your desire? Are you on the right forum?'

I am here because I have enough doubts that motivate me to check things which supposedly support ID. I am aware that ID supporters are in the minority and I cannot ignore the majority of very intelligent people (many atheists e.g Dawkins) who do not 'see' ID in things like we are discussing in this thread. I think it's important to get 'both sides' views and arguments in order to be sure. I know there is a possibility there is no 'God' and that my reasonings etc are faulty. The folk here have already opened my eyes, as it were to a 'bigger' possibility that there is no God.
Hope that explains why I am here? By the way, happy birthday

Evidence- my brain has nearly short circuited with your revelations of your exact position. I'll try to decipher it when I get a chance.

Adrian, you said:
'I'm trying to come up with an analogy that you can understand, but so far I seem to have failed miserably (my fault entirely).' I think the fault may be with me, in that I don't understand biology stuff that well, and so maybe this post is going to prove too much for me. I may have bitten off more than I can chew so to speak. I see what you are saying: these smaller 'machines' ie the syringe, come together gradually and produce more complex things ie the flagellum? Is that right? I spent a good few hours yesterday reading up on this bloody flagellum, and IC. Actually the flagellum is amazing and would put Mazda to shame. Some of the articles I read were seeming to say that IC does not preclude gradual evolution, but I haven't read enough about this and to be honest i think the main supporters wouldn't agree with this. I'm going to email the man himself, Behe regarding a few points. I've emailed him before and he responded within a few days. I will ask for a reprieve at this point while I recheck some things, see if Behe can get back to me, and hopefully tie this thing up. Hope that is ok.

CR, thanks for your kind wishes for my birthday. You still appear to me to actually want to prove there is a God rather than accept that there isn't. Am I right or not?

[CoxRox]

Hi Bozo, I'm here to discuss 'scientific' issues that relate to the possibility of intelligent design. I believe in intelligent design, so I would be very pleased if someone here suddenly said, 'oh, yes, I see what you mean'. I won't lie about that. I'm not here to convert anyone as such, because I know that atheists are usually very intelligent people who have studied their stuff. I am fascinated that ID (which also has similiarly intelligent folk, even experts in their field as its supporters), is rejected so totally, in the face of some of the 'scientific' findings (which I am discussing here). I am 'testing' these ideas with the 'other side' if you like. Why is it that I see intelligent design in things but you don't? Who knows, maybe I will be the one who sees the light and becomes an atheist. My main purpose is to debate, and not to try to convert anyone. (I have many doubts about my own beliefs regarding the nature of the Designer, hence why I wouldn't readily debate such topics like the Bible or Christianity. I will happily do so if invited by someone). I hope that is acceptable. I'd just like to say that I think it's great that this forum 'tolerates' us 'believers'. I've actually come across more hostility from a Christian forum I go on, because I don't believe in their literal hell.

regards

Catherine

[bozo]

Hi Bozo, I'm here to discuss 'scientific' issues that relate to the possibility of intelligent design. I believe in intelligent design, so I would be very pleased if someone here suddenly said, 'oh, yes, I see what you mean'. I won't lie about that. I'm not here to convert anyone as such, because I know that atheists are usually very intelligent people who have studied their stuff. I am fascinated that ID (which also has similiarly intelligent folk, even experts in their field as its supporters), is rejected so totally, in the face of some of the 'scientific' findings (which I am discussing here). I am 'testing' these ideas with the 'other side' if you like. Why is it that I see intelligent design in things but you don't? Who knows, maybe I will be the one who sees the light and becomes an atheist. My main purpose is to debate, and not to try to convert anyone. (I have many doubts about my own beliefs regarding the nature of the Designer, hence why I wouldn't readily debate such topics like the Bible or Christianity. I will happily do so if invited by someone). I hope that is acceptable. I'd just like to say that I think it's great that this forum 'tolerates' us 'believers'. I've actually come across more hostility from a Christian forum I go on, because I don't believe in their literal hell.

regards

Catherine

Catherine, you are going all around the houses to avoid giving a direct answer to my question, which is, to repeat, do you want " God " to exist? Everything else you say about debate and learning is fine, but at the end of the day, what do you really want to be true?

[leo-rcc]

Well the reason we do not readily accept ID because the evidence for it is flimsy to non existent, and proponents of ID have yet to publish or peer review a single scientific document on the subject. You claim there are experts in the field that support ID, and I am sure there are some, since the discovery institute loves to strut those scientists around as a posterchild.

Scientists are human beings, too, and we all have our personal quirks and failures to think rationally. You will always be able find some small fraction of the population of scientists who believe in some wacky thing, whether it is UFOs, bigfoot, or that ST:TNG is better than ST:TOS. It is nothing but background noise. Finding that I have an irrational infatuation with cephalopods does not mean that squid-loving is scientific.

Here's another example: Kary Mullis. He won the Nobel Prize! He invented PCR, which even laypeople know is some extremely cool DNA technology that they use all the time on CSI!

At the same time, he's an HIV denier (and coauthored papers with the Discovery Institute's Philip Johnson, no less). I know, I know, many of the same crackpots who love Intelligent Design creationism will think that's a point in his favor, but how about this: he's also an astrologer. He believes the stars influence everyone's destiny. And astrologers do exactly what the Discovery Institute does, and claim validation by listing the 'scientists' who support their ideas. (You know, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that there are just as many scientists out there who think there is something to astrology, as there are those who think Intelligent Design creationism is Da Bomb. I've seen polls that show over half the population believe astrology works. Shall we start teaching it in the schools?)

Mullis wrote an autobiography, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, that is depressing in how it reveals the poor understanding of science held by an actual Nobel Prize winner. He has a chapter on his personal discovery of the validity of astrology. He ran through a whole heap of astrological descriptors from his birthdate. Some fit, some didn't (no surprise there). He then filtered those assessments, picking the ones that fit best, and announced that the astrological factors behind the good predictions were correct, while the others were invalid.

Methodologically, it was a disgraceful example of blatant selection bias, and cherry-picking the data to his hypothesis. It was very, very bad science. I literally cringed on reading it, it was so embarrassingly stupid. He even ended the chapter by saying that he really hadn't needed to write an abutobiography—all he needed to do was publish his birth data, and everything else was derivable.

It just goes to show that finding a few scientists, even prominent scientists, who believe in something doesn't make it so. That Argument from Miniscule Fraction of Authority of which the Discovery Institute is so fond is utterly bogus. Science rests on replicable experiment and observable evidence, not the credentials of one or four hundred or even ten million scientists.

As other postings from you have shown, you are more prone to take arguments at face value. By applying the skepticism as used in the scientific method you will see that arguments from a single source do not carry much weight with us. It is one of the cool failsafes of science, it protects it from scientists.

[CoxRox]

Bozo, yes I'd like God to be real. It would mean there is a real lasting purpose for our lives and for eternity. I'm well aware that these reasons aren't proof, hence why I'm here.

Leo, I try to check and review many sources and not take arguments at face value. I'm reading up on Miller etc as well as Behe etc. Have I used an argument that was only supported with one source??

[Tiberius]

Intelligent Design is rejected by the scientific community because it has not come up with any peer-reviewed articles that can demonstrate anything that isn't explained by Evolution, a theory that has much more scientific evidence and experiments. In science, you cannot have two contradictory theories that explain the same thing; that's not how it works.

For a theory to disprove another, it must do two things:

1) It must propose a detailed description of how the mechanisms work, citing experiments, data, observations, etc.
2) It must explain all the evidence that the other theory has supporting it, because both theories are contradictory and therefore must explain the current evidence on their own.

I.D has failed on both these accounts. It has not provided any scientific papers on how any of the processes work, or how one would observe them working or test them. It also doesn't explain any of the evidence for Evolution. In fact, a lot of I.D proponents reject the evidence already at hand, claiming it is simply "wrong". That isn't how science works. The evidence is rarely wrong, and even if it were, you would have to explain how it were wrong (for example, look through all the experiments and point out the mistakes made). Due to the fact that these experiments have already passed peer-review, the chances of any error being missed are incredibly low.

I think Intelligent Design is possible; you don't technically have to address the identity of the designer in order to accept the theory, however you do need to explain the designer, and how it all happened.

As many scientists have said, I.D does not explain the origins of the designer. If a designer designed the designer, then this needs to be explained, and you get a infinite line going back in time to an "undesigned designer". I.D does not explain this.

Evolution on the other hand has several theories towards how it all works, with the Big Bang being the beginning of everything (time included), the "designer" being the laws of Nature, abiogenesis creating the first replicating molecules, and natural selection with random mutation causing the evolution.

[chatpilot]

The theory of evolution is a known fact.The basic theory of evolution has been proven over and over again in the lab and has been observed in the natural world.We may not have the whole puzzle but I don't see or feel that there is a need for a creator behind the scenes.The whole concept or idea of a creator comes from religions and myths and have no place in science.I find it quite humorous that we even have to waste our time trying to debate or in this case debunk religious beliefs and myths that have come down to us from primitive man.

Before the scientific studies of life and the world we live in everything was explained by folktales and lore.But you would think that after the mysterious veil has been removed from the basic tenets of life that man would cast away his cloak of superstition and embrace learning.I have heard it said that mans fear of death is one of the many reasons that he clings to religion,it gives him a sense of worth and hope.Religion,especially Christianity gives man the idea that he is the pinnacle of creation and Gods greatest and most loved achievement.Science knocks man off of his proverbial pedestal and equates him with the rest of creation.Man is an animal and not some spiritual beings special creation we live and die like all other forms of life on this earth.

When it comes to the origin of the universe (the big bang etc) I dont have much to say on it.I feel it's something that is at the moment a little hard to grasp and even if we did gain that knowledge we would not really benefit much from it.Evolution on the other hand is a little closer to home and more relevant to how we view our lives and the world we live in.

[Tiberius]

The theory of evolution is a known fact.

Actually wrong. "Evolution" itself is a proven fact, we have seen it happening (i.e. species mutating into new species, adaptive change, etc). The theory of Evolution is the explanation of these facts, and our current understanding of Evolution has changed so much since we started trying to explain it! Every new piece of evidence has to be included into the big picture, and when an anomaly occurs, the theory changes to accept that anomaly.

[chatpilot]

Thanks for that correction there Adrian Evolution itself is a proven fact.The theory of evolution is always subject to change but the basic principles remain the same.The puzzle is not yet complete so there are always new discoveries in the field and and anomalies in nature that require explanations.

[leo-rcc]

Leo, I try to check and review many sources and not take arguments at face value. I'm reading up on Miller etc as well as Behe etc. Have I used an argument that was only supported with one source??

Sorry, I guess I wasn't making myself very clear there. I trust you will attempt everything to see the evidence as objective as you can, which is what we all should do.

I have not read the book from Behe, but I have been in a lot of discussions with people defending the book and citing Behe's hypothesis and read several articles from him and the Discovery institute. These people are fully in their right to believe what they want to believe, but they are going about it all the wrong way trying to get this squeezed into science education. And I really am cross with Behe about that because as a scientist he should know how to get his hypothesis validated and taught the right way he doesn't do it. I suspect it is because deep down he knows it wouldn't hold up against the peer review he would get should he want to publish his findings.