Re: [asa] Re: ID without specifying the intelligence?

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007, rpaulmason@juno.com wrote:

> What has ID given science? This is a brief list of what it has explained for me.
> For me ID has provided statistical support for the following
>
> 1. Some of the gaps in the fossil record which may be real not just missing (which I fully accept as ancient - I'm not a YEC)
>
> 2. How the first cell could overcome chemical thermodynamics and that normally would drive macromolecules to break up outside cells.
>
> 3. How you could get 200 genes in one place at one time for a first cell when 199 of them could not function until the last one was in place.
>
> 4. Why so many of our "ancestors" seem to be side branches and dead ends - they could have been surrogates for the next species. I call it Zygote Theory. God added or altered genes, possibly at the zygote stage leaving the rest of the genes in place. A new species (male and female) was birthed that could be cared for by the existing species until it could live on it's own. see http://zygotetheory.wordpress.com/ for more details.
>
> 5. The fossil record seems to show jumps and then stasis instead of gradual transitions because there were sudden infusions of information.
>
> 6. How the incredible odds of getting useful genes by chance could be overcome
>
> 7. Why there was an explosion of forms in the Cambrian (not that there can't be earlier life forms or prototypes)
>
> 8. Why some forms (ie sharks etc) have remained remarkably stable when mutation and drift could have dispensed with them long ago - they could be lucky.
>
> 9. How so many millions of complex, seemingly irreducibly complex structure and chemical pathways could appear when they seem impossible to work up to step by step. I wondered why the bacterial flagellum was the best we could do for design but that's just Behe's expertise - there are actually millions of what appear to me to be irreducibly complex structures or behaviors, etc. see Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain: Books: by Geoffrey Simmons - I can imagine solutions to some of the problems but that's all it is : imagination - we don't have fossils or living intermediates for most of the irreducibly complex structures.
>
> 10. How so many chicken or the egg relationships got started - like DNA needing enzymes to replicate and make proteins but the enzymes need the DNA to build them.
>
> 11. If it is true ID has uncovered the secret of life that is no small feat and this does not mean research into HOW all of these mysteries could have been done has to stop - direct intervention may be the cause or we may yet find secondary causes God used, we can keep looking but we can't say we WILL find a secondary cause - that's metaphysical materialism.
>
> 12 It explains how creatures can develop defenses to new offenses and how animals can mimic each other's appearance.
>
> 13. It solves the riddle of how malaria can't seem to overcome the sickle cell trait or even resistance to cold even though it can become resistant to some drugs. Drug resistance only takes one destructive mutation of a surface molecule - the other traits would take several coordinated genes forming and working together (huge probability barrier).
>
> 14. How both male and female can co evolve when almost any change in a species would usually make it unable or unwilling to be mated with.
>
> 15. ID points out the vast number of different possible configurations of DNA and proteins.
>
> 16. If life is as complex and improbable as ID has calculated then life may be rare, ET may not exist, even a single cell ET unless an IDer put life on other planets.
>
> 17. It makes life, especially human life and intelligence even more precious in that the human brain may well be the most complex physical structure in the universe.
>
> 18. ID confirms that particular patterns of DNA are so improbably that it is unlikely that the same gene would evolve twice thus the order of the bases in a gene can be used to identify relationships in nature. If genes were as easy to come by as some evolutionists think then who's to say the same sequence couldn't arise many times - but ID says the complex specific orders of DNA are too improbable to arise twice by pure chance.
>
> 19 The improbability of specific complex orders of DNA arising by chance is what makes it possible to identify viruses by their genes - or to use DNA fingerprinting in identification of criminals. IF genes evolved easily you couldn't trust a DNA test.
>
> 20. ID in the form of Zygote Theory explains how life could make the big jumps between major groups - such as from amphibian to reptile and yet still have many genes in common.
>
> 21. and in the non biological world the fine tuning of the universe seems to be more and more real and the "gap" is growing larger with each new discovery as ID would predict, not smaller as materialism would predict. (the fine tuning I have read includes the Big Bang which I accept as the best theory at present for origin of the universe)
>
>
> Other predictions
> 1. hominids would continue to look like dead end side branches as we learn more about their structures and genetics
> 2. hypothesies on the origin of life would continue to run into walls of probabilities to be overcome for the first cell to appear on it's own.
> 3. The probability barrier for the origin of functional genes and especially clusters of genes that work together will not be overcome by realistic computer programs or biochemistry.
> 4. More irreducibly complex structures and molecular pathways will be found as we learn more about life. Originally cells were thought to be little blobs of protoplasm - now they appear to be complex chemical nano machines.

Does all of the above come from ID or from id? In other words, is it
proposed by Dembski, Behe, and others associated with the Discovery
Institute, or does it stem from generic intelligent design (lower case
id)? My impression is that ID is much more narrowly focused than id.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Sun Sep 16 23:03:23 2007