Something was funky there for a while I think. I logged in with a different browser and was given another poster’s “hidden” email address. Not Good!

I’ll just leave you with two thoughts and a link.

One: As for the time scales involved making evolution more likely, you are seriously mistaken. There is a very well established science called Probability Theory which calculates the chances that something could likely occur. For life to have gotten started by chance, even giving all favorable conditions possible, it reduces the asserted 17 billion years of our universe to something like mere nanoseconds (less actually). It is astonishing. It makes all the estimated atoms in the entire universe look like nothing by comparison; nothing!!! Considering the almost complete lack of beneficial, not to mention the total lack of information gaining, mutations for natural selection to act on, the picture isn’t any better even if you start with an initial life form.

Two: I’m sincerely concerned when I see evolution advocates who are unaware of even basic empirical facts that even evolution believing scientists freely admit to. It screams that they have clearly not done the reading and research that they claim to have done, and shows their hypocrisy when they charge creationists/I.D. proponents with not doing the same. It is clear that they’ve only gone to the evolution advocates who predigest the “facts” for them. Unfortunately, these advocates are very reluctant to share anything that may upset their disciples total faith in the theory. Please understand that I’m not throwing stones here. I’m just surprised that you are apparently unaware that mutations are overwhelmingly negative (conferring disadvantages), sometimes neutral (providing neither advantage nor disadvantage), and so rarely are positive in any way that they virtually never occur.

This is where the link comes in: http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_ap01.asp

It is a very long article, and the information about mutations, well documented from evolutionary biologists, comes toward the bottom. This has been well known for a long time.

Again, I’m sorry to have to leave off here. If you’d like you can contact me through my blog.

I’m adding this last line in hopes that the WP duplicate post filter won’t eat this attempt also! Aaaargh!

I’ll just leave you with two thoughts and a link.

One: As for the time scales involved making evolution more likely, you are seriously mistaken. There is a very well established science called Probability Theory which calculates the chances that something could likely occur. For life to have gotten started by chance, even giving all favorable conditions possible, it reduces the asserted 17 billion years of our universe to something like mere nanoseconds (less actually). It is astonishing. It makes all the estimated atoms in the entire universe look like nothing by comparison; nothing!!! Considering the almost complete lack of beneficial, not to mention the total lack of information gaining, mutations for natural selection to act on, the picture isn’t any better even if you start with an initial life form.

Two: I’m sincerely concerned when I see evolution advocates who are unaware of even basic empirical facts that even evolution believing scientists freely admit to. It screams that they have clearly not done the reading and research that they claim to have done, and shows their hypocrisy when they charge creationists/I.D. proponents with not doing the same. It is clear that they’ve only gone to the evolution advocates who predigest the “facts” for them. Unfortunately, these advocates are very reluctant to share anything that may upset their disciples total faith in the theory. Please understand that I’m not throwing stones here. I’m just surprised that you are apparently unaware that mutations are overwhelmingly negative (conferring disadvantages), sometimes neutral (providing neither advantage nor disadvantage), and so rarely are positive in any way that they virtually never occur.

This is where the link comes in: http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_ap01.asp

It is a very long article, and the information about mutations, well documented from evolutionary biologists, comes toward the bottom. This has been well known for a long time.

Again, I’m sorry to have to leave off here. If you’d like you can contact me through my blog.

@Abby

Please provide a reference for your comment about atoms.

@Brent

My quick perusal of the links I included (I admit I did not read in depth) led me to think that they are saying that it is very likely, not that it is 100% the case, that the flagellum evolved from some similar prior forms.

Second, you state that the simpler forms are 99.9% certain to have evolved from the flagellum. Please provide references to the well-controlled, peer-reviewed studies that make provide evidence of this. Without providing this evidence, your argument cannot stand.

I actually read Behe’s testimony from the Dover trial, and he seems, well, a bit confused about what exactly ID is and what it addresses and doesn’t address. To say the least, he performed poorly on cross-examination.

And going back to one of my previous posts:

“If ID is a theory (in the scientific sense), what evidence does it have to support it? What predictions does it make? What research has been done to test those predictions, and what were the results? Please provide links to support your answers to these questions, so that readers may evaluate your evidence for themselves.“

These questions have yet to be answered.

The simple complexity of an object or system, by the way, cannot determine that the object or system was designed, created or constructed by an intelligence. For example, crystalline structures are incredibly complex (e.g., a snowflake). Their complexity is a result of various environmental factors acting on the materials. It may be possible that some intelligent force is acting on it, but we have no way of determining this. So, what contribution does a statement that an “intelligence designed this” make to science? Again, see my questions above.

What evidence, besides supposed irreducible complexity, is there for an intelligent designer? And even if something appears to be irreducibly complex, if one claims that it must have formed as a whole through intelligent guidance because it is so complex and we have not seen anything like it develop in such a gradual process, keep in mind that the time scale we’re talking about for such changes runs well beyond numerous generations of human existence and very likely predates humans by millennia. Given the time scales involved, I do not see any problem in small, seemingly insignificant changes eventually leading to a complex structure that may or may not be related to the function of the initial form.

And finally, the Theory of Evolution, from my understanding, has moved on quite a bit from the way Mr. Darwin understood it.

Todd:

“In ruling out direct Darwinian pathways to irreducibly complex systems, Behe isn’t saying it’s logically impossible for the Darwinian mechanism to attain such systems. It’s logically possible for just about anything to attain any other thing via a vastly improbable or fortuitous event. For instance, it’s logically possible that with my very limited chess ability I might defeat the reigning world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in ten straight games. But if I do so, it will be despite my limited chess ability and not because of it. Likewise, if the Darwinian mechanism is the conduit by which a direct Darwinian pathway leads to an irreducibly complex biochemical system, then it is despite the intrinsic properties or capacities of that mechanism. Thus, in saying that irreducibly complex biochemical systems are provably inaccessible to direct Darwinian pathways, design proponents are saying that the Darwinian mechanism has no intrinsic capacity for generating such systems except as vastly improbable or fortuitous events. Accordingly, to attribute irreducible complexity to a direct Darwinian pathway is like attributing Mount Rushmore to wind and erosion. There’s a sheer possibility that wind and erosion could sculpt Mount Rushmore but not a realistic one.
It’s not clear whether Orr is willing to concede that direct Darwinian pathways are inherently incapable of generating irreducible complexity. At any rate, Orr looks to save Darwinism not by challenging this point but by putting his eggs in another basket, namely, by looking to indirect Darwinian pathways. How does Behe handle indirect Darwinian pathways? Here Behe’s point is no longer logical but empirical. The fact is that for irreducibly complex biochemical systems, no indirect Darwinian pathways are known. At best biologists have been able to isolate subsystems of such systems that perform other functions. But any reasonably complicated machine always includes subsystems that perform functions distinct from the original machine. So the mere occurrence or identification of subsystems that could perform some function on their own is no evidence for an indirect Darwinian pathway leading to the system. What’s needed is a seamless Darwinian account that’s both detailed and testable of how subsystems undergoing coevolution could gradually transform into an irreducibly complex system. No such accounts are available or forthcoming. Indeed, if such accounts were available, Orr would merely need to cite them and intelligent design would be finished.”

William Dembski
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_logic_credulity.htm

The problem with what you linked for me above is that, again, the first step to trying to debunk the irreducible complexity problems for the Darwinian mechanism is to mis-characterize it. It amounts to a very sophisticated straw-man, really.

The first link you gave is rather laughable. There is simply an assertion that because they could find some similar and less complex components that they must have then therefore been the precursor to the flagellum.

“ … the relationships among these genes suggest the probable order in which the structural components of the bacterial flagellum arose. These results show that core components of the bacterial flagellum originated through the successive duplication and modification of a few, or perhaps even a single, precursor gene.”

There is nothing remotely close here to showing there is a sufficient mechanism to produce the flagellum. It matters not one whit that they can find something lesser that is possibly a core component. Indeed, the rub here is that according to what is actually emperically known about mutations and selection is that these lesser components are 99.9 percent sure to have evolved from the flagellum!!! That is precisely what one should conclude; that these components exist much, much, much more probably as a gradual breakdown from the flagellum rather than a precursor to it. Thereby, you have conveniently backed up my claim that scientists routinely look at actual observable facts and then go 180 degrees against what that evidence suggests.

To note, the second link does the same thing. The author cites lesser components of the flagellum and then reasons that they were the “building blocks” for it, rather than the evolution (downward) of it, which is what one would reasonably expect from the observed way in which mutations and such actually work.

Please read the link I’ve provided which should at the least ensure you have a grasp of what Behe is really saying. Don’t let others mis-interpret, purposely in my opinion, what his argument really is.

Also, and I don’t know how many people know this, but Behe isn’t trying to argue against evolution altogether at all. He believes in it and common ancestry. He is just being honest about the observable and overwhelming problems that any known Darwinian mechanisms have.