How does Complexity demonstrate Design

Well, I'm not entirely sure what you mean, exactly. Do you mean, can a blind person make a watch? I imagine so.Did you mean, can random mutation and natural selection give rise to complex, functional systems? Yes, it very much can and does. Genetic algorhythms are at work in a number of different fields, including electronics and aeronautical engineering. Often the eletronic circuits created by these evolutionary processes are so complex that the precise details of their function are beyond our understanding.So, if the "blind watchmaker" is the mechanism of evolution, then I'd say it has a better chance of working than anything humans could make. Why on Earth would we bother, since random mutation and natural selection are more than sufficient explanations for the complexity we observe?

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BREATHE DEEP THE GATHERING GLOOM

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Michael Polanyi noted some years ago, both machines and living systems transcend simple explanations based on the laws of chemistry and physics, requiring as they do highly improbable initial conditions or time independent boundary constraints (Polanyi 1967)....Polanyi argues that living systems are far more complicated than the machines of people...

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True, but also old news. This is from 1967!!! The ecological and data sciences approaches to complex systems have answered many of these concerns; as have the concepts of emergent phenomenon and synthesis. So sure; the explanations were not simple, they were complex... but thats normal enough.

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The similarity between such information in nature and the production of information by human intelligence argues persuasively for an intelligent creator or designer.

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No, it doesn't in any sense. The similarity of our designs and natures designs are unsuprising because... we are an expression of nature! We design things natures way... becuase we are ourselves a natural product.

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[Michael] Polanyi argues that living systems are far more complicated than the machines of people and thus provide an even greater challenge to the observer to explain their existence in terms of natural laws alone.

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In assuming that the degree of complexity alone is the sign of intelligent design, Polanyi makes what I call the Rube Goldberg Fallacy. Michael Behe himself used an exhibit of one of Goldberg's maniacally complicated contraptions in Darwin's Black Box to illustrate the exact same point: if something is really complex, it must have been designed by an intelligence.I have to admit to being slightly embarrassed whenever I point out the irony that evidently eluded Behe: no intelligent designer whatsoever would design the sort of circuitous, redundantly complex structure to perform a simple task the way Goldberg's designs do. That's the humor in the cartoon, and that's the fallacy laid bare. The sort of design we see in Nature is monumentally, bizarrely, redundantly, needlessly complex. This makes it even more probable that the design is the product of millions of years of step-by-step modifications by a process with no foresight.regards,
Esteban Hambre

I am curious because ID and creationism are mutually exclusive when you think the precepts through to their logical conclusions.Therefore a creationsist arguing for ID is arguing against creationism.In fact taking ID to its logical conclusion means that it would accept the scientific evidence from every possible field to verify the concept.There is also no explicit or implicit need to involve a biblical view in ID, and this renders any reference to the bible irrelevant to the concept.Call me a skeptic, but it seems to me that most people are confused about ID, especially those who promote it.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Nice paste job with the blue text. If the author were here it might be worth looking at. If you paraphrased it or extended it with your own thoughts, it might be worth looking at. Otherwise it is a violation of the guidelines. Beliefs? The belief involved is in the operation of the scientific method. If there were another theory that explained the same data with the same or greater degree of accuracy and if it was testable to determine if it were in fact a more rational explanation of the scientific data, then, yes, hardcore scientists would accept it as a more valid theory.That is after all how science works.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

More blue blocks of pasted work of others .... with little personal contribution.The first block is simply the argument from incredulity, and is no evidence of anything except possible a failure of imagination. It also seems to come from a site with no real university affilitation ("we don't have classrooms or grant degrees") nor does the author appear to have a degree in biology (material science and mechanical engineering strangely do not qualify).The second block appears to be a statement of opinion, and is from a site that advertises "Integrating Science and Faith" and is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists ("The Institute uses both science and revelation to study the question of origins because it considers the exclusive use of science as too narrow an approach. The Institute serves the Seventh-day Adventist church in two major areas: research and communication."). It is curious that the "professor" of Biology and Paleontology is not listed with any kind of degree.I point this out because you ask if we should accept work of other scientists(while admitting that you are not one).For this question to be valid the work of needs to be verified as (1) being scientific, and (2) actually done by scientists in their field of expertise. The usual forum for this is in peer reviewed scientific journals.Note that any preconception of results invalidates work as scientific.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Look, jackass, I can read your posts, ok? I don't have to quote the whole damn missive just to prove to you I read the whole thing, ok? The point of quoting isn't to duplicate your entire post, which is a waste of forum resources (this shit has to get stored on someone's hard drive, get it?) and a waste of time. What "scientific research" do you think there could be that would disprove the fact that evolutionary algorhythms are at work creating complexity beyond that of human design, when that's exactly what's happening? That was, after all, my assertion. Should DarkStar be required to actually address his opponents position instead of posting irrelevancies? Apparently not.AbE: I'm sorry, DS. It was inappropriate of me to call you a jackass. I apologize for being a jackass. But you really need to let go of the quoting thing. How much people quote from your post is not indicative of how much they've read, and it's rarely an attempt to misconstrue or misrepresent your post. It's just an attempt to save space.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-22-2004 10:26 PM

If you keep up the little games you won't be playing anymore. And don't whine about being called names that describe your behaviour. Your "contributions", in annoying colors aren't all that valuable.

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BREATHE DEEP THE GATHERING GLOOM

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Actually, DNA is very, very simple

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- There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to
store the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, 3 or 4 times over.- The amount of information that could be stored in a pinheads volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from the earth to the moon.- No one could believe a computer could make itself into such a complex almost thinking type machine, no one would say well maybe in a million yrs anything can happen, yet a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information than a 40gig hard drive.- The genetic code is not the outcome of raw chemistry, but of elaborate decoding machinery. Such a system must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity, this means that it is impossible to be built on natural selection working with small changes.- This complexity is evidence of a designer. A house which can be built with just basic materials could never be believed well through natural processes it happen on its own. We know it must have been designed. This is why complexity is evidence of design, & design is evidence of a designer.

You wouldn't be about to quote mine, would you? Please tell me you aren't. What on Earth would be the relevance of quotes from scientists on this issue?If you have evidence, lets see it. If you want to see ours, ask. But you can't wave away the evidence we have by virtue of misquoting a scientist so that it sounds like we don't have any.For a guy who's always whining about his posts being chopped up and misconstrued, one would think you wouldn't be so hypocritical as to do the same to scientists. Then again there's no evidence you're interested in honest debate, now is there? (You can quote me on that if you like.)

Quote mining is an old trick used by the unscrupulous. The fact is that science is open to new ideas, all they need to do is follow the rules of the scientific process: hard data analysis generates a theory that results in a prediction that if false disproves the theory but if true validates it until a better theory comes along that does a better job. That is all that is required. Don’t whine about belief and not being accepted, just do the work. What you imply about hardcore evolutionists (a term that shows bias btw) does not apply to true scientists, and while it may apply to some non-scientific people it has no effect on the science of evolution. Science is founded on the scientific work, not on the people and what they believe: it is the evidence, theories, predictions and tests of the theories that make the difference.Just so you know what I mean about unscrupulous quote mining, your posts could be combed over and quoted to show you support evolution.I also reiterate that creationism has a basic conflict with the concept of ID, and that ID properly pursued would be totally unbiased in its acceptance of all branches of science, and their scientific data, facts and theories. If you want to discuss this aspect further, there is a topic on this at http://EvC Forum: Is ID properly pursued?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Why? All you have posted is that you find it incredible to believe that DNA could have evolved, but you give no evidence of it being impossible.This is just argument from incredulity and evidence of a lack of imagination.DNA is assembled from amino acids, not atom by atom, and there are only 20 that are used, each of them readily available. See http://www.serv.net/~only1egg/biology/amino.htmlYou can look at a kaleidoscope from two ends: from one it appears to show an intricate pattern, while from the other it is just a jumble of beads. The jumble is the reality, the pattern is in the eye of the beholder, and is not the physical reality.apparent complexity is often just viewing the pattern through a narrow lens.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

You know, I'd like to see your little quotes. I'd like nothing better than to go over each one and show how you've taken them all out of the appropriate context in a cynical attempt to style evolution as a "theory in crisis" or some such.Go on. Do it. I dare you.