Irreducible Complexity.

[lukec]

If number 1 is true, then the following possibilities might folllow:

1) God did not know how to design the eye better
2) God knew how to design the eye better, but had a reason for not doing so

Interesting point, and I'm not sure that it would even sit well with many theists; that could be implying that God was either not omnipotent or perhaps that God did not care to give us the most efficient eye possible. For the latter, I don't know what arguments could be made, but for the former I know it would be difficult for many theists to swallow that their God was not perfect.

As for the article on why the human eye is NOT bad design, the idea of protection from, for example, short wave light rays was brought up. This is one way of giving protection, but I cannot help but think that it would in fact be more efficient to simply have a thicker cornea or filter to stop these harmful rays. In squid, cuttlefish, and octopi the retina is of course "verted," which is interesting to me because although the these organisms live underwater, they are still subject to light damage- squid have disproportionally large eyes to catch more light since they are often very deep, but some live near the surface. Octopi, for example, living in clear tropical waters are in sunlight much of the time, and water would not offer much of a filter as one can still become sunburned even on the "tougher" skin, up to I believe 8 meters deep. Of course, this paragraph is full of ideas which I have not looked very much into, so if I'm wrong please correct me!

Note: I finished reading that article which finishes by talking about invertebrate eyes, and it brings up some interesting points. Good article, I thought.

[Tiberius]

If number 1 is true, then the following possibilities might folllow:

1) God did not know how to design the eye better
2) God knew how to design the eye better, but had a reason for not doing so

The problem with this is that although it is a correct approach to take, I have yet to meet a theist who actually supports 1). Most theistic gods are omnipotent.

[leo-rcc]

Jason,

In that case my revision:

1) God did not know how to design the eye better and therefore she isn't omnipotent
2) God did know how to make the eye better but she was lazy which is not a particularly godlike trait in my book either.
3) There is no design at all.

If a god exists and humans where her special pet project as religion says us humans are, then argument 2 holds no water. I know that when I design my robots and there is one I want to succeed more than any other I will go the extra mile in designing and building it to the highest degree of my ability, no matter how much extra time and effort it takes. I am sure a god would do the same.

[CoxRox]

Guys, can I say that there are many interesting points being raised. 'Not omnipotent' and 'lazy'- terms attributed to a possible God are meaningless to me and as silly as saying 'can God make 2 add 2 to equal 5?' If a God is responsible for the laws of physics, mathematics, life, a human eye, all things which I believe infer a designer, then I trust this designer knew what He/She was doing. Many of the objections to the structure of the eye have been explained and we can see that there are good reasons for the wiring etc beng the way it is. There are probably hundreds of physical and biochemical factors that make the human eye just right for our needs on this planet. If we lived under water we would no doubt have a different eye. I found a web site by an 'expert' and emailed him yesterday. He sent me a reply and had this to say about the lens causing images to be inverted:

''The eye lens focuses an upside down image on the retina.
It is an efficient optical design that allows considerable optical correction to enable us the see with high resolution.
With the flexible brain that we have it can adapt to correct or inverted images as taught.
Since there is image processing going on from the eye to the brain, it can be packaged in many different ways.
That is not as important as the rapid image processing that takes place in the brain—this is what really enables us to see.
Our eyes are helpless without a good brain---everything has to play together-àdesignàdesigner.

Note the limited design themes of all eyes-- indicating a designer---not random evolution.

There are only about 8 or 9 design themes, but 1000’s of applications.'

http://www.eyedesignbook.com/ch6/eyech6-...a06ec.html

He seems to know everything there is to know about all types of eyes. I am also waiting on some more information from someone else regarding the lens.

I have some info on the Esophagus problem noted earlier and will post shortly.

regards Catherine

[leo-rcc]

Hi Catherine,

If a God is responsible for the laws of physics, mathematics, life, a human eye, all things which I believe infer a designer, then I trust this designer knew what He/She was doing.

This basically puts you back to your "The lord works in mysterious ways" argument. I don't know why it did it like that, but I trust it had a good reason for it.

How is that an answer?

Many of the objections to the structure of the eye have been explained and we can see that there are good reasons for the wiring etc being the way it is.

Do we really? The way I see it (no pun intended) is that its remarkable that we have as good eyesight as we do, not thanks to the designer but inspite of the designer, should one really have existed. Just because it works, doesn't make the reason for doing it this way a good one, in fact its a very silly one.

And then there is your site that pulls this one out of its hat*:

How can one place any significant probability on the origin of life apart from intelligent design, when up to ninety percent of present U. S. scientists seem to be shifting toward some variation of intelligent design ?

This I want to see hard evidence of.

*euphemism

[CoxRox]

Hi Catherine,

If a God is responsible for the laws of physics, mathematics, life, a human eye, all things which I believe infer a designer, then I trust this designer knew what He/She was doing.

This basically puts you back to your "The lord works in mysterious ways" argument. I don't know why it did it like that, but I trust it had a good reason for it.

How is that an answer?

Well, we have a sort of answer in that we know some of the 'why' in how the eye works. All the links we've been posting on the eye show how incredible it is and what a good job it does. I can't see how it doesn't do what it is 'designed' for?? We could have had three eyes, one in the middle but we don't. I'm sorry my answer isn't very scientific. I think they did a good job. Not only do they work very well, they look beautiful.

Many of the objections to the structure of the eye have been explained and we can see that there are good reasons for the wiring etc being the way it is.

Do we really? The way I see it (no pun intended) is that its remarkable that we have as good eyesight as we do, not thanks to the designer but inspite of the designer, should one really have existed. Just because it works, doesn't make the reason for doing it this way a good one, in fact its a very silly one.

[/b] All the articles I've read on the eye, show me that it works very well and is 'remarkable'[/b]. Maybe I'm not understanding these articles. [b]

And then there is your site that pulls this one out of its hat*:

How can one place any significant probability on the origin of life apart from intelligent design, when up to ninety percent of present U. S. scientists seem to be shifting toward some variation of intelligent design ?

This I want to see hard evidence of.

*euphemism

[b]This quote seems incorrect to me. I will look into it. [b]

---

Leo, I hope you can see my answers ok. They haven't all come out in bold. Sorry.

[Tiberius]

Note the limited design themes of all eyes-- indicating a designer---not random evolution.

That quote there discredits anything he has to do with biology. He has shown complete and utter ignorance by calling evolution "random". Evolution has a limited number of "themes" for a reason: Only the good ones get through.

[leo-rcc]

Hi Catherine,

Like the "they" part, pre-emptive striking, nice one.

If I may make a recap:

You suppose there is a designer, because everything to you looks and feels designed, intuitively. You search on the web and there are some scientists that agree with you (Behe, Bergman, Deckert).

You also assert that because it all works so well it must have been designed for us. Douglas Adams frased that rather perfectly:

...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

When things appear to be one thing because it intuitively makes sense, doesn't mean it is always correct. Now maybe there really was a designer or creator, I don't know. But so far there is no scientific evidence to back it up, unless you count scripture which I don't.

Maybe I'm not understanding these articles.

Well if you continue to read from creationists propaganda websites of course they will confirm your way of thinking because they do the same. No matter who makes a website or writes a book, he can write down his opinion on the subject at hand. This will be published, or put online, and there might be some comments when that is allowed on that website, but there is no peer review, no scientific method passed over these articles and books. This is also why I never quote Dawkins or Harris from their books to prove a scientific point, because even though experts in their respective fields, these books are not scientific papers. I quote Douglas Adams on a more comparative note, he never claimed to be a scientist and neither do I. With regards to Behe even his own faculty denounces ID in favour of Evolution making an official statement to that fact because it does not want to associate itself with the opinions of Behe.

So far all the real scientific evidence points to the opposite of ID, Evolution trough natural selection provides a much better answer although that is not always intuitive.

It will require more reading on the subject, there are literally thousands of scientific studies and papers published the correct way (someone told me 18.000 in 2007 alone but don't hold me to that, it maybe less maybe more).

Here are a few to start of with.

Direct Experimental Tests Of Evolutionary Concepts:

Cavefish as a Model System in Evolutionary Developmental Biology by William R. Jeffrey, Developmental Biology, 231:, 1-12 (1 Mar 2001) - contains experimental tests of hypotheses about eye evolution

Crystal Structure Of An Ancient Protein: Evolution By Conformational Epistasis by Eric A. Ortlund, Jamie T. Bridgham, Matthew R. Redinbo and Joseph W. Thornton, Science, 317: 1544-1548 (14 September 2007) - refers to the reconstruction of ancient proteins from extinct animals by back-tracking along the molecular phylogenetic trees and demonstrating that the proteins in question WORK

Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory by J.R. Weinberg V. R. Starczak and P. Jora, Evolution vol 46, pp 1214-1220, 1992 - EXPERIMENTAL GENERATION OF A SPECIATION EVENT IN THE LABORATORY

Experimentally Created Incipient Species of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Olga Pavlovsky, Nature 230, pp 289 - 292 (02 April 1971) - EXPERIMENTAL GENERATION OF A SPECIATION EVENT IN THE LABORATORY

Founder-flush speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a large scale experiment by A. Galiana, A. Moya and F. J. Alaya, Evolution vol 47, pp 432-444, 1993 - EXPERIMENTAL GENERATION OF A SPECIATION EVENT IN THE LABORATORY

Genetics of Natural Populations XII. Experimental Reproduction of Some of the Changes Caused by Natural Selection by Sewall Wright & Theodosius Dobzkansky, Genetics, 31(2): 125-156 (1946) - direct experimental tests of natural selection mechanisms

Hedgehog Signalling Controls Eye Degeneration in Blind Cavefish by Yoshiyuki Yamamoto, David W. Stock and William R. Jeffery, Nature, 431: 844-847 (14 Oct 2004) - direct experimental test of theories about eye evolution and the elucidation of the controlling genes involved

Initial Sequencing of the Chimpanzee Genome and Comparison with the Human Genome, The Chimpanzee Genome Sequencing Consortium (see paper for full list of 68 authors), Nature, Vol 437, pp 69-87, 1 September 2005 - direct sequencing of the chimpanzee genome and direct comparison of this genome with the previously sequenced human genome, whereby the scientists discovered that fully twenty-nine percent of the orthologous proteins of humans and chmpanzees are IDENTICAL

Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks and Axel Meyer, Science, vol 300, pp 325-329, 11 April 2003 - direct experimental determination of the molecular phylogeny of the Lake Victoria Superflock, including IDENTIFYING THE COMMON ANCESTOR OF THE 350+ SPECIES IN QUESTION and NAMING THAT ANCESTOR as Haplochromis gracilior

Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity by M.E. Boraas, D.B. Seale and J.E. Boxhorn, Evolutionary Ecology Vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 153-164. Feb 1998 - direct experimental test of hypotheses about the origins of multicellularity

Protein engineering of hydrogenase 3 to enhance hydrogen production by T. Maeda, V. Sanchez-Torres and T. K. Wood, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 79(1): 77-86 (May 2008) - DIRECT EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF EVOLUTION IN THE LABORATORY TO PRODUCE A NEW BIOTECHNOLOGY PRODUCT

Resurrecting Ancient Genes: Experimental Analysis Of Extinct Molecules by Joseph W. Thornton, Nature Reviews: Genetics, 5: 366-375 (5 May 2004) - direct experimental reconstruction in the laboratory of ancient proteins from extinct animals

Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura by E. del Solar, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol 56, pp 484-487, 1966 - direct experimental test of selection mechanisms and their implications for speciation

The Master Control Gene For Morphogenesis And Evolution Of The Eye by Walter J. Gehrig, Genes to Cells, 1: 11-15, 1996 - direct experimental test of hypotheses concerning eye evolution including the elucidation of the connection between the Pax6 gene and eye morphogenesis, and the experimental manipulation of that gene to control eye development

The Past As The Key To The Present: Resurrection Of Ancient Proteins From Eosinophils by Steven A. Benner, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 99(8): 4760-4761 (16 April 2002) - direct experimental reconstruction of ancient proteins from extinct animals.

Now I don't expect you to read all that, I don't even want to read all that. The only point I am trying to make that each and every single one of these studies and scientific peer reviewed papers hold more credence than anything ever put forward by supporters of ID because they have been through the whole scientific process. As I stated before, if people like Behe really want to give credence to ID, they have to do the legwork, and so for that has not been done.

[CoxRox]

Leo, the 'they' was a typo. It should have said 'I think they do a good job' referring to the eyes.

May I say that I don't think it is just an intuitive thing where I 'see' design. My partner is an atheist through and through. He looks at me as if he feels sorry for me if I talk about spiritual matters. I played a trick on him last week when we were debating the flagellar motor. I had a big image on the computer screen of it and said to him: 'what's that?' He thought it was some kind of aeroplane engine or something like that. I couldn't resist laughing and when I told him what it was he looked rather doubtful to say the least. Just maybe, and I've said it many times, the fact it conforms to a high spec, that would make a mazda engineer blush, is because it is actually designed. My thinking and reasoning seem 'set' in seeing things this way. (Just as I would always arrive at the same conclusion if I looked up at the 'shapes' on the side of Mount Rushmore and concluded they were fashioned by some intelligence as opposed to the weather etching them over thousands of years.) I'm prepared to say that evolution takes place but I can't fathom it happening without guidance. I haven't made my mind up about this though so I need to do more studying. Anyway, getting back to the eye:

Adrian, Leo: Two friends have come back to me with these points which seem feasable:

How is the upside down image a problem? The eye still has to send that image data to your brain so regardless of whether it was upside down or not, the data would still have to be interpreted by the brain. Your brain has to work regardless. God could have make the image right side up with an extra lens in your eye, but there would really be no point. Besides, the brain is very versatile. They did this one experiment on a cat where they put some kind of goggles on him that made everything upside down. For a little bit, he couldn't figure it out, but eventually was able to move around normally after his brain adjusted.


Iin order to have an image right side up on our retina we would need another lens to flip it around, requiring another part, needless and inefficient when you consider that the brain can quite easily work within this image that is upside down.


I've got some interesting points on the 'swallowing, breathing' problem if you are interested.....

[leo-rcc]

If you look back you will find I never made an objection of the picture being upside down, just the retina being inside-out, which I still maintain is not a smart way of doing things.

---

is an atheist through and through. He looks at me as if he feels sorry for me if I talk about spiritual matters. I played a trick on him last week when we were debating the flagellar motor. I had a big image on the computer screen of it and said to him: 'what's that?' He thought it was some kind of aeroplane engine or something like that.

This is actually more a case supporting the notion that intuitively things do look designed.

I couldn't resist laughing and when I told him what it was he looked rather doubtful to say the least. Just maybe, and I've said it many times, the fact it conforms to a high spec, that would make a mazda engineer blush, is because it is actually designed. My thinking and reasoning seem 'set' in seeing things this way. (Just as I would always arrive at the same conclusion if I looked up at the 'shapes' on the side of Mount Rushmore and concluded they were fashioned by some intelligence as opposed to the weather etching them over thousands of years.) I'm prepared to say that evolution takes place but I can't fathom it happening without guidance.

That guideance is there, it's called natural selection.

I've got some interesting points on the 'swallowing, breathing' problem if you are interested.....

Sure, go right ahead. Shall we move on to the Urethra and Prostate after that?