I'll try to be brief to keep this from exploding ...
Touchy! You ask me to look at a LONG thread from like 15 years ago and with 10 years of comments on it. Then when I simply state I have some issues with the premises, you castigate me for not immediately detailing them in a somewhat unrelated thread?
Sorry I only expected you to deal with the initial post, should have been more specific. What I see is that you seem to be having the "
kaleidoscope problem" when you see design everywhere:
quote:
The search for the evidence of design must be done by those with the most capable trained "eyes" free of constrained perspectives - the most open and complete knowledge of the physical workings of the universe and all it contains ... matter, energy, life. Anything less will likely lead to mistakes or a lack of understanding to see the actual fingerprints of design.
Without as complete a base of knowledge as possible we could be looking at a watch with the mind of a frog, or we could be like a child, bemused by a kaleidoscope of pattern when there is none ... we could be unable to properly observe and evaluate the evidence before us.
Italics added for emphasis.
This fixation on living things is the same. Any designed thing should (obviously) be able to display the characteristics of design, and that thing would be distinct in some properties from non-designed things (again obviously). The only thing that is unique for humans in this endeavor is that we are the only available thing that is able to rationally identify the differences. But what designed a thing is a distinctly different question as to whether or not a thing is designed. ID aims to address only the latter.
Actually not obvious at all, as noted in the "kaleidoscope problem" -- if you are applying belief confirmation bias your results are biased. Observing known designs (from crow tools to whale bubble nets) involves knowing and understanding the sources of these designs, not in just looking at the end results, because there are no common design elements that say they are designed.
Ahh, but if you want to analogize your micro-trekking and macro-trekking to evolution, they are very different animals.
For one, evolution doesn't have a target. When you start from a point in your room, you cannot specify ahead of time a successful journey target, even if such a successful journey would take you to the other end of the room. Same applies to a trek across the US. You could not pre-specify that getting to CA from Maine is a successful trip, even if that happens to be true.
The analogy is to show how one, macro, is just an accumulation of the other, micro, not to be a perfect analogy of evolution.
Evolution has been compared to a drunken walk, and yes it has no target, but it does build up to the point that species have recognizably changed (which is what scientific macro evolution is). This has been observed to occur and thus it is factual, and not some untested hypothesis.
Unfortunately, the numbers for macro-evolution appear to be much worse than your trekking across the US.
An assertion like this without substantiating evidence is worthless babble. What numbers? What paradigm are these numbers based on? How is it measured and quantified?
Operative word is "purported" Turns out it isn't all that impressive as to evolving IC.https://www.discovery.org/a/441/
I listed some of the systems proposed by ID in another thread. You mean those haven't stood up to testing? Really?!? Where?
Indeed, I know of no IDologist's purported IC system that stands up to testing for being incapable to evolve. Your link to respond has also been refuted by Kenneth Miller. Look further than confirmation bias sites.
Body plans comprise the specific arrangements of specialized organs and tissues.
For networks, things like developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) that control the timing and expression of pre-existing genes during animal development.
All easy for evolution to explain:
And Tiktaalik isn't such a great example anymore, since tetrapod tracks were discovered that are 20 million years older than Tiktaalik.
The
timing is irrelevant, what is
relevant is the development of the quadraped body plan from the fish body plan, which is why it is easy for evolution to explain new body plans without resorting to ID interaction/s.
No, design elements would not have to be done via cross-fertilization. Unless you are assuming evolution is the method, there is no reason why that would have to be so.
The issue is that such cross-fertilization would show definite design that would differentiate it from evolution: if you don't have any test that differentiates design from evolution then you have an unnecessary embellishment and not a testable differentiation hypothesis (see
Occam's Razor), again with apparent confirmation bias and kaleidoscope eyes.
I doubt this. If it was viable, I'm not sure why we don't have human inventions that do this. ...
Actually we do have human inventions that do this, they are called zoom lenses for cameras and binoculars, which is why I use it as an example of a designed eye.
... Any design has to take into account certain trade-offs. You can't do everything equally well at the same time or via the same mechanisms.
Why not if design is involved?
Evolution exquisitely explains why each system is stuck within the nested hierarchy where they evolved, unable to cross-over to appear in an organism from a different nested hierarchy, and also why elements that are "good enough" are seen rather than optimized elements. Design should also seek to optimize rather than make do.
As mentioned by Tanypteryx (
Message 286) you might also want to look at
Silly Design Institute: Let's discuss BOTH sides of the Design Controversy... particularly
Investigator: Eye's Silly Design for a different viewpoint.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .
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