On 23-4-2011 0:03, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 4/21/2011 3:35 PM, andrel wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> Which then brings up Russel's Teapot. Its that a strawman argument, but
> an accurate description of the problem. There is no logically
> conceivable way that you can construct something in genetics where it
> just appears, any more than with a bridge, so trying to find one that
> did is like chasing invisible teapots. Its a useless pursuit of
> something that you can't be 100% sure doesn't exist, but for which there
> are lots, and lots, of evidence to suggest that its simply an
> unnecessary complication to go hunting for it.
>
> The first step, if you want to hunt for such a thing, is to come up with
> a plausible description of what, and where, it will be found. Given a
> few thousands years, some idiot is bound to find a teapot (if for no
> other reason that that by then some other idiot will have accidentally
> left one in an airlock, before someone else went EVA). By the same
> token, if some clown keeps hunting long enough, they are bound to find
> something "designed", but not because DNA was designed, but because
> someone actually inserts some designed DNA in someone/something, then
> dies, or something, without telling anyone.
>
> Its the only conceivable condition where you can spend your time looking
> for the genetic equivalent of Bigfoot, and actually find something that
> isn't a man in a gorilla suit.

The problem here is that every argument you use assumes that everything 
evolved in a natural way. If you assume that (or even if you know that 
it is a fact,) then everything is entirely clear. But it all falls apart 
if you start from the other assumption.
Somewhere in my library is a book I inherited from my father. It gives a 
number of arguments that proof that God does exist. Very convincing,... 
if you believe God does exist. I found most of them amusing and/or 
interesting but none was convincing.

So unless you have a proof of evolution that convinces even the die hard 
creationists then we better leave it at that. You don't have to convince me.


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

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