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.

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