In a message dated 9/17/2000 3:51:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
sejones@iinet.net.au writes:
<<
FJ>If they accepted ID then why would there be the need for more research?
SJ: Why would there not be "the need for more research"? Knowing something
is designed would not preclude finding out more about how it was
designed.
>>
So you accept that the how is missing so perhaps natural pathways indeed
exist
since natural forces could not be excluded as the designer? How do you suppose
we find evidence of how God did it?
Behe's mechanism
"During the Q & A, Simon Conway Morris was the moderator. When my hand
went up he called on me. [I took this as evidence supporting the
hypothesis that he liked my question during his talk :-) --grm] I
asked Behe that he has spent a lot of time talking about what wouldn't
work and asked him to tell us what would work--if not evolution, what,
then? Miracles? Behe stumbled around a bit and finally said that God
inputs information into living system all along the way."
More
Toole got up and read from Behe's book:
"Suppose that nearly four billion years ago the designer made the first
cell already containing all of the irreducibly complex biochemical systems
discussed here and many others. (One can postulate that the designs for
systems that were to be used later, such as blood clotting were present
but not 'turned on.' In present-day organisms plenty of genes re turned off
for a while, sometimes for generations, to be turned on at a later time.) Ad
ditionally, suppose the designer placed into the cell some other systems for
which we cannot adduce enough evidence to conclude design. The cell containin
g the designed systems then was left on autopilot to reproduce, mutate, eat
and be eaten, bump against rocks, and suffer all the vagaries of life on
earth. " Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, (New York: The Free Press,
1996), p. 227
He then asked if the blood clotting mechanisms of other animals had that
genetic mechanism but it hadn't been turned on. Behe said that this was
not his present scenario. And Behe wouldn't commit to test Toole's
suggestion.
Ptashne got up and asked Behe what he would want scientists to do
differently? Behe said that he would like to have someone like Ptashne to
determine how something like phage lambda (a complex system) might have
evolved.
http://home.flash.net/~mortongr/wacoday2.htm
==================================================
Does not look promising to me
SJ: << Indeed, if design is scientifically demonstrated it would probably
be the biggest shot in the arm for "research" *ever*.
>>
Only if it could exclude natural designers. But that seems to be the problem
ID is
facing right now. They cannot.
<< FJ>It's
>the present approach which has lead to new discoveries, new lines of
thinking
>etc.
That's not what Dose said in the quote I posted. Here it is again:
"More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the
fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better
perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on
Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on
principal theories and experiments in the field either end in
stalemate or in a confession of ignorance. New lines of thinking and
experimentation must be tried. ...The flow sheet shown in Figure 2
is a scheme of ignorance. Without fundamentally new insights in
evolutionary processes, perhaps involving new modes of thinking,
this ignorance is likely to persist. (Dose K., "The Origin of Life:
More Questions Than Answers", Interdisciplinary Science Reviews,
Vol. 13, No. 4, 1988, pp.348,355).
"New lines of thinking ... new modes of thinking" does not mean endlessly
recycling old ways of thinking. There is *one* new mode of thinking that
science has steadfastly tried to ignore for the last 140 years and that is
*design*!
>>
This is about the origin of life, not evolution per se. You have to be
careful to apply
his comments to something which has shown to be quite able to lead to new
discoveries
and new lines of thinking. Furthermore this hardly means that ID is therefore
a new
mode of thinking or would even lead new discoveries.
What would ID contribute to the origins of life discussion? Please show us
some examples?
Examples that show that present science would not have considered,
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