My, your understanding of irreducible complexity seems a bit shaky. Did you read DBB?
Yes I did read his book, as well as most of the early ID literature. Contrary to your opinion I am not using an argument from authority, that could only happen if I thought they were right about a subject. The only thing I am appealing to is that the definitions they coined, they may in fact have a stated opinion on which is valid.
Behe used IC and in discussing it within his book, clearly made the point that there is a difference between complex-dependent systems (your monkey example) and an IC system. He did argue that it is possible for evo theorists to reject organ level systems as IC because of the various plausible routes for natural development.
Yes he did use some macroscopic examples but they were analogies. He made clear that they were analogies. Your monkey works as an analogy of, and not as an example of, IC.
IC systems could not evolve because any one part is useless without ALL the parts already present. Tell me what your logic is on this evolution: Why would a heart evolve to pump blood that did not yet exist? But why would a kidney evolve before it had blood to clean and before a heart was there to pump it to the kidney and why would lungs evolve before veins and arteries were present to carry the blood with hemoglobin already present in it for the lungs to oxygenate? Why would plasma and hemoglobin evolve before lungs were already present to oxygenate the hemoglobin or before a heart was there to pump the slurry? This is a vicious circle that a 3rd grader could comprehend.
A heart may have started as a muscle to pump water, or rather nutrient rich water through a system. A kidney may form to filter toxins from the water, or not have formed later, after the heart had formed internal channels for greater nutrient distribution and eventually closed off from the main opening through a connection to "lungs".
There is no viscious circle here. It is true that I personally, and perhaps no one ever will, know exactly what order or function each organ had before its present state. However it is simple incredulity to say that they must all have initially started as is, and altogether.
Finally, Darwin said in OOS: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
I fail to see where you provided a demonstration that any of those organs much less the system of organs COULD NOT POSSIBLY have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications.
All you said is that you cannot imagine what any POSSIBLE route was, appealing to the intellectual capacity of a third grader as your authority.
I'm afraid that whatever conditions you wish to throw at the scenario, the math of chemistry states that my math, as presented, is correct.
Yes, I suppose it MIGHT if that is all there was to any reaction. But the real world does not present such straightforward reactions. And as it stands your description of equilibrium is a bit stretched.
It certainly is NOT the case that an equilibrium is 50/50 anything, or must necessarily be such. Environmental conditions will change what is equilibrium and equilibrium is a balance of exchange (so proportions stay equal) not equal quantity of products on each side.
I find it interesting that you are discounting the role of environment and catalyzers as irrelevant. Could you then explain what they are and what they do in a reaction and so how a hypothetical catalyzer could never help in the creation of complex hydrocarbons?
All that ID does is assert that there is more than one epistemology in which to observe and investigate certain phenomena.
That is the first thing you have said that I agree with. ID is interested in changing the epistemological rules underlying science in order to get their theory accepted, rather than finding the evidence within current scientific methodology to get their theory accepted.
Finally, ID does not necessitate a more complex entity that is not described
How could a designer NOT be a complex entity? It had to use complex systems to generate its products, correct?
In any case if you do reject a more complex entity, then I take it you firmly reject Dembski's ID theory?
I anxiously await those mathematics.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that. My point has been, from the standpoint of someone who has modelled chemical systems, that such calculations are impossible, or at the very least practically impossible.
In order to create a model of anything, one must have knowledge of the system to be modeled. One cannot say I will model how system X came to be, when by definition the history of X and all factors which may have played a part in creating X are unknown.
You certainly can calculate the probability of a freestanding one jump creation of a molecule given some hypothetical initial conditions. But that is totally different than modeling the history of how a specific molecule may have developed within a complex universe where we are not sure of all ACTUAL initial conditions.
The best you can get now is a statistic which shows we do not know what conditions are necessary to form X, not that we do know no conditions are possible for X to have formed. There is a large difference between the two.
Which is the simplest answer to the questions of origins, that all of life sprang from some unknown ameboid magically morphing through a series of speciations upward and over the highway of complexity through reptiles to mammals and all of that rig-er-ma-roe or that it was simply designed-end of story. Sure you want to bring Occam into the scenario?
Yes, as the question you phrased is inaccurate. Indeed I see little resemblance between that and ID theory. Even ID theory accepts change within species, and between species and your theory reduces to each creature being hand crafted.
Indeed I find the use of the term "magic" in the evo account rather pointed to how fraudulent your comparison is.
Here is how it stands...
Put simply, we know that living organisms reproduce, and there are changes from one generation to the next. We also know that environmental factors can help determine the "strength" of any change and so its maintenaince within a population. Over time that can result in an overall change in the average characteristics of a population. There is no known barrier to how much change can occur over great periods of time.
We also know that all of the factors which determine change and self-sustainability within complex hydrocarbons and biological organisms are not known.
We also know that we have absolutely NO evidence of a creative force of some kind in the Earth's ancient past.
Thus Occam's razor would prefer a stance that while we do not know exact mechanisms for speciation and abiogenesis, they were the result of natural mechanisms some known and some unknown, rather than being the result of a wholly unknown designer (which itself must have undergone a form of abiogenesis and speciation) using unknown mechanisms to build each species.
I think that would be pretty obvious.
Hmmm...We shall quickly see who is for real when it comes to chemistry.
What did anything you have to say, show anything about whether you know chemisty or more importantly, enough to statistically model abiogenesis?
You said the 2nd law works against abiogenesis, I gave you one singular example to address and you ignored it, to instead describe endo and exo thermic reactions.
Yes there are those types of reactions, so what? How does the 2nd law work against the possibility of abiogenesis?
I'm not going to waste my time showing how hypothetical chemical reactions cannot occur when you haven't shown chemically how they do.
My point is that NO ONE has the ability to calculate whether abiogenesis is naturally occuring or not.
I have given you examples of impediments to your calculations and you hand me back tiny bits of chemistry that have no bearing on my examples.
You are quickly becoming dull. Do you or do you not admit that such calculations will have to take into account environmental conditions, including location specific conditions such as chemical compositions and quantities?
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
™ Version 4.2