On 4/20/2010 1:49 PM, andrel wrote:
> On 20-4-2010 22:12, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 4/19/2010 12:54 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>>> Hmm. If you follow from your starting premise, maybe. The problem of
>>>> course that (3) is in error anyway. You can *get* irreducible systems,
>>>> without either needing them to be designed *or* previously existing.
>>>
>>> Certainly. And even if you found an irreducible system that you could
>>> *prove* could *not* have evolved on its own, that still doesn't point to
>>> the necessity of a God.
>>>
>>> After all, we already have systems like that. Indeed, the whole
>>> "watchmaker's" argument is predicated on the fact that the watch is
>>> indeed irreducible enough to need to be designed. It doesn't follow from
>>> that that God created watches.
>>>
>> Actually, think someone wrote as fairly simple gear program that
>> torpedoed that too.
>
> you mean the one in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0?
>
>> What is necessary is that change between versions be *possible*, and
>> that the thing in question produce such *copy versions*. Watches need
>> watchmakers, not because they are irreducibly complex, but because
>> watches do not copy themselves, with or without modifications. If they
>> did, they wouldn't need watchmakers either.
>
> perhaps also good to mention is that watches, like all technology, did
> actually evolve. If you look at one of the latest mechanical watched
> made, you can not understand how someone could design that from scratch.
> In fact you would need to retrace part of the history to understand that.
> Better, if you would try to make that watch or something similar from
> scratch (i.e. while you would also need to build the equipment to make
> the parts) you would probably fail.
> Why I find this fascinating? because to build something so refined you
> need to make tools and you need to make the tools to make the tools.
> Etc. And for some of the technology needed, the skills have been lost
> and left no fossils. Which gives an interesting twist to the watchmaker
> argument.
>

Well, that is true too. After all, it would be damn hard to find the 
"in-between" forms, i.e., fossil record, for the transition from candle 
clocks to water clocks, or water clocks to hour glasses (though that may 
be a bit easier), and its *very* unclear how you got from either of 
those to spring driven ones, never mind ones with the same gears as the 
spring driven ones, but a little battery and electric motor pushing the 
gears. So, yeah, you get some similar things happening in technology 
too, even *with* design.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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