Quote:Original post by OpenGL_Guru
again i well say....

do you believe in evolution as a scientific theory or as philosophical dogma? You'd be surprised how many people treat evolution almost as if it were a religious belief. as a scientific theory, you would agree that it should be held as long as it seems to be a consistent explanation of the evidence we have available, right?

there is a problem that exists...the problem of trying to use the scientific method to investigate any event that took place in the past. You see, to qualify as a scientific theory, any ideas must be testable in a controlled laboratory setting. The experiment we run must be capable of being repeated by any other qualified scientist. The most that laboratory experiments could ever hope to show is that natural selection or spontaneous generation or some other evolutionary mechanism can work under certain conditions. And all that would prove is that it could have been the way life evolved. An experiment could never say that this was the way life did evolve.

that being said, science can never make positive statements about historical events of any kind; it can only investigate current processes...i.e. evolution is really historical speculation, nothing more.

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lets go through an exercise shall we as a simple and as ONE of many examples? anyone have a coin? get it out and flip it. its either going to be heads or tails. lets assume its tails. now what do you think the chances would be that you could flip 10 more tails in a row? not too good? you would be right.
...anyone good with permutations/combinations? Let's suppose that you sat here and flipped this coin steadily, five flips every second. How long do you think it would take for you to get 10 tails in a row? 30 mins? an hour? 24 hours? And what if I made you flip it until you got a hundred tails in a row. How long might that take? maybe days? weeks? now what about a million tails in a row??? guess what.. you wouldnt live that long.. it would be (nearly) impossible..at least in your lifetime , for all practical purposes it would be impossible.

there are studies done on very simple molecules that have been studied and verified through numerous calculations that the odds of even ONE of these forming purely by chance is one in one hundred trillion trillion..one of the most popular molecules worked on in this matter is the protein called polypeptid...of course you wouldnt ever hear about this being done in the mainstream media. Even if you could flip that coin a hundred times a second, it would still take you 31 billion years to flip your coin the equivalent number of times to equal the odds of that one simple molecule. if you are talking about a fish you are talking about many multiple times that for the odds. and humans?? unimaginable.

To test it in science, you simply have to test the process (through evolution, this method happens).

You're using an example to 'test' for a specific chain reaction outcome. I won't dispute that it's near impossible for humans to reproduce the evolution that has come to be NOW, but we can perform smaller reproductions based on the overall direction of it to begin with.

If you belive in Intellectual design, an abstract from science, then this is near impossible because we cannot create the 'exact' result in our random testing. However, if you approach it as a 'we were a result', then getting 'us' again isn't required... because getting any other result... just as long as it's a new result in an evolutionary direction, proves the theory.

If you predetermine the outcome of a multi-leveled uncontroled test, it could be possible to return the results as they happened before... if you are willing to wait the time it took for it to happen at first x the amount of possible outcomes (but I'd guess you'd be dead long before)

Edit: If you test without intellectual design, all that must be done is to show things can evolve... not reproduce a 'designed' outcome. (had to clarify)

Quote:Original post by OpenGL_Guru
if you are talking about a fish you are talking about many multiple times that for the odds. and humans?? unimaginable.

If the universe is constantly expanding and collapsing (a popular theory) then effectively there is infinte time for the chances you are talking about to happen.

I read the responses to the claims on that site, and they aren't very good.

responses to protein transport:

Quote:
Despite the complexity of the system that Behe describes, protein transport need not be that complex. Some proteins direct their own secretion so that no transport mechanism is necessary (see references in Ussery 1999). Certainly, other simple systems that could serve as precursors to vesicular transport should be possible.

Seems like a big "what if".

Quote:
Many of the proteins involved in transport in eukaryote cells have molecular "ancestors" in bacteria. These molecules, the ABC transporters, serve in a much simpler system. If Behe is interested in the simplest system that accomplishes a function, why does he not even mention them?

ABC transporters aren't simpler, just different. In fact, they can be said to be even more complex because they require 4 subunits instead of 1 subunite for eukaryotes. The microscopic details of substrate recognition, transport mechanism and energy coupling for ABC transporters are still almost obscure. Only a few plant transporters and their substrate specificities have been analysed in detail (Martnoia et al., 2002).

To use this in response isn't viable, IMO.

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Irreducible complexity is not an obstacle to evolution and doesn't imply design.

A very generic statement, so I clicked the "not an obstacle to evolution link" here are my thoughts on those responses:

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Irreducible complexity can evolve. It is defined as a system that loses its function if any one part is removed, so it only indicates that the system did not evolve by the addition of single parts with no change in function. That still leaves several evolutionary mechanisms:


deletion of parts
addition of multiple parts; for example, duplication of much or all of the system (Pennisi 2001)
change of function
addition of a second function to a part (Aharoni et al. 2004)
gradual modification of parts

All of these mechanisms have been observed in genetic mutations. In particular, deletions and gene duplications are fairly common (Dujon et al. 2004; Hooper and Berg 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000), and together they make irreducible complexity not only possible but expected. In fact, it was predicted by Nobel-prize-winning geneticist Hermann Muller almost a century ago (Muller 1918, 463-464). Muller referred to it as interlocking complexity (Muller 1939).

Evolutionary origins of some irreducibly complex systems have been described in some detail. For example, the evolution of the Krebs citric acid cycle has been well studied; irreducibility is no obstacle to its formation (Meléndez-Hevia et al. 1996).

We're talking about a complex system going from nothing to existense, not a complex system evolving from already functional to something else. The possibility of slow formation for something like citric acid cycle doesn't blanket over all other examples.

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Even if irreducible complexity did prohibit Darwinian evolution, the conclusion of design does not follow. Other processes might have produced it. Irreducible complexity is an example of a failed argument from incredulity.

"Yeah, well it doesn't prove you right, either!" Weak argument. To me, god of the gaps was made up so that evolutionists would have a phrase to negatively associate with creationists viewpoint. Weak, IMO. Same thing happened in J2EE. Everybody was using EJB's even when the situation didn't warrant the complexity of EJBs. So someone decided to coin the term POJO - plain old java object, now it's all the rage.

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Irreducible complexity is poorly defined. It is defined in terms of parts, but it is far from obvious what a "part" is. Logically, the parts should be individual atoms, because they are the level of organization that does not get subdivided further in biochemistry, and they are the smallest level that biochemists consider in their analysis. Behe, however, considered sets of molecules to be individual parts, and he gave no indication of how he made his determinations.

They're reaching here...I think it would be whatever fits the scope of the system in question. Some will require further breaking down to atomic level, some wont. It doesn't change the complexity of the overall system, or the interdependency of it. Why is this a counter-argument?

Quote:
Systems that have been considered irreducibly complex might not be. For example:
The mousetrap that Behe used as an example of irreducible complexity can be simplified by bending the holding arm slightly and removing the latch.
The bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex because it can lose many parts and still function, either as a simpler flagellum or a secretion system. Many proteins of the eukaryotic flagellum (also called a cilium or undulipodium) are known to be dispensable, because functional swimming flagella that lack these proteins are known to exist.
In spite of the complexity of Behe's protein transport example, there are other proteins for which no transport is necessary (see Ussery 1999 for references).
The immune system example that Behe includes is not irreducibly complex because the antibodies that mark invading cells for destruction might themselves hinder the function of those cells, allowing the system to function (albeit not as well) without the destroyer molecules of the complement system.

I don't see how this is a counter-argument either. The point is that if they were to break down into smaller parts they no longer can function as the whole. Just because a simpler flagellum can exist or a secretion system, they don't retain the original function that they could perform as a whole.

Quote:Original post by Drazgal

Quote:Original post by OpenGL_Guru
if you are talking about a fish you are talking about many multiple times that for the odds. and humans?? unimaginable.

If the universe is constantly expanding and collapsing (a popular theory) then effectively there is infinte time for the chances you are talking about to happen.

How did the universe start expanding and collapsing though? When did time start to even define infinite time? How did the first force, molecule, atom, etc. come into existence? Science will never answer those questions. The odds from going to absolute nothing (I mean no physical forces, nothing) to something are 1 in infiniti.

Quote:Original post by Chris81
How did the universe start expanding and collapsing though? When did time start to even define infinite time? How did the first force, molecule, atom, etc. come into existence? Science will never answer those questions. The odds from going to absolute nothing (I mean no physical forces, nothing) to something are 1 in infiniti.

Time is a human-made concept to explain the passage of matter through space. The only way someone can answer that question, is to assume that 'time' actually did start. Just because humans expire, does not mean that matter can.

You believe there is an eternal afterlife (or so I've gathered from reading, correct me if I'm wrong), why is the concept of endless post existance alright, but endless preexistance impossible?