On 21-4-2011 1:01, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 4/20/2011 3:26 PM, andrel wrote:
>>> But there's a reference to intelligence and design. "This protein could
>>> not have evolved", even if found, does not imply "someone designed it."
>>
>> But in all likelihood it would imply that it's presence would be easier
>> explained by assuming it was designed. By someone, something, a
>> committee, or a mad scientist.
>>
> Sadly, you can make a similar argument with the bridge analogy. That
> bridge, since there is no way it could stay up if you removed certain
> things, "could not have been designed", so it must QED be a natural
> formation. The only reason we don't hear people making this sort of
> moronic claim is purely bias. In both cases, the correct answer is, "We
> don't know what scaffolding may have existed, which allowed it to
> evolve/be built." In either argument, lack of understanding of how it
> could have formed doesn't prove the assertion that one or the other
> solution is true. Only finding, a) in the case of DNA, a species that
> still has part/all of the precursor, b) figuring out how such a
> precursor might have happened, or c) in the case of a bridge, watching
> someone build a similar one, gets you any place. What doesn't get you
> any place? Postulating that some invisible architect, alien, god, or
> otherwise, simply "inserted" the whole, complete, design into the genome
> (or dropped a complete bridge in place), without themselves using some
> sort of scaffolding to do it. Frankly, it doesn't matter if they used
> mental scaffolding and then just sequenced the gene from that, or
> anti-gravity beams, to lift the rocks. You still need some sort of
> "process" to get the result.
>
> ID's central premise, sadly, is that it just "poofed" into being. Hell,
> even the ones arguing "front loading", fail to grasp that any such
> "master genetic code", to avoid breaking the organism fatally, while
> inserting new features, has to take clear steps, in which it replaces
> parts of the system, only as possible, before reaching and end result.

I know it would be hard to find a sensible way to construct something in 
such a way that it could not have been evolved. Precisely because your 
bridge example is a known pitfall (and the paragraphs above therefore 
effectively a strawman argument). But simply the fact that you believe 
it is not possible does not mean you have in any way proven it to be so. 
Man and nature are often more inventive than either of them would have 
though.


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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