And THAT is the point. Also we don’t know if it was an “evolutionary path”. There isn’t any data that would suggest what they engineered could occur without intervention.

ftrp11:
ID is about life being too complex to have material origins.

Lol! THAT is what newspaper clippings and anti-IDists say about ID. The real ID is different. Also “The Privileged Planet” doesn’t say anything about life’s origins but is pro-ID.

ftrp11:
ID as amovement is not sbout humans intelligently designing life.

Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?

Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence. — William A. Dembski

ftrp11:
In this case the mechanism was the blind random mutations that were put under intelligent selection pressure.

According to the article that is false:

The Berkeley researchers identified the plasticity residues for the Grand fir sesquiterpene synthase, then systematically recombined mutations of these residues through site-directed mutagenesis, based on a mathematical model developed by Yoshikuni. Construction of the seven sesquiterpene synthases was accomplished with the screening of fewer than 2,500 mutants.

It (their work) has ID written all over it.

ftrp11 said:
There work relies on ET not ID, but they are intelligently designing life.

Their work relies on ID- that is being able to do what unintelligent, blind/ undirected process didn’t/ couldn’t/ wouldn’t do. ID is NOT anti-evolution. There isn’t anything in ID that states evolution doesn’t occur.

The “Debate” is all about the mechanism. In this case the mechanism was the genetic engineers rearranging genetic components to get a desired outcome.

Perhaps we could take these same organisms- an untouched population- subject it to differing selection pressures and see if any of the designed changes can occur without intervention.

As far as not congratulating Darwin, that is true. Although I rarely come across a mention of Darwin in a serious journal. It is usually in pop science literature that people get into the cultural/metaphysical debate.

Fross wrote:
“Isn’t this more analogous to breeding than I.D.?”
Perhaps. And breeding is a) undirected, b) intelligent design?

But to throw him a bone, I think Fross makes a valid point.
I will use Fross’ point to make a REAL ID point.

New theraputic drugs and new enzymes were only evolutionary in exactly the same sense that hybrid cattle are evolutionary. NO new genetic information is or was created in either case. This is “Micro” not “Macro” E.

Even when the “evolution” (micro-evolution) is *directed*, no NEW information is being developed: information is being retrieved and refined that is already there. Niether are new biological mechanisms developed in the process.

Even gene splicing takes information from one organism and grafts it to another: still no NEW information.

So, the ID point: if goal-oriented and rigorously forced “directed evolution” under ideal conditions does not actually generate NEW information, “undirected evolution” isn’t going to do it “in the wild” for reasons that have been hashed to death on the 2nd LoT threads here recently.

Where did all of the information come from in the first place?
ID says the existence of information in living (and/or cosmic) systems is BEST explained as the result of an Intelligent Cause.

A dumb rock really IS “stuck on stupid”.

This is what I mean by deliberate ignorance.
Did you READ Dr. Dembski’s comments? No.
Or if you did you chose to play dumb and act like it all makes no sense to you.

Read Dr. Dembski’s quote.
If you understand ID, you understand that the Darwinists have assualted ID beyond the bounds of science and have made it an issue in cultural, legal, educational, even religious spheres.

So, here’s how this topic relates (read and grasp):
“…but one has to appreciate, especially in the current climate of controversy, that the researchers are being up front about how intelligent design is at the center of their work and also that they resisted the urge to suck up to the establishment by offering ritualistic deference to Darwin and conventional evolutionary theory.”

To reiterate: don’t be stuck on stupid.

1.”In nature…. Multiple combinations of many different amino acid substitutions are tested in promiscuous enzymes until an evolutionary path that achieves a desired result is found.” Um, from what I understand, achieving a ‘desired’ result indicates intelligence, isn’t evolution supposed to be undirected?

2.”An alterative approach, called directed evolution or molecular breeding, that is currently being tested at other laboratories, requires the screening of tens of thousands to a million or more mutants.” In other words, using an intelligent agent we are able to acutally get something to work, whereas with blind evoltuion we’re shooting at a moving target hoping something hits.

Just my thoughts.