> A fundamental difference between Creationists and Evolutionists is that
> Creationist believe that the source of complexity is intelligence while the
> Evolutionist believes that the source of complexity is nature. The problem
> for Evolutionists is that empirical science squarely demonstrates that
> they're wrong. If nature can create complexity, show me just one example.
Of course the best example of nature creating complexity is evolution itself.
You seem to be asking for an example of nature creating large amounts of
complexity very quickly, but that's a strawman. There are 3 billion bases
in the human genome, and only about 5% of them code for proteins. This
complexity evolved over 4 billion years, which means it took nature about
27 years per base on the average.
Now I can understand if you want to say that the process has not been
demonstrated, but you're making a much stronger statement. You're saying
that "empirical science squarely demonstrates" that evolution is wrong.
I don't see how you can possibly support that statement.
> Of course, the first thing they'll say is a snowflake.
The *only* reason snowflakes get dragged into the argument is as a
counterexample for the 2nd law of thermo misunderstanding. Since you are
not (at the moment) making an argument based on the 2nd law, they're
irrelevant.
> ...when I challenge Evolutionists to show us that nature can
> create complexity, I always include the qualifier "indefinite," as in
> "Demonstrate an indefinite increase in complexity in nature."...
But scientists do not claim that evolution will result in an indefinite
increase in complexity. And even if it were so, how could you possibly
demonstrate it? The correct question is, "Can the proposed mechanisms
of evolution account for the amount of complexity that we see today?"
And so far, we haven't seen any reason why they can't.
As an example, take a look at http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/benmut.html,
which calculates the necessary fraction of mutations which must be
beneficial in evolving man from a chimp-like ancestor in 5 million years.
Rich Daniel rwdaniel@dnaco.net http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/