Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

Which is not alive. Computers are not even comparable to the complexity of even the simplest living thing.Which proves that living things cannot be the product of intelligence. No intelligence has the capability to create life. The complexity of life proves evolution - it's too complex to have been designed.

Actually, this is an exciting area of research - the search to create the "minimal" cell.

Well, not exactly. I'm sure that when the minimal cell is developed the ID advocates will assert that it is too complicated to have evolved without any evidence to support their position. Will they be right? Even if they are there's no reason to believe that our minimal cell is anything like the original minimal cell, so the fact that what we developed couldn't evolve doesn't mean that no minimal cell could have evolved.

Funny, but I see it completely disproving a major tenant of ID - that complex regulatory mechanisms (among other things) are too complex to come about by natural selection and random mutation. Since they did exactly that in the experiment, that's proof that ID is false, not that it is true.

But that's not what happened. The mechanism was not "elucidated", it was completely destroyed, and then a replacement developed from random mutation and natural selection.As I said, this disproves a basic canard of intelligent design - random mutation and natural selection cannot give rise to complexity. Since we directly observed them do just that in this experiment, that statement is proven false by observation. The experiment proves how it came about - random mutation and natural selection.

Huh? We can synthesize polypeptides of basically any arbitrary sequence. Here's one they did back in 1999, so this is hardly new:

quote:

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Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and the Hubble Space Telescope has captured pillars of it. Yet, scientists struggle to produce a cheap supply of hydrogen gas. Scientists have created a synthetic enzyme that produces hydrogen fuel, a breakthrough that could move the world closer to an energy-efficient, hydrogen-based economy.

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No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9910/15/hydrogen.enn/index.htmlJust like to point out that all I did was put "synthetic enzyme" into Google, and looked at the first of over 4 million hits. Maybe it would behoove you next time to do a little more research before you sweepingly assert what has or has never been done by scientists? Edited by crashfrog, : Taking out a spurious insult.

We observe new species all the time. Right, but the thing is - you're not looking very hard. You're so adamant that this is impossible that you don't even feel like you have to look and see if it's already happened.Arguing from your own ignorance isn't going to get you very far. An argument that's essentially "if this is true why haven't I heard about it?" isn't very compelling - you haven't heard about it because you choose to remain in ignorance rather than investigate the truth. Because it's really hard. But we're working on it, and we'll do it. Chemically. Why does the fact that we're still working on the problem mean that evolution is wrong?

I follow the first part, but not the second. In what sense does evolution need to be "acceptable"? Do you mean to say that you won't accept evolution unless the theory is changed in such a way that you don't find the conclusions of it so troubling?Honestly I don't see the relevance, here, of what is acceptable or not. The question is - what is the accurate model? Your plurality of exclamation points don't constitute an argument. Would you care to actually support this sweeping statement?

Oh, hardly. (Didn't you make this erroneous claim once before? I don't get the sense that you're actually reading the posts of your opponents. If you're not doing that, why are you even here?)Many bacteria use right-handed aminos in addition to the left-handed ones, so an equal mixture is hardly "biologically useless." There's no need to rewrite the laws of chemistry, as you asserted. All that is required is that you actually educate yourself about the chemistry of living things. Also? Glycine isn't handed - it doesn't have D and L forms. That's a pretty surprising mistake for someone who claims knowledge of chemistry to make. Can you explain this discrepancy?Edited by crashfrog, : Added fact about glycine.

You stopped being interesting when you started talking nonsense, so I don't think our discussion in that thread is going to continue. Plus that topic isn't of relevance to this one.Did you have a comment on the topic of this thread? Or a specific rebuttal to the points I raised in the post you just replied to?

Could you show your math?

What makes you think that (some) animals and machines aren't aware or aren't aware that they are aware? I don't follow your reasoning, here. From what evidence do you conclude that your intelligence is not the product of natural causes? It seems to me that it's quite obvious that natural causes produce intelligence; certainly there's nothing more natural than, or supernatural about, the process that humans use to produce additional intelligences - sexual reproduction and childrearing. Sure, you heard about it from somebody. What does that prove?

In fact, I know from experience that nothing scholarly can be found in any work by C.S. Lewis; moreover, C.S. Lewis had no education in cognitive science nor in comparative anthropology. Indeed, these two fields did not even exist until well after his death. What possible relevance could the writings of Lewis have on the matter? Response to stimuli strikes me as pretty objective, actually. Once again, the low caliber of Lewis-based argumentation is exposed. If evolution occurred, it should be sufficient to determine that it had simply by examining the evidence. And, to the surprise of no one but you, when we do look at the evidence, we see that it substantiates the evolutionary model and refutes all current challengers.So where's the paradox? Have you ever played a game of "Telephone"? Where do you suppose the faulty messages come from? God?No, they come from people's imaginations. Every messenger adds a little invention to the message, until the message is completely invention and bears no resemblance to the original message. It's not hard to imagine a game of telephone continuing into history, with the result that a countless number of elaborate, fantastic messages are developed from even the most prosaic of original messages (or, following the logic of Baudrillard, no original at all.) Good question, but beyond the scope of an internet post. Since you like to hand out reading assignments so much, I'll do you the same favor. If you want to understand the natural origin of God mythology, I suggest you pick up Danial Dennet's Breaking the Spell. Are you joking, or what? People love the idea of God. They can't get enough of it. They'll invent gods, if it helps them come to terms with the forces that they have no control over. For instance, the example of anorexia sufferers "deifying" their eating disorder, creating "Ana", the goddess of anorexia.No, really. Search the internet. You can find plenty of young people, a lot of them female, who talk about their personal relationship with Ana. If gods are real, why are they so easy to invent? I asked you to explain how that constitutes evidence for ID, but you completely ducked the question. The simple fact of the matter is that consciousness arises naturally from brains. It's what brains do.

He's not that good, though. No, really.And it really leaves you "speechless" to be confronted by an opinion that is different than your own? Seriously? You must be pretty sheltered.

Nonsense. The brain is the explanation. It's a pretty simple explanation - "brains are the organs that produce sensations of consciousness." Of what? Actually the lack of evidence is a pretty compelling reason to dismiss it, at least until there's some evidence. Why wouldn't it be? Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, after all. Now you're just repeating his assertion, and still the question I've asked is being ducked. Why is conscious awareness evidence against materialism? The fact that consciousness is only observed to exist under a specific, narrow set of material conditions seems to indicate the exact opposite. The ephemerality of consciousness is excellent evidence for materialism.