I have no idea why I thought it read “do not” other than that and except that Id.net seemed to be implying that I was conflating YEC with ID- which I was not trying to do at all- as I know the differences well. The reason why I used them both (YEC and ID) was because I was talking about the fossil record and DE and such and wanted to exemplify the detractors from common ancestry with a real example- YEC. If you go back and read my posts obviously I was focusing on the differences between DE and ID with also a focus on special creation or special design which is the opposing view to common ancestry. I think that nowhere in the posts will you find a direct illogical contradiction or conflation between ID and YEC.

I might add, just to convolute things even more- people can believe in special creation or design and not be a YEC.

If we use the word “evolution” to mean changes over time, then it is evident that complexity has increased over time. If we use the word as a mechanism for the change ie RM and NS, then I suspect it never leads to increased specified complexity.

Yes, ID is an evolutionary theory. The paper I sited provides evidence that evolution has a direction — complexity. This finding is contrary to the prediction of neo-Darwinism, and is consistent with the prediction of ID.

Frost22585:

That is certainly not a universal truth. YEC simply think that basically the earth is about 6000 years old and the universe was created 6 modern days.

However, the YEC community points to “scientific evidence” all of the time. Certainly if life came to being in all of its glory about 6000 years ago, it did so because it was designed. The YEC strong assumption is that the 6000 years ago scenerio can be validated by evidence. Idnet.com.au, statement, “YEC do hold to the idea that design is real and can be detected” is absolutely correct.

“YEC do hold to the idea that design is real and can be detected.”

That is certainly not a universal truth. YEC simply think that basically the earth is about 6000 years old and the universe was created 6 modern days. Its a literal biblical interpretation of creation or evolution of the universe (evolution being defined as change over time). They can certainly belief that the complexity in DNA or in the cell warrants a design inference. Even an atheist can believe in the theory of ID. Dogmatic atheists excluded because their religion is the destruction of divine faith of any kind and ID supports many divine faiths.

I was not conflating ID and creation except for in the general sense that both cannot be reconciled with a methodologically materialistic interpretation of Darwinian Evolution.

And now I would like to comment on a topic of recent interest in many of the posts that I have been reading.

Natural laws seem to have a special almost agnositic but at least desitic leaning relationship with interpretation of empirical sceince. Certinaly natural laws have been used to strengthen the argument for God and they definetly do dont do anything to negate God’s existence. But where do natural laws sit in regards to ID.

I recently was corrosponding via email with Mike Behe on the sub ject of natural law and ID and this is what I and he said…

Me:

Dear Mike, I was wondering how you think about the issue of natural law. I know that Bill Dembski for example says that life could not have evolved or arisen even with natural laws acting. Now aside from the obvious possibility that natural laws “could” have been designed- that is a sort of designed universe from the start that would go well with front loading– do your calculations regarding the improbability of life evolving via simple natural selection and random mutation take the position that the laws themselves are doing the design work or do you take the position (like Dembski seems to do) that even with “necessity” containing all the laws of physics and the known universe that there “still” isn’t even enough resources left for life’s design?

Obviously no one says “the natural law of life arising”- and so are there enough laws left – if you add them to time, chance and necessity and random mutation- to get life or is there still some room for special design needed?

Mike’s response :

Hi, Ed. I don’t think natural “laws” can contain enough information in them to do the design work, if by “law” one means a short, mathematical description of some phenomena, like Newton’s laws or Maxwell’s equations. I think that in addition to laws much information has to be added, perhaps in the form of initial conditions, or by some other way. Best wishes.

Mike

The laws of Newton, Keplar, Einstein, Maxwell and the like are mrerly beautifully simplified formulations of what nature is actually doing. Nothing in any of these will give you life by necessity. You would need a sting theory or Mach theory with elvendy zillion dimentions to get a proof by physical necessity for DE.

Laws will only get you so far and as we learned from Godel, will never get you all the way there. Obviously some form of nature brought about the universe and all of its complexity but, where it all came from and how you can get specified complexity out of nothing is at the end of the day, outside of sceinces reach. Even the Darwinist will say as much- they just take the initiative of eliminating intelligence from of the mix a priori.

“What if there is more “downhill” to evolution than even your friend supposed?”

This was written four days before the current thread “Tree of life has complexity at its roots” was started (although this is far from the first case of “more complex than we expected”).

Suppose we consider a front-loaded ID scenario, one that designs and builds in sufficient information, complexity and control such that it can adapt flexibly through subsequent undirected processes.

I’m wondering if you would agree that the kind of empirical evidence we would expect from such a scenario would be that we observe that the “Tree of life has complexity at its roots”? Would you also agree that, if intelligence is required to get things started, we should find that attempts to explain the origin of the original language, information, specified complexity, control mechanisms, etc. as the result of undirected processes should ultimately fail?

Put another way, I would be interested in your thoughts on how one should approach the empirical evidence to evaluate that hypothesis.

Since some would reject that hypothesis from an ideological objection (regardless of the empirical evidence), how should others who reject ideological prejudice approach the matter? Specifically, what would you find relevant and potentially persuasive to you?

“Christmas Frost, “a man in the jaws of a T-rex” is not a possibility except in YEC. ID does not equal YEC. YEC do hold to the idea that design is real and can be detected.

As far as I am aware, ID does not hold any one particular view about the time frame of design implementation.”

Good job, that is my birthday, “12-25-85″ Christmas day of 85. I know, but the other side, when asked what would invalidate their theory, they always use that example or something like “human bones found in the Cambrian.” To invalidate DE we don’t need to go that far especially over here on the ID side and neither do the YECs either.

All you have to do is show that the mechanisms for Darwinian evolution are wanting or that spontaneous creation, that is “phyla that have no long tedious evolutionary history” is a reasonable or better interpretation of the evidence then a historical explanatory lineage of billions of intermediate ancestors and forms— what is known as common descent.

As I pointed out and I thought it important, on both sides, Darwinism and creationism, you have the inexorable problem of universal historical regress. Creationists face it right off the bat. They say no common ancestry so then how did the life forms get there without any long chain of evolution? But on the other side with Darwinism you have the same EXACT problem. Ok, everything is connected over billions of years, but, where did the laws come from that make this chain of common descent and ancestry possible. Where did the first life come from!? What allowed for the universe to be fine tuned just enough to support its development over billions of years in this extremely complex system of Darwinian Evolution?

Neither said can support their theory! Both are incomplete.

But here is the most amusing part. The evolutionists say to the creationists in particular “well your side is not a theory because it explains nothing and is just religion.” But, their side is just as lost. In fact, Darwinian common ancestry requires an enormous plethroa of animal intermediate species. So many that obviously given that they both share the creation problem of the universal historical regress, creationism is actually more scientific if we go by Occam’s razor. It doesn’t require the absolutely necessary billions of interlinking transitional forms.

And this is worthy of some note.

Period.

“evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity,” Dunn said.

He is on to something. Look how much evolution explains with regard to the bacterial flagellum.

If we use the word “evolution” to mean changes over time, then it is evident that complexity has increased over time. If we use the word as a mechanism for the change ie RM and NS, then I suspect it never leads to increased specified complexity.

YEC is a variant of ID, yet it doesn’t expect any heierarchy of growth at all — just poof. Well, there is some expectation of an increase in varieties of the animals after the flood, but no sense that the increase is “advancement”.

So much for “pastry power”!

May I humbly suggest, as one in need of this lesson myself, that it may be more profitable to engage one’s best efforts in the pursuit of clarity of thought rather than cleverness.

First, the results returned by your “danish” search overwhelmingly refer not to pastry but to the nation of Denmark.

Furthermore there is no school of thought of which I am aware that claims any correlation or explanatory power vis a vis the nation of Denmark and complexity. The proximity of these words on a number of web pages is mere coincidence.

However, Darwinism does make strong claims regarding the supposed increase in complexity of organisms over time through the process of evolution. The results of my Google search illustrate a couple of points. First, that highly complex organisms existed much earlier than evolutionary theory predicts. Second, the more we learn of the natural world the more complex it appears and the less plausible it becomes that such complexity could have been produced by evolutionary processes. Both of these, in my opinion, indicate a failure of evolutionary theory.