Since, small random changes (including small additions) to *replications*
of strings of information can produce, ultimately, *any* degree and type of
complexity information that can be represented at all, we have to ask, What
might *prevent* some particular kind of complexity from occurring?
My answers are:
1. Insufficient number of replications with variations. If we start with a
one-bit string and can only add one bit per generation, then a
two-billion-bit string cannot be produced in only one billion generations.
2. Exclusion of some variations from further replication. If *all* possible
approaches to a particular complex structure-representation are excluded
from having "offspring," then there is a kind of "solid wall" around that
particular structure that prevents it from occurring.
3. Insufficient exhaustiveness of the changes. If the changes that can
occur are sufficiently *non-*random in certain ways, certain results can be
prevented from occurring. For example, if all changes produce *only* "on"
bits, then all strings will consist solely of "on" bits, and significant
complexity will not arise.
What Dembski, et al, must prove, in order to prove design (or at least that
naturalistic Darwinian theory is essentially wrong), is that there haven't
been enough generations to allow for the kinds of complexity they talk
about, or that that complexity is systematically *prevented* from occurring
by natural processes, or that there is some major failure of modified
replications to be sufficiently random to produce the specified form of
complexity.
Paradoxically, given that 1 and 3 do not apply, the *failure* to produce
any particular form of complexity would be a better indication of design
than the production of it, because it would indicate that something is
*systematically* excluding it. Evolution does select against complexity in
some cases, because the cost of the complexity outweighs any advantages it
might provide. But, for it *always* to do so, under *all* possible
environmental conditions, would be a remarkable fact indeed, one that would
require unusual explanation. That explanation might be a "designer."
Since quite an array of complex structures does exist in biology, I
conclude that *neither* nature nor a designer is excluding complexity, and
that, therefore, that ID theory cannot effectively use the *lack* of any
particular type of complexity as evidence for design.
To be sure, certain complex structures *are* systematically excluded, but
only because they "cost" too much to the organism's survival. That is, the
fact of natural selection against some complex structures cannot be used as
evidence for design, because biological harmfulness is sufficient
explanation for the exclusion of those structures when they begin to occur.
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