We know from both experiment and theory that reproduction with inheritance, variation, and competition does produce increasing complexity; therefore it is perfectly reasonable to propose that the complexity of life as we know it has arisen from this simple, observable process iterated over very long periods of time. We have no reason outside folklore to believe in omnipotent magical creators.

The problem with science is that it is not friendly to the general public. And it shouldn’t be: areas of expertise bring with them their own expert jargon. But that jargon makes the general public believe creationists sooner, because they speak a language they can recognize.

This is the last thing I will say here about Mr. Wagner. Reading his material, it seems to me his whole argument stands and falls on a single analogy, and he has rephrased this analogy in so many different ways as to expand a 3 line argument into pages and pages of text, but it is all still the same idea. But his analogy can just as easily be turned around to say the exact opposite. To whit:

1. No intelligent designer has ever been observed to design and build a practical working machine on a molecular scale. No molecular motors. Not even a practically useful inclined plane. Nanotech is still science fiction.
2. No machine, on any scale, has ever been observed to be capable of self-replication. Von Neumann probes are also still science fiction.
3. No intelligent designer has ever been observed to design and build a lifeform.
4. No intelligent designer has ever been observed to even be able to modify a pre-existing lifeform without using tools that were already pre-existing in some other lifeform.
5. There is at least 3000 years of recorded history of known intelligent designers at work, and an archeological record dating back over 2 million years. (Far longer than the 20 year Lenski experiment, for comparison)
6. There is a 3.8 billion year fossil record, and astronomial observations dating back to almost 13 billion years, and nowhere is there any evidence of any other intelligent designers more capable than the ones considerd in #5.

By the above, I can easily conclude with the same logic that the mechanism of intelligence is clearly utterly insufficient, incapable, obviously too feeble, to design and build the complex, organized, self-replicating entity otherwise known as life. The only alternate, therefore, is random mutation, genetic drift, natural selection, and the other mechanisms of the theory of evolution.

Do you not see how empty the First Cause Argument is? “Because of this, you eventually must come to a primary cause, which religions call God.” Might as well call it “mashed potatoes”. Either way it’s vacuous. Even if there was a First Cause (and I dispute that this is necessarily so), since we have no mechanism at this point in science’s fledgling existence for how the universe came into being, we can make no inference on the cause itself. Thus, the only appropriate answer to the question of the universe’s existence is “I don’t know how it came into being.” What you and everyone else has done since this argument came about (and really, it only sounds good - it is otherwise completely vacuous) is try to stuff god in the gaps of our knowledge. This is not positive evidence for a designer, or a creator, or whatever and the argument reduces to “I can’t figure out what the First Cause is, so it must be god.” Not exactly a worthy argument.

@ Charlie Wagner: If you think my comments have wronged you, then I invite you to rebuke me personally at “EastwoodDC AT netscape.net”. Consider this my way of taking responsibility for my behavior without annoying everyone else in the process.

I don’t have a clue about who “designed the designer”.

Nor is it necessary.

One of the oldest problems facing humankind is the problem of “First
Cause”. Why is there anything, instead of nothing? When and how did it
all start? Is it “turtles all the way down”? Evolution has the same
problem of infinite regress. All evolved forms were modified from
pre-existing forms. But is it just an infinite regression of
pre-existing forms? When and how did it all start?

The question of First Cause has been addressed by Philosophers and
Scientists since the beginning of time. No solution has been
forthcoming, although I will offer one for your contemplation. The First
Cause problem stems from the knowledge that everything in the world has
a cause. Because of this, you eventually must come to a primary cause,
which religions call God. But this begs the question: “who made god?”.
If everything must have a cause, then God too must have a cause.
Religion says: “not so, God has always existed.” and leave it at that.
But I contend that if there is anything in the universe without a cause,
it might as well be the universe itself, rather than God. Since I don’t
believe in God, there’s only one option as far as I can see: the
universe and the life in it have always existed. There’s simply no
reason for thinking that the universe had a beginning. Cosmologists seem
to have an even different view. They claim that the universe came into
existence without a cause. It’s really only poverty of our limited human
imagination that everything must have a beginning. For evolutionists,
the question “where did life come from” may be no different from the
question “where did matter come from?”

You made the statement: “My claim is that since no complex, highly organized system has ever bootstrapped itself into existence from nothing, that it is highly likely that living organisms, which fall into the same category, likewise required an intelligent author.”

OK, as Todd has asked and you haven’t responded, since the “intelligent designer” must therefore be a complex, highly organized system, then who designed the designer? Your statement doesn’t make any sense unless you can propose the designer of the designer, right? And I’m sure you can see where this is going, can’t you? I’m not sure why people who use this argument don’t understand the necessity of answering their own proposed mechanism as needing a designer. Or do you just have to believe (LOL!)? Please get back to us when you can answer that little annoying question, OK? Otherwise, your argument is back to “Since I don’t understand, I’ll propose some supernatural being”. Easy to say, but practically means nothing, if you think about it. Don’t you understand this, or will you just choose to ignore it?