Jeffrey Lee replied:
>I would buy this argument if there was no intelligence involved in the
>establishment of the forerunners of the "world" economy. Since there is
>automatically intelligence - consider the stock markets. Those are not
>merely evolved beings - they were designed and created. The steel
>industry, again designed and created.
There is an assumption that the intelligent agents who were involved in making the economy were acting intelligently and in concert. They weren't. Each man tries to get rich at the expense of others or with the help of others. Each is trying to maximise his own well being. The entrepreneur doesn't give a darn about the structure of the economy except as it relates to him getting more money. So while there was intelligence in the development of the economy, it was not acting in concert with others in an intelligent fashion.
Secondly, natural selection tries to maximise the efficiency of molecules. It can do that without anyone telling them how they should be maximized.
To David Campbell, Jeffrey Lee wrote:
>You would require that a large number (esp. in the case of coagulation) of proteins
>would come into existence but have no use and hang around long enough for
>all of the "scaffolding" to disappear for them to actually have a
>function.
I have heard it argued that coagulation, Behe's centerpiece of IC, is actually too complex to have been designed. Designers don't usually engage in Rube Goldberg types of apparati. Coagulation is certain a Rube Goldberg contraption and it appears more consistent with unintelligent design than with intelligent design.