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Author
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Topic: Michael Behe's Mousetrap Revisited
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John A. Davison
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Member # 1425
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posted 07. January 2005 19:26
Jim Skipper
I note from your post that you indicate that evolution is in progress by using the present tense when you mention how IT WORKS. There is no evidence anywhere that it is in progress and to assume that it is indicates an abysmal failure to understand the fossil record and decades of experimental biology. The Darwinians long ago abandoned any further attempt at experimental evolution and instead just assume that it must be so. That is hardly a rational position. Darwinism in all its manifestations is a myth without a shred of experimental or observational support. In my personal opinion it is the greatest hoax in the history of science. That is why I have offered an alternative hypothesis, one that recognizes the realities revealed by molecular biology, animal and plant morphology and chromosome mechanics.
John A. Davison
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Darel R. Finley
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posted 07. January 2005 20:22
quote:
Jim, Yes, we can ask who designed the intelligent designer, but it is not critical to our claim. The theists have a simple answer: God does not need a designer, God always existed. My opinion is that if anything at all has always existed, it might just as well be the universe, as God. So, I believe that the universe and the life in it has always existed. I think that the concept of time is a human convention, certainly not even present in lower forms or in plants. We have to get past the notion that everything has to have a beginning. Of course, the ultimate question is: "why is there anything at all, instead of nothing?"
Human science:
The idea that this universe and the life in it have always existed is, I think, not very compatible with the available evidence, as probably almost everyone (evolutionist or ID) would agree. Should we abandon science just because mice and plants cannot practice it?
Ultimate causes:
If Dembski's fourth law of thermodynamics is correct, then the designer must be at least as complex as the designed. That would mean that either there is an infinite amount of complexity preceding us, or at some point as you go back in time, it stops increasing.
That might imply some sort of all-knowing, originator god, but if so, I'm betting that it's at least two levels above this universe, not the one level above that Christian-leaning ID-proponents like to imply. While we can make some scientific inferences about what lies one level above our universe (that's the premise of ID, anyway), going up another level is most likely sheer speculation; beyond the scope of our science.
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Jim Skipper
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posted 08. January 2005 09:32
John,
You demonstrate a fact that I observer among many IDers, as I mentioned in my previous post. You have to get out of the 19th century.
Modern evolutionary scientists are not Darwinians. Modern evolutonary theory is not Darwinian. Evolution has been observed, from simple variation within as species as a response to environmental changes to true speciation.
You do not even have to read scientific journals to know this. The Autumn 2004 issue of the Wilson Quarterly reports on the finding of new species of finches on the Galapagos island that have appeared since Darwin's study.
There is far more evidence for evolution than there is for intelligent design, which is based on a single comjecture.
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Jim Skipper
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posted 08. January 2005 10:09
Charlie Wagner said:
quote:
This intelligence is required to be more complex and more technologically advanced than any organisms we know about, but it does not rquire me to address the problem of primary cause, or any infinite regression of designers any more than proposing evolutionary theory requires evolutionary biologists to address the problem of abiogenesis.
There is a major difference. Modern evolutionists can legitimatley claim that there only area of interest is evolution from the starting point of life and not the starting point itself.
But ID is quite specifically about the origin of life, but, more significantly, it is based on a specific idea: complexity implies design and a design requires a designer. That is a very different claim than the evolutionist's "new species can arise through genetic mutation, genetic interchange, etc."
Evolutionary theory can only be applied to things that carry genetic information (not necessarily just life forms, since most people do not consider viruses alive, but the carry genetic information, reproduce and evolve).
On the other hand, "complexity implies design" can applied to any complex system, from bicycles, watches and mousetraps to plant to humans to intelligent designers. It is a more general, more widely applicable principle. To say that it cannot or should not be applied to the Designer requires some better explaination than the Designer is out of our scope.
Intelligent Design just does not give us information or the tools to better understand our universe. It does not actually explain the origin of life or how the genetic code works. It just adds another inexplicable mystery. The intelligent designer might as well be God because it raises all the same questions. What is ID like? Where does ID live? What kind of place is heaven?
I grant you that modern science is full of mysteries. The jump from proteins (which we have proven can arise spontaniously) and organelles (which are inevitable from basic organic chemistry) to full blown cells is a scientific challenge. The present theories of the nature of the universe and its origins seem a little far fetched (I am convinced physicists are barking up the wrong tree).
But, Intelligent Design leaves us with all of those same challenges and adds to it an inexplicable Designer.
I realize that there are a couple of levels of Intelligent Design proponents. There those who apparently only suggest that the ID designed life using available materials and those that believe the Designer created all the materials also. It is difficult for me to separate out the two ends of the spectrum so I end up usually working with the more encompassing version.
As an aside, thanks Darel for introducing me to this site. I enjoy these discussions and just wish I had more time to read all the other posts and get more involved. Thanks to the guys who run this.
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John A. Davison
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posted 08. January 2005 18:56
Jim Skipper
You are obviously an incorrigable irretrievable Darwinian. Furthermore, your condescending manner has no place on this or any other forum. Darwin's finches are, as far as has been experimentally and observationally determined, all one species. The phasic and freely reversible changes in bill size are nothing but transient responses to a change in the diet on which the finches subsist. Those changes have been further correlated with variations in rainfall. They have and had absolutely nothing to do with organic evolution. As for my citations of older references, it is necessary because I give credit where credit is due and it just so happens that there are no current scholars in the same league with those on whom my work depends. Nearly all contemporary evolutionists are Darwinian mystics, still clutching at straws in a vain attempt to save the most failed hypothesis in the history of science. You are obviously one of them. I most definitely am not, as I hope you have gathered. It is unfortunate that you insist on making your untenable position so obvious by dismissing out of hand the views of others. It reminds me of EvC, from which forum I am proud to say that I have been banned as I understand it for life. What a tribute. I treasure it.
John A. Davison
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John A. Davison
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posted 08. January 2005 19:20
Without Intelligent Design there could have been no evolution. To challenge Intelligent design is like challenging Newton's Laws of Motion or Mendeleef's Periodic Table. They too were designed. Newton and Mendeleef simply discovered what was always there. Discovery is all that science ever was or ever will be. Darwin and Wallace discovered absolutely nothing. They both just happened to have read the works of Charles Lyell and Thomas Malthus and as a result dreamed up the most failed hypothesis in the history of science. That Darwinian mysticism still persists is a scandal.
I challenge anyone to demonstrate a single example of a new species with a known ancestor having appeared in historical times. All that I or any other objective observer can see is rampant extinction with absolutely no evidence that any of the thousands of forms now extinct have been or are in the process of being replaced.
All concrete evidence indicates that evolution beyond the production of varieties or subspecies is a thing of the past. I have certainly not been alone in reaching that conclusion as anyone would realize if they would simply read that literature which the Darwinian evolutionary establishment continues to ignore. I have summarized some of that literature in the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis which still languishes here, ignored like all other challenges to the Darwinian fairy tale.
John A. Davison
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Darel R. Finley
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posted 08. January 2005 22:24
John,
quote:
Without Intelligent Design there could have been no evolution. To challenge Intelligent design is like challenging Newton's Laws of Motion or Mendeleef's Periodic Table. They too were designed.
I think you might be confusing two different kinds of design argument.
(a) The biocentric coincidences in physics and cosmology are use by IDers to suggest that this universe was purposely designed for life.
(b) Irreducible complexity and other problems (Haldane's dilemma, mosaics, ontogeny issues) suggest that life was purposely injected into this universe at various points in Earth's history over the past 4 billion years.
These arguments are very separate, in that (a) argues only for a life-prepared universe but has nothing to say about mutation-selection evolution, whereas (b) argues only for direct design of life but has nothing to say about whether the universe was designed for life (i.e. the designers might be evolved aliens from another planet).
Only when (a) and (b) are combined do we reach the conclusion that our bodies were directly designed by the creator(s) of this universe (or entities of the same realm).
quote:
Darwin and Wallace discovered absolutely nothing. They both just happened to have read the works of Charles Lyell and Thomas Malthus and as a result dreamed up the most failed hypothesis in the history of science.
Darwin was the first to propose natural (i.e. random) variation combined with natural selection as the mechanism of change, and that it could substitute for an intelligent designer. Even if it turns out to be wrong, I think it's still a great idea that is worth exploring. While I agree with you that Darwin's idea is most likely failing, how is it the "most failed hypothesis in the history of science?" All scientific hypotheses that fail are, I think, equally "failed."
It is perhaps scandalous that Darwin's theory was so heavily accepted for so long on little more than the coolness of the idea itself (and perhaps as an overreaction to religious scripturalism). But that's not entirely Darwin's fault. I remember reading somewhere that in his later years he bemoaned that the scientific community had made his theory into a religion.
(Jim -- you're welcome! It's fun to chat here when time allows.)
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Jim Skipper
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posted 09. January 2005 10:36
John, I have been meaning to read PEH, so I will make you a promise. I will read, think seriously about it and then respond, but I do want to clarify one point.
You seem to be saying that not just Life, but the fundamental physics of the universe (atomic structure, the fundamental forces, Newtonian physics, etc) were all designed and, I am guessing here, created by an Intelligent Designer. Am I reading your post correctly?
[ 09. January 2005, 10:39: Message edited by: Jim Skipper ]
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John A. Davison
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posted 09. January 2005 11:02
My proposals are mine alone. I do not represent any faction of IDers or anyone else. I am a loner by choice and nature.
I am intrigued by the proposition - if Darwin's ideas turn out to be wrong, a conclusion that I regard as established in his own day by St George Mivart and repeatedly decade after decade by some of the finest minds of two centuries. There is absolutely nothing in the Darwinian scheme that can be demonstarted to have any validity whatsoever beyond the establishment of varieties and perhaps subspecies. Natural Selection is demonstrably anti-evolutionary, serving only to maintain the status quo and even that only for limited periods of time. The vast majority of all species have become extinct without significant further change. Those that did undergo further change are the ones that became extinct the earliest. Those orthogenetic transformations were not the result of Natural Selection but were innate and irreversible.
There is not a single scrap of experimental or observational evidence that the environment in any way played a role in the emergence of new life forms. In my opinion, the entire Darwinian model is pure science fiction generated and perpetuated by those who, for purely ideological reasons, steadfastly refuse to accept the real facts as revealed by experiment and the fossil record. It must, and ultimately, will be abandoned as a meaningful instrument of organic change. Of that I am certain.
Of course that is just my opinion, one that is shared, apparently, by very few, a condition I regard as most indicative that I am on the right track.
"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
George Bernard Shaw
John A. Davison
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John A. Davison
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posted 09. January 2005 12:34
jim skipper
Once you have read the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis you will know what I believe. Until you do you will not. I feel no need to further clarify what I have presented over the course of the last 20 years in my published papers. I am happy to answer any specific question that relates to my work or that of my many predecessors. Actually what I or anyone else "believe" is of no consequence in any event. It is what we know that counts.
In the immortal words of Sergeant Friday (Jack Webb):
"Just the facts maam, just the facts."
John A. Davison
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Charlie Wagner
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posted 09. January 2005 13:08
Jim,
You are lumping me in with other "IDists" but like John Davison, I speak for no one but myself. In addition, you are attributing to me positions which I have never taken.
My position is very limited because I restrict it only to those conclusions which can be supported by empirical evidence. Summed up in one sentence, my position is that life could not have emerged and evolution could not have occurred without some component of intelligent input.
I stated my arguments and evidence here:
http://www.charliewagner.net/casefor.htm
In addition, the concepts of complexity and information are red herrings because both information and complexity can be generated by random processes. On the other hand, life has a quality called organization, in which multiple structures and multiple processes are integrated together in such a way that they support each other and they support the overall function of the system. This kind of organization cannot be generated by random processes, as demonstrated by Nelson's Law.
A minimum requirement, it would seem to me, for a theory to be considered would be some amount of empirical evidence, either observational or experimental. Darwinian evolution has none. What is often touted as evidence are fundamental principles of genetics, molecular biology and paleontology. All of these are legitimate disciplines and have great value to science. The mistake is thinking that these kinds of facts somehow support a scenario of gradual evolution by the random occurrence of accidental, fortuitous mutations, under the sorting of natural selection.
While it is clear that mutations occur and also that gene frequencies can change under selective pressure, there is no explanation for how these changes are integrated into functional systems without intelligent guidance.
In all of my experience, I have never met anyone else who has the combination of views that I do on this subject. While I believe in intelligent input, I have no reason to believe in God, therefore I count myself as an agnostic. I would be perfectly happy to discover some as yet undiscovered natural principle that will explain the universe and the life in it.
http://www.charliewagner.net/conver.htm
In addition, I don't believe that life arose from nothing on a primordal earth but came here from elsewhere with all of the information necessary for life to unfold and that what we call evolution is actually the unfolding of an algorithm that was present in the first cells. I also agree with John D that this process is over and that no further evolution is taking place.
I'm also of the opinion that if anything in the universe has always existed, it might as well be the universe itself, so if I had to bet, I'd guess that the universe and the life in it has always existed.
Charlie Wagner
http://enigma.charliewagner.com
http://www.charliewagner.com
[ 09. January 2005, 13:11: Message edited by: Charlie Wagner ]
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Jim Skipper
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posted 09. January 2005 13:42
Charles,
I have definitely been meaning to read your website and I hope to get started today. I have just read John's PEH paper, but it left me with more questions than answers. Your site seems quite thorough, and so, as I stated above for John, I will forego further discussion of your ideas until I have read them and try to understand them completely, rather than trying to glean your ideas from these few postings.
But one quesion to help me on my way:
quote:
Nelson’s Law
Based on these observations and experiments, Nelson’s Law is proposed.
In its simplest form, Nelson’s Law states that “things do not organize* themselves without intelligent guidance”.
You stated Nelson's Law in an earlier posting in this thread. I do not know who this Nelson is and have not heard this "law" before. Is there some reference to it and the evidence that supports that you can point me to? Is it on your site.
The reason I ask is that you bring it up right after you talk about your grand-daughter's bicycle, and clearly a bicycle will *never* organize itself with or without intelligent guidance. A bicycle and all man-made items must be individually assembled by an intelligent actor.
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Charlie Wagner
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posted 09. January 2005 17:57
I am Nelson. Marshall Nelson to be exact, my alter-ego!
It is my law and I have proposed it. It is explained on my website and you can also Google on those words and my name (Wagner) on talk.origins.
A bicycle (or a camera or a car) can be assembled by non-intelligent robots, following the instructions in a guiding algorithm. That's how living organisms assemble new copies of themselves. The cellular machinery follows the instructions in the DNA.
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John A. Davison
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posted 10. January 2005 14:32
Charlie
While we agree on much, I am surprised you would say that life always existed. Do you reject a prebiotic earth? Do you reject the Big Bang? Even if one accepts an eternal universe, there is plenty of evidence that life appeared relatively late in the history of our planet. I see no merit in assuming life is elsewhere when there is no evidence for it. I am not at all convinced that random events can really generate meaningful information or organized structure especially on the living level.
These are just questions which do not really require answers but they did occur to me.
"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand."
Montaigne
John A. Davison
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Charlie Wagner
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posted 11. January 2005 09:52
John Davison,
I do reject the Big Bang theory. I usually reject any theory that gives you something from nothing. The whole problem of primary cause is solved very simply by assuming that the universe has always existed. If, as theists claim, God always existed, then in my view, if anything can have no cause and can have always existed, it might as well be the universe as God.
I don't reject the pre-biotic earth. Clearly, there was a time when there was no life on earth. But I don't agree that life bootstrapped itself into existence either. The only plausible explanation is that life came to earth from elsewhere, with all the information needed for its evolution on earth. I view the genome as something akin to an automaton, a robotic machine that can make any other biochemical machine provided it has the raw materials and the information. The information is coded into the genome, and this automaton uses whatever resources it has available to construct the necesssary biochemical machines that can survive in that environment (evolution). After unfolding all of these possible solutions, it then discards those that are inefficient or unsuitable (extinction). As you say, phase 1 is most likely over.
"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore". Richard Feynman
[ 11. January 2005, 09:53: Message edited by: Charlie Wagner ]
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