Ok I will throw out any claims about design and accept your premise that
evolution only concerns itself with how these complex forms came to be.
According to what I have learned in the few classes on evolution that I
have taken, the main mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and
mutation. It is my argument that these two mechanisms cannot account for
the amount of complexity that we see. Natural selection can only select on
things that already exist, and mutation has the limitation that most
mutations are a hinderance instead of an advantage. Furthermore there are
things which aren't compatible with the gradual evolution argument. As
Behe put it the eye is one of these things that is so complex that it would
be near impossible to explain in evolutionistic terms. Complex systems
such as these cause me to think that either evolution is incomplete, or
maybe to whole theory needs to be rethought and reworked. Perhaps we
should accept that evolution cannot account for all the complexities of
life.
I would like to add that if evolution were ever able to account for these
things I would have no problem accepting the theory.
>
> It is fine to disagree with the claims of evolution, but to say that
> evolution is only consistent with the absemce of design is not a proper
> claim of the science. It is fair to reject this metaphysical claim, but
> this rejection does not automatically cause rejection of the proper
claims
> of evolution science.
>
> Anyway, I do not believe that Behe's book presents a serious challenge to
> evolution science. His thesis is based on classical Darwinina evolution
> model rather than on the more current neoDarwinian synthesis. His
criticism
> is also based on a poor philosophy of science in which he assumes that
only
> reason for the absence of data on cellular evolution is that it is
> nonexistent. Equally plausible is that the research simply hasn't been
done.
I don't believe that that Behe was trying to make such an argument. I
believe that was Behe was trying to show is that for some reason research
on the evolution of cellular mechanisms is nonexistent. He then proceeds
to show that one of the reasons for this lack of research is the fact that
these cellular mechanisms are extremely complex. He then proceeds to show
that it might be a possibility that this complexity can't be explained by
evolution.
You say that Behe's arguments have no bearing on NeoDarwinian evolution,
and perhaps you are correct. However, I tend to see NeoDarwinism as a
weaker theory. For one under NeoDarwinism evolution is defined as the
change in gene frequencies over time. Personally I think that this weakens
the theory considerably.
>
> >I for one am not against evolution, however, I cannot yet aford myself
the
> >liberty of embracing it due to the fact that there are still many things
> >that have been left unanswered.
>
> Here, it sounds as if you are an agnostic when it comes to evolution.
> However, your earlier posts seem to clearly place you firmly against
evolution.
Perhaps I do seem to be more against evolution, however, that is not the
case. I think that to say that I am an agnostic when it comes to
evolution would be a way of describing my stance. I'm not trying to say
that knowledge of evolution is impossible, rather, that knowledge is
incomplete and therefore I can't yet accept all the claims of evolution.
Best Regards,
J.D. Guzman