Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

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Come to that I'm shocked by the woeful lack of reading comprehension....

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Especially from someone who claims to be an expert in biochemistry. (Come to think of it, he hasn't shown much knowledge of biochemistry, either.)

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Hi ramoss, *****bingo*****. all humans beings can for certain say about the exisistance of the cosmos and the formulation of the things in it; is that it is here. From who or whence it came is totally speculative, nature is sufficient to to explain itself. If something intelligent exist that created nature then I will call that nature and natural as well.

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"One is punished most for ones virtues" Fredrick Neitzche

You do not need to do any experiment to prove this. Volumes and volumes of information is available about the structure and functions of the cell. All you have to do is to look up the information already available and find out for yourself if this is too simple to understand or it is extremely complex..

What does complexity vs simplicity have to do with what I said? Your response was a non-sequitor.I specificalliy asked on how to tell if somethign was "irreducibly complex", and why does I.C. means there is an intelligent designer.Can you answer the question? Or are you going to come back with another avoidance.This message has been edited by ramoss, 03-11-2006 05:12 PMThis message has been edited by ramoss, 03-11-2006 05:14 PM

Just taking a gander at this topic, but perhaps a way to test for IC systems might be to focus on the genome instead of the systems within a cell instead?Instead of focusing on removing individual "structures" within a cell focus on the genome. What i'm trying to get at maybe form an experiment where you systemically cut up a cell's DNA and resplice it together and do it at a numerous variety of positions in a variety of sequenses and then cut it down until the cell no longer functions. Then take a look at the least "functional" cell and see what it has.My knowledge in this particular area is minimal and i've no idea if this type of experiment is even feasible, i'm just throwing something out there for discussion sake, sides it sounds more objective then any real description of IC system i've heard of so far anyways.

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

So is this a yes to it being a feasibly way to test for an "IC system" and if it is, the hell are those Discovery instute people...why they fooling around with useless trains of thought?

The main problem is that depending upon which definition is being followed Irreducible complexity itself can either allow or disallow normal evolutionary pathways.The initial definition by Michael Behe, 'By irreducibly complex I mean a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.', is a perfectly usable definition and while it has a degree of subjectivity is probably quite sufficient for most people to agree on a number of things as being IC. The problem for the ID camp is that Behe's original definition has nothing to say about the evolvability of such systems. Behe uses their existence as an argument for another mechanism to be involved, but gives no compelling reason why already understood evolutionary mechanisms are not perfectly sufficient.William Dembski then redefined IC in terms of his own concept of Specified Complexity and redefines it in such a way as to rule out plausible evolutionary pathways.So we have two different froms, one which can be used but is useless and one which is not useless but is completely unusable relying as it does on numbers Dembski seems to have effectively made up off the top of his head and the ability to eliminate all natural evolutionary mechanisms as the source of the complexity, which seems rather redundant since if he could do that he wouldn't need to make an argument from SC/IC.I don't think your system would produce a way of studying IC by either of these definitions. Your eventual minimal cell might be IC as Behe defines it but it doesn't preclude prior simpler forms the vital components of which have since disappeared from the genome.TTFN,WK

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William Dembski then redefined IC in terms of his own concept of Specified Complexity and redefines it in such a way as to rule out plausible evolutionary pathways.

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Isn't Dembski's SC just warmed over incredultiy? I haven't actually read his stuff, but I got the impression that his schtick was to rule out possibilities that we were already aware of and knew were inadequate, then calculate the probability of it all coming together by pure chance.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

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.

Okay so then perhaps the first thing to do prior to actually even establishing any form of experiments would be to establish a clear cut strict agreeable definition.Notably i think the most productive thing to perhaps answering whether or not ID is testable is to generate a clear cut definition for it.Understandable that yes some groups resist the idea of ever even establishing such a clear cut definition. But for the sake of having some kind of productive discussion may be best to establish some form of definition that an experiment could be designed to test then?

The problem is that the momentum for such a definition must come from the ID camp. Those arguing for evolution cannot force the pro-ID movement to accept their definitions.Until those who claim to be interested in properly researching ID actually start coming up with both usable and useful definitions and actually doing something resembling science then there will be no scientific evidence for ID to discuss.At least Michael Behe has attempted, with his paper in collaboration with Snoke (Snoke and Behe, 2004), to produce a proper scientific approach to the question he wants to study. It is perhaps unfortunate for him that the research actually pointed out that his premise was incorrect and that the evolution of multiresidues protein features was in fact quite possible given a moderately large population, provided that realistic values were fed into his simulations in the first place.TTFN,WK

That shows Behe is at least more honest and realistic than Dembski. He is, however, still very very wrong. Behe DiD try to use the scientific method. Dembski trys to redefine things to make them work.

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We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 10(8) generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 10(9).

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If the 10(8), 10(9) are exponentials then I think the numbers are beyond "moderately large". A billion of a mammal is a LOT! Is that what that means?

That is what it means. But the initial figures plugged into the simulation to get those values were unrealistic, if you replace them with more realistic assumptions then you get much more tenable values. It is also worth bearing in mind that many of the fundamental functional protein domains are already present in species which have populations well in excess of 10^9 so it may be that you are much less likely to see the development of truly novel in long generation small population organisms, but that is entirely in line with what you would expect from a standard neo-darwinian view anyway.TTFN,WK