I can’t see it. Care to explain how that statement is in any way optimistsic? I certainly only intended it to be a statement of the way things could be. No reference to the future was intended or implied as far as I can see.
You’re going to have to forgive me, I don’t speak acronym. What is IC?
Beyond that, do you know whether it is possible to export an entire system from one taxon to another without compromising the recipient taxon? Has it ever been done?
That is what we call a joke!
Are we talking here about the JC God who couldn’t defeat iron chariots? Or the one that didn’t know whether to believe the prayers of the faithful in Sodom without manifesting and going in to see for himself? Or the one that was literally afraid of the people of Babel? You seem to have a belief in a particular version of the complex JC deity. That’s fine and I’m happy for you, but perhaps you should have stated which particular belief you wished the debate to adhere to in the OP. For that matter I never saw any mention of the JC God at all. You realise There are many billions of people out there who don’t believe in that particular designer?
Maybe you define Panglossian a little differently than I do. All I meant was that you seemed to be saying, “Things are the way they are because that’s the way they are.”
While we’re at it, I could point to a number of impossible evolutionary scenarios other than IC which the designer doesn’t seem to bother with. For example, why does a man’s urethra have to pass through the prostate? A designer with the magical ability to rewrite the genome could potentially turn the prostate into a ducted gland draining into the urethra, but somehow that doesn’t happen. (There is, FWIW, a similar problem for cephalopods: their brains are toroidal, with the digestive tract passing through the center. If evolution could make the tract pass around the brain, it would enable cephalopods to evolve larger brains- but it doesn’t happen.) What’s the problem here- is the prostate not IC enough for the designer to be able to do anything?
**
Irreducibly complex.
**
I don’t see why possessing a backbone is an essential prerequisite for immune recombination.
**
**
Is there anyone here who believes in that kind of God? Somehow I doubt that Behe and Dembski- not to mention GOM and Clive Staples- believe in that God.
So? The relevant question is not “what percentage of people don’t believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God.” The real question is, “what percentage of people who believe in ID believe that the designer was imperfect, and working on a limited budget?”
Pan·gloss·i·an
(p n-gl s - n, -glôs -, p ng-)
adj.
Blindly or naively optimistic.
But you are more or less correct. I’m saying that things could be as they are because it works. Evolutionary theory doesn’t differ greatly from this viewpoint. If I were asked why humans had never evolved wings I’d tend to respond that such a development was never necessary for survival in our ancestry. The same argument could equally be applied to your question.
Similarly it would be far less difficult for this to occur through natural selection than say, the development of wings. And yet such a feature has failed to evolve while wings have evolved at least 4 times, possibly more. The same answer can easily be applied to both theories can’t it? That such a change was never necessary for the success of the species? In both cases the fact that mammals continue to exist despite the way the plumbing is arranged proves that it works and that tinkering is unnecessary.
Nor do I, but often in the past we have found these things are very complex and are interdependent in non-obvious ways Unless you have some evidence that it is possible to export an entire system from one taxon to another without compromising the recipient taxon I’m going to have to remain undecided about its possibility.
I don’t know. Is there?
Sorry, I was just responding to the question as asked in your OP. I didn’t realise that was the question.
So, what percentage of people who believe in ID believe that the designer was imperfect, and working on a limited budget? Do you know the answer? I’m thinking tht many Bhuddists for example believe in a world created by human desire/imagination. This is less than perfect, and just as people avoid creating a perfect lifetime for themselves, so they create an imperfect world in which to learn that which they need to learn.
Interesting question, but radically different from the OP.
To further the hijack, do you understand immune recombination? I only know the basics. Could you explain how it works in educated layman’s terms, either here or in another thread?
Some microbes can travel in space. Great Barrier Reef was not exactly man-made. Wasps developed air conditioning. Just as there are no such species, there is no real creation, just replication in a larger scale.
Actually, I believe the term is a little more specific than that. I’ve always heard the term defined to very specifically refer to Dr. Pangloss’s attitude of “God gave us noses so that we would have something to perch glasses on.”
**
Cite? Or at least an argument?
You don’t seem to have addressed my argument at all. Rerouting a duct around, rather than through, another organ is a prime example of developmental constraints on evolution that appear to be very hard, if not impossible, to circumvent. Hence octopi, for all their intelligence, haven’t been able to evolve further in that direction because an increase in brain size would choke off their digestive tracts.
You are aware that there are constraints on what evolution can accomplish, right? Because it seems like your entire argument is that evolution will create whatever selection pressure demands, and thus if it didn’t create something, then there wasn’t a need for it yet.
**
Again, you’re committing the Panglossian fallacy. One could imagine extraterrestials visiting the Earth of a billion years ago and saying, “Clearly multicellular life will never evolve on this planet- unicellular life is doing just fine.”
**
“Works” in the sense of, “makes it so that less than 100% of the organisms die before reproducing,” sure. By that token, there wasn’t much need for the Designer to create the vertebrate immune system. We weren’t exactly dropping like flies for the lack of it beforehand.
Ultimately, I think this begs the big question which IDists don’t answer: why does the designer tinker with the genomes of living organisms? Why did God (let’s not mince words here) decide that a certain taxon of bacteria absolutely had to have a fancy flagellum?
**
Shrug. Suit yourself. It seems to me at the very least that if the taxa are closely related, there’s every reason to believe that there would be no problem.
It also seems to me that your argument is a bit self-contradictory. On the one hand, if evolution demanded the vertebrate immune system of cephalopods, then they would have one already. But if you have to explain why the designer didn’t do it- well then, it’s possible that there’s some sort of fundamental incompatibility at work.
**
You raised the issue, so I suggest you defend it.
**
:rolleyes:
Would you care to actually address my point?
**
Maybe so, but then they won’t be believing in Behe-style ID, as posited in the OP.
**
Yes, I noticed. Would you like to actually stick to the OP now?
[quote]
Actually, I believe the term is a little more specific than that.
[quote]
I can only go on what the dictionaries say. At the most lenient the OED says that it pertains to the philosophy of Pangloss with no further explanation. Pangloss’ philosophy is essentially that everything happens for a reason and that this is the best possible world because of that. But you can use your definition if you wish.
The evolution of wings requires some major restructuring of either the forelimbs or the thoracic plates. On the other hand to avoid having the prostate surrounding the urethra only requires that the gland develops only on one side.
In vertebrates alone I can think of several comparable changes. In cephalochordates the atrial/gill tissue totally surrounds the digestive tract. In later chordates it develops only on two and later only on one side. Similarly the gill arches have altered from being circular structures surrounding the digestive tract to being two part structures and in several animals having been reduced almost to the point of only an upper jaw.
Alternatively the vertebrate heart has changed from a simple tubular organ into the complex thing we see in mammals by bending and then ‘welding’ to itself. There is no reason I can see that the urethra couldn’t likewise bend to bypass the prostate.
Compared to restructuring functional ambulatory legs into wings a change in gland growth from spherical to in development should be fairly This should be a fairly trivial change. The usual explanation given as to why this trivial change has never occurred is that prostate problems rarely arise in men prior to reproduction, and so, like potential mutations favouring breast cancer or heart disease resistance it cannot be selected for.
[quote]
Rerouting a duct around, rather than through, another organ is a prime example of developmental constraints on evolution that appear to be very hard, if not impossible, to circumvent.[.quote]
Maybe, although I can’t see why simply bending the duct to bypass the gland wouldn’t work. However I have given two examples of where simply altering the development of the organs so it doesn’t surround the duct has occurred. This is probably the simpler of the two solutions.
Of course I never said anything even remotely like that and so there is no need to address this further.
Are you implying that unicellular life wasn’t doing just fine? That God would have failed if Her goal was to create a lifeform that would survive under those conditions and perform those functions?
I really don’t follow you here. You seem to be yet again adhering to some preconceived yet unstated notion of what God’s ultimate goal is. If God’s goal was to produce what we now see, and to ensure that it existed at this point in time, then why would altering the genome of a mollusc have been necessary?
And again, you appear to be utilising some unstated knowledge of what the creator intended and what the state of affairs would be on another ‘counter-Earth’. How can you know that all a putative creator wanted was a species that didn’t drop like flies? How can you know that humanity would still be humanity if it didn’t have a human immune system?
The simple answer would surely be that it creates the world that She want’s wouldn’t it? I might ask you why you tinkered with botanical makeup of your garden? Why did you (let’s not mince words here) decide that a certain taxon of angiosperm absolutely had to have a fancy garden bed? How else would you respond as the creator of that garden aside from ‘It creates the garden that I want?
That seems a simplistic argument. Cows and dogs are closely related, yet we couldn’t simply alter a cow’s digestive tract to that of a dog’s without also altering the behavioural sections of the cow’s brain and the cow’s kidneys, liver, reproductive tract etc. You do realise that the mammalian body is quite complex and all the systems are interconnected don’t you? What you do to one invariably affects the others.
I have yet to be convinced that it would be possible to transplant a mammalian immune system into a mollusc without tinkering with many other systems within the mollusc.
I fear you have misread me. I never constructed any such argument. What I have said is that animals are able to survive with less than perfect systems. This is self evident and something I assume you don’t contend. I never at any stage said that if evolution demanded something then it would appear. I said that it is clearly not necessary for cephalopod survival since cephalopods do survive without such a system. That is all I ever said.
In a related line of reasoning I have said that the designer may want molluscs to be molluscs, and altering something as complex as an immune system may prevent them from being molluscs. You have yet to present any evidence or even any coherent argument that we could perform such a system transplant without radically altering the animal. As such I don’t buy your assertion that a squid would remain even fundamentally a squid with a vertebrate immune system.
Errr, no! That was a question you asked.
Would you care to make it clear just what your point is? It seems to be wandering from hypothetical reasons why squid don’t have a vertebrate immune system to how many people believe in a fallible God. I have addressed each point as you raised it. If you feel I have not addressed any of your points then by all means reiterate the. But please cut out the sarcastic rolleyes.
I’m not entirely sure on that point. From what I’ve read of Behe, while he holds Christian beliefs privatelyt, his style of Idism as published isn’t specific to any school of thought. It’s quite possibly I’m wrong on this since I don’t claim to have ever read any of his books cover to cover. If so then perhaps you could provide a quote from Behe on just what his style of IDism is (from the body text as opposed to the prologue etc).
Ben, you asked the question, and I politely addressed it in a well intentioned spirit. I can’t see why you are criticising me for doing so. If you don’t want me to address your questions you can simply not post them. If you post them I will address them, if nothing else I will do so from now on for fear of you accusing me of addressing he OP rather than your most recent questions.
As for immune recombination, I know the bare details. There is a system which allows the human immune system to essentially disassemble and reassemble sections of DNA in order to allow for the rapid production of antibodies. I have no idea if this is done at the base-pair/triplet level or if we are talking about shunting around large strings of DNA or even entire genes. I don’t even know if these things code for immunoglobulins or WBC surface proteins or something entirely different.
The trouble is the articles I’ve seen have either been horrendously dumbed down or else so technical I get lost in a haze of jargon.
