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ORIGINAL: unclemonkey

ORIGINAL:Method

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It's a very weak hypothesis right now, but scientists are investigating it right now.

Abiogenesis is nothing more than atheist dogma. Teaching school children that life arose by aboigenesis is brainwashing them with atheist dogma.

The response I constantly see to this is that schools only teach that life may have arisen via abiogeneses.
Well, if it is ok for schools to teach that then what is wrong with schools teaching also that the origin of life may require a supernatural source? After all, in all honesty science doesn’t have the answer and it is not scientifically proper to arbitrarily rule out any possibility.

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Also, abiogenesis is the only testable mechanism that science has right now.

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Trying to prove any of these like trying to prove man can't fly in 1776 only to smacked with news of the Wright Brothers success in 1903. In practice, an indeterminate amount of time can elapse, centuries or even millenniums, where one believes a false conclusion that is proven wrong by an unguided force.

Yes ID has a falsifiable premise. Unfortunately, instead of spending time in a organic chemistry lab attempting to create component, from random sub-components, that are considered irreducibly complex, ID proponents dwell on thought experiments that have pre ordained outcomes. ID proponents should spend less time refuting evolution and more time disproving ID. ID's only method of proof is to falsify other theories. I'd like to see other methods employed so we can move on from ID and get on with our lives.

Unfortunately, just because we can appear to simulate abiogenesis doesn't mean abiogenesis actually occurred.
Just because we can appear to simulate ID, doesn't mean ID actually occurred.

I think there is irreducible complexity, but I think irreducible complexity occurs at the sub-atomic size.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

ID has been positively proved more times than can be numbered; the question is, can it be falsified?

And you have confirmed that it is.

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ORIGINAL: unclemonkey

ORIGINAL:Method

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Also, abiogenesis is the only testable mechanism that science has right now.

What is testable about it?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Yep. Absolutely correct. Somethings cannot be known for certain.
My case is that ID's only method of proof is to falsify other theories, ID's only method of gaining plausibility is to make other theories implausible. That's a big mountain to climb.

Well, no, I can think of a couple of statements ID makes that are readily falsifiable.

The first would be that original information driven machinery cannot arise from unguided sources. The second is that the original cellular information systems and molecular machinery did not arise cannot arise by unguided forces. A third would be that objects that exhibit of irreducible complexity cannot arise from unguided forces. Another would be that structures or systems whose specified complexity exceeds the universal probability bound cannot arise by unguided forces. All of these are readily falsifiable.

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Oh yes, ID can be falsified, but ID proponent's only method of proof of ID is to falsify other theories.

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So, specifically just to be clear, are you saying DNA is irreducibly complex? When you say cellular info systems and molecular machinery I'm not sure what parts you mean.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Oh yes, ID can be falsified, but ID proponent's only method of proof of ID is to falsify other theories.

No, it's already been positively established.

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No it has not. That's why we sit here talking to walls.
ID has not been positively established as have occurred.
ID has not been positively established as the most probable explanation for current life.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
I don't know where you have been, but ID occurs everyday, and we have been observing intelligent designers produce information systems and irreducibly complex and specifically complex systems and structures for centuries; it is completely, absolutely, and positively established.

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Irreducible complexity: Has been shown that it wouldn't be impossible for evolution to build IC, if in fact we could actually find an IC system. It doesn't even follow that this idea is even a characteristic a designer would use. A ID theorists have failed to identify an IC system to date, to any degree of certainty.

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Specified Complexity: Been reading more on this... Apparently not even Dembski has put his own formula's through rigorous tests. Thankfully, some other researches have done some of his work for him, and found his formulas to be inadequate for detecting design and throw up false positives on objects of known natural origin. Nor has Dembski bothered to test his formula's on biological systems where the origin and evolutionary path is well pretty well established, vs those that arent... to you know... make sure his formula works. Furthermore, it relies on the tornado in a junkyard assembles a 747 argument.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Irreducible complexity: Has been shown that it wouldn't be impossible for evolution to build IC, if in fact we could actually find an IC system. It doesn't even follow that this idea is even a characteristic a designer would use. A ID theorists have failed to identify an IC system to date, to any degree of certainty.

It has never been demonstrated evolution could do this. Saying something is 'not impossible', and saying that something can happen, or exists, are vastly different things. It is not impossible that unicorns, Bigfoot (feet?), Loch Ness Monsters, etc exist – but that fact doesn’t demonstrate that they do indeed exist.

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Specified Complexity: Been reading more on this... Apparently not even Dembski has put his own formula's through rigorous tests. Thankfully, some other researches have done some of his work for him, and found his formulas to be inadequate for detecting design and throw up false positives on objects of known natural origin. Nor has Dembski bothered to test his formula's on biological systems where the origin and evolutionary path is well pretty well established, vs those that arent... to you know... make sure his formula works. Furthermore, it relies on the tornado in a junkyard assembles a 747 argument.

Specified complexity is merely the rational assertion that as a structure or systems increases in complexity and conformation to a pattern that has a purpose, the probability that intelligence was involved in it’s construction increases, and the probability that it could happen in an unguided manner decreases until it reaches approximately zero.

To understand this, consider this scenario –

You are walking along a beach and you see three sticks lying across each other so that there shape approximates the letter ‘A'. While that letter can be matched to a recognizable pattern with a purpose (in this case, an alphabet), that is it is specific, it is not particularly complex. The probability that intelligence was involved in its construction is fairly low, and the probability that the sticks washed up in that pattern is quite high.

Now, if you were walking along the same beach the next day and you saw a pile of sticks on top of each other that clearly conformed to a pattern that looked like this:

JOHN WAS HERE ON THIS BEACH YESTERDAY

The estimation would change – why? Well, because the specificity remained high, and the complexity increases considerably. So the probability that it happened as the result of unguided forces decreases, while the probability that intelligence was involved in the construction increases considerably. Eventually, the probability that a pattern with a purpose can occur without intelligence approximates zero – for example a Shakespearean sonnet composed on the beach from sticks.

So we find the same sort of patterns in nature, whether we are talking the genetic information found in DNA or the complexities of molecular machinery, or the overall organization of animal morphology – they are patterns that are high in specificity, and high in complexity – much higher than a sonnet. That means the probability of them occurring by known natural causes approximates zero.

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I understand that reasoning, but Dembski's formulas have been shown to throw up false positives over even some trivial examples. At the very least, I would think, even if his formulas could throw false negatives, they would at least not throw false positives so easily to be confident that they reliably detect design.

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Specified complexity is merely the rational assertion that as a structure or systems increases in complexity and conformation to a pattern that has a purpose, the probability that intelligence was involved in it’s construction increases, and the probability that it could happen in an unguided manner decreases until it reaches approximately zero.

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Specified complexity is the thought experiment foundation that ID rests upon. It is the giant Occam's Razor mis-wielded. "It's too complicated for my small brain to understand, somebody with a bigger brain must have done it". People who think this way build a roadblock that will stop scientific progress.

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ORIGINAL: swan42

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Specified complexity is merely the rational assertion that as a structure or systems increases in complexity and conformation to a pattern that has a purpose, the probability that intelligence was involved in it’s construction increases, and the probability that it could happen in an unguided manner decreases until it reaches approximately zero.

Specified complexity is the thought experiment foundation that ID rests upon. It is the giant Occam's Razor mis-wielded. "It's too complicated for my small brain to understand, somebody with a bigger brain must have done it". People who think this way build a roadblock that will stop scientific progress.

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There has been some interesting research response to claims of instances specified complexity that might not have have occurred as quickly without the pressure. Each of the subcomponents of bacterial flagellum have been demonstrated has having function separate from operating the flagellum.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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There has been some interesting research response to claims of instances specified complexity that might not have have occurred as quickly without the pressure. Each of the subcomponents of bacterial flagellum have been demonstrated has having function separate from operating the flagellum.

I know of one analog, but I have not seen any others (not that this in and of itself disproves IR of the flagellum)

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To name a few:
Type 3 Secretory System (TTSS for short) (that's the one you probably heard of)
motor protein MotA
motor protein MotB
the signal transduction protein is a common design (helps guide the bacteria toward food)

The complete modern flagellum in its modern current form is not irreducible experimentally. Some of the components are useful, but required for operation. Laboratory designed bacteria without L- rings, P- rings, FliH, or FliD still operate, though naturally occurring bacteria tend to have these components.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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To name a few:
Type 3 Secretory System (TTSS for short) (that's the one you probably heard of)
motor protein MotA
motor protein MotB
the signal transduction protein is a common design (helps guide the bacteria toward food)

The complete modern flagellum in its modern current form is not irreducible experimentally. Some of the components are useful, but required for operation. Laboratory designed bacteria without L- rings, P- rings, FliH, or FliD still operate, though naturally occurring bacteria tend to have these components.

And what exactly do you think the motor proteins correspond to in a flagellum?

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In any case, it only takes one example sub-component to prove that the most often touted example of Specific Complexity actually isn't. This doesn't disprove ID, it only means ID proponents need to work harder; they have a 170 year handicap to catch up with. It is possible that a sub-component could not be further reduced but ID proponents have not yet taken that path of logic with flagellum.

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Trying to hold the attention of a creationist back then that lacked enough education to communicate was very difficult. It will only get worse in this regard. Experts on evolution become more specialized and experts on (insert alternative to evolution here) cannot keep up with the details.

Most of those debates are now stale... the unexplainable became explained. I await with curiosity the next step in the debate over the origin of life. I'm sure the debate will never stop.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud


Most of those debates are now stale... the unexplainable became explained. I await with curiosity the next step in the debate over the origin of life. I'm sure the debate will never stop.

Actually, I think this is where you are distinctly wrong. As someone who was a biology major in the '80s and very involved with this debate from both sides, and has observed the trends ever since, I would have to say that the critics of evolution have become much more sophisticated (there was nothing like a Behe around then) and the evidence against evolution much more robust (especially with the onset of genetic sequencing); the trend simply isn't going toward a Neo-Darwinian view of the development of life.

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No .. no.. no disagreement. I'm not wrong, neither are you. I said the critics of evolution can't keep up. They follow, they learn, they get more sophisticated, but they can't keep up.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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No .. no.. no disagreement. I'm not wrong, neither are you. I said the critics of evolution can't keep up. They follow, they learn, they get more sophisticated, but they can't keep up.

I am not sure what it is you think they 'can't keep up with'; being wrong?