Precisely.
That means you do not have to consider or address it.
Then they are not IC.
(Because IC means that they cannot be made up in small steps)
Richard
You really should learn how evolution works.
Until then, sayonara.
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The last bastion of science.
You do not understand!
I think that sums up your position.
You do not have to define evolutionary change. it just does it!
And you have shown no understanding of IC
(Because you think it does not exist)
Get off your high horse
Richard
Edit
I will be around when you want to talk. Keep thinking I do not understand, please, it makes my life so much easier
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This is an irrational expectation. If I walk into a hotel and see a fountain in the lobby, I assume it was designed and built. If I wanted to, I could probably find the design and the builder in the city records. Biomolecules donât file for permits. There is no record for this, but many places in life are obviously designed and constructed for a purpose. The fountain was not an accident. Life is not an accident.
For lots of post-LUCA biomolecular structures, I donât have faith that they are the result of just natural changes resulting from the processes we know.
You really need to look at whatâs going on at the molecular level.
So, what do you think is more likely, that downy feathers were adapted to become flight feathers, or that flight feathers were adapted to become downy feathers?
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You do.
Every time you claim that objective morality exists, but are then unable to say what that objective morality is and how it applies to specific questions or situations, you are broadcasting loud and clear that you cannot discern objective morality.
Every time you ignore a question about the contents of your objective moral code, you are providing evidence that you cannot discern what that code is.
Every time you are asked about your objective moral code and your reply is along the lines of âEvery fiber of my being tells me âŚâ or âBut most of us now, at least to me, on the back of Jesus and the long, rocky climb of Western civilization, have come to see âŚâ or âI tie my morals to the goodness of GodâŚâ, you demonstrate not only that you canât discern objective morality, but also that your own morality is subjective, since it is based on your personal feelings, or, your views of society, or your religious belief.
You cannot fall back on the Bible or your church as a source of objective morality, either for yourself or for everyone, because both scripture and your church have declared that things you personally find unacceptably immoral are sometimes permitted.
You reject the various non-religious proposals for objective morality, such as the golden rule or utilitarianism[1] or the Wiccan an it harm none do what ye will, on the grounds that they are standards made up by humans, without realising that your own morals are also a standard made up by a human, because you cannot discern objective morality.
Which is why you have everything about morality completely backwards.
Atheists/materialists who you claim have no basis for objective morality actually do have objective standards against which they can judge slavery, infanticide, etc.
You, on the other hand, canât judge anything against your supposed objective morality because you canât show that it exists, and even if you could you donât actually know what it says. Youâre just producing rules based on your feelings.
So when you say that without objective morality "We canât even tell the Naziâs or slave traders what they did was wrong and justify our assertion beyond âthis is my opinionââ, not only does that apply just as much to your subjective morality, but you can be checkmated if the slave traders respond that slavery is moral because it is permitted in their objective morality based on their and your godâs Mosaic laws, and they will show you the text if you disagree. Worse, because you cannot discern objective morality other than through the subjective feelings of the fibres of your being, you canât know they arenât right.
So when you say that âIf we canât say it is objectively wrong to play catch with babies using bayonets then a worldview is broken.â that is not only mistaken, it is downright insulting, because I can say that it is objectively wrong, via e.g. the Wiccan creed, but because your morals are actually entirely subjective, and because even though you claim to have an objective moral code based on âthe goodness of Godâ the scripture of your church describes your god ordering the slaughter of babies (Samuel 15), you cannot.
Iâve no doubt you will rant and rail and insist once more that atheist/materialist objective moral codes are useless because theyâre just based on opinion, while your own âobjectiveâ moral code is superior because it is based on your âfeelingsâ about the goodness of a god that demands actions that are in your opinion unacceptable. It wonât be worth responding to.
One last point:
Not only do you not seem to understand that what people believe in is subjective, not objective - which by itself skewers any and all claims you make about objective morality - you have just given your objective morality the same level of reality as fairies: it only exists if you believe in it.
Which, based on your comment that âif helping my neighbor doesnât help me in a particulate instance I have lost the moral reason for doing so in a utilitarian framework,â you donât understand. âŠď¸
Itâs what you said they did.
There are different kinds of feathers, not just flying feathers and downy ones. It is very likely that there has happened changes in the structure of the feathers, to both a more simple and more complex directions. For example, there are such stuctural differences between the grouse, wader and passerine feathers that make it possible to identify the group from the remains of the feathers in carnivore scats.
The structure of a flight feather is marvelous but simple in the sense that there is a repeated structural pattern that forms the functional surface. A relatively simple change in the âblueprintâ of the feather may have a strong effect on the function of the feather when the change is repeated through all the barbs. That appears to be a reason to why feathers may change depending on the filter of natural selection - more simple ones where such feathers are enough and more complex ones where such structures give an advantage in survival or sexual selection.
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Downy feathers are simpler, butâŚ
There is no reason for them to be refined except for flight. That implies construction or design.
The basic problem is, whichever way you look at it, flight feathers a a bigger cosmic fluke than humanity would be without guidance. Unfortunately that ends up as incredulity which is too subjective for Science.
This is one of those examples where subjectivity becomes too big a factor for objective reasoning. In terms of development it would make sense for the downy to come first, but in terms of the final result, downy feathers have no meaning to flight, so to claim a change of purpose is to nullify random development. It is a philosophical conundrum with no clear solution.
Sorry, that was a waffle
Richard
Were it not for the discoveries at Burgess and more recent sites in China, we would have scarcely any record at all aside from trilobites. As it is, it is like doing a review of Gone With the Wind from a half dozen film frames. Finding sites with the particular circumstances leading to preservation is surprising; not leaving a record is par for the course.
As ID is an irrational explanation. Not in the sense of creation being immediately illogical, but in the sense of having no basis. Like John Wisdomâs Parable of the Invisible Gardener concludes âBut what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, incorporeal, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?â[
Should you not be able to at least be able to distinguish between ex nihilo poofing and tinkering biotech angels? The fiat disavowal of the method of creation allows for the ID big tent which absurdly disregards the chasm between fine tuning advocates who hold no further intervention was required, and YEC who tell that it all poofed from nothing 6,000 years ago. There is plenty of empircal evidence to distinguish the two, but the vaguery of ID accommodates all because it is close to meaningless.
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???
No basis?
Can you not identify something that has been designed by a human as opposed to be natural? Some of the principles, like velcro or catâs eyes may derive from nature but the result is designed. As I was saying earlier, I fail to see how anyone can look at a flight feather and not see that it has one specific purpose for which the design fits. If there was ever a candidate for ID it would be the feather IMHO. But there are other systems and integrations that, from the outside, would seem to defy fluke, or chance.
Perhaps you rationality is not as rational as you think it is. It would appear to be blinkered.
Richard
Or at least use terms the way biologists do when talking about biology, rather than insisting that his definitions are the right ones.
Please go back and read what he wrote.
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IC is not a scientific, Biological term. The definition is as I posted.
What makes you think I didnât?
Oh, because i contradicted him!
Besides, he takes no notice of me, why should I take notice of him?
You are running true to form.
Richard
Beheâs original definition of âirreducible complexityâ courtesy of Wikipedia:
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
@RichardGâs definition:
IC means that they cannot be made up in small steps
These are not the same. Beheâs definition is about removing components, @RichardGâs definition is about adding them.
Beheâs definition does not include or imply that IC systems cannot evolve.
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And?
If here is more than one part needed, how are you going to do that in one small step?
Perhaps you are being deliberately obtuse.
The definition I gave (also from Wiki not me) is the current one. Just as the current theory of evolution does not match Darwinâs original version there is no reason not to accept the updated version of IC.
This time, you lose.
Richard
ID is a self-described big tent. It includes a very wide range of views on the extent to which evolution has been used as a means of creation. Denton currently advocates evolution as an example of design, for example, while Wells made bad attacks on observed change within a species. Itâs important to clarify exactly what you mean by ID.
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Weâre not omniscient, so any conclusion that we draw about anything involves some connecting of dots. Different people will vary in where they think connections can be made when dots are more spread out. But YEC and antievolution ID make up dots while ignoring actual dots. That ruins their credibility.
Pterosaurs and many dinosaurs were somewhat fuzzy. (Pterosaur flight used thin membranes extending from an elongate finger, more batlike than birdlike in general structure.) Some of the dino fuzz is similar to simple feathers. Dinosaurs already had the very efficient breathing system that both promotes light weight (air sacs and hollow bones) and helps get enough oxygen for very active behavior, such as flight. Insulation, camouflage, and display are plausible uses for the dino fuzz, though itâs true that some recent illustrators of dinosaurs are too inspired by birds and not thinking what is practical for the dinosaur.
Certain small climbing dinosaurs such as Microraptor have feathers functioning as wings, comparable to the many gliding animals of past and present (âflyingâ squirrels, snakes, lizards, frogs, etc ). Being lightweight and fluffy means they donât fall fast. The key difference for birds is asymmetric feathers for powered flight. The first birds did not have much sternum development and generally looked quite similar to small predatory dinosaurs.
The Cambrian radiation does not appear out of nowhere. Simple animals are present through the late Precambrian. Precambrian seas generally had extensive microbial mats, so many of the deposits formed from storms and were fairly coarse-grained, limiting preservation of detail. Some of the fossils are relatively generic, as would be expected for ancestral forms. Few fossils had hard parts, which limits preservation. Despite those limitations, we do have a diversity of fossils from well before the Cambrian. The appearance of major kinds through the Cambrian is spread over tens of millions of years. Many Cambrian forms are intermediate between phyla or other higher taxon levels. Many animals develop hard parts in the Cambrian. And being able to dig or chew through microbial mats made it much easier to end up buried in fine mud, preserving detail. We donât have every intermediate form that we might like, but certainly the Cambrian faunas do not appear our of nowhere.
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Ouch. (I seem to be saying that allot recently)
Basically what you are saying is that only evolutionary science can join the dots properly.
Richard
Yes, because only Richard is right.
No, because what you said didnât respond to what he said.
Itâs a current one. There are others. For example:
Four Definitions of Irreducible Complexity
1. Michael Beheâs Original Definition â [an irreducibly complex system is] âa single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.â (Darwinâs Black Box, page 39, 1996)
2. William Dembskiâs Enhanced Definition â âA system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the systemâs basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system.â (No Free Lunch, page 285, 2001)
3. Michael Beheâs âEvolutionaryâ Definition â âAn irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.â (A Response to Critics of Darwinâs Black Box, 2002)
4. My Revision of Beheâs Original Definition â A system is irreducibly complex if there is no function for any system that is missing one part, i.e. if all âsubsystems with one less partâ are functionless. { This revision, suggested in 2001, corrects a minor error in Beheâs original definition; the error does not affect the logic of claims about irreducible complexity if we use Definitions 2, 3 or 4. }
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They all amount to the same thing.
If something cannot be broken down, the converse is that it cannot be constructed in parts and still function.
You are either splitting hairs or being deliberately dumb.
Richard