[kimtom]

After having stumbled on various articles proclaiming fossils show "evolution of flight", I decided to interject the engineering/ design of such a feat.

[thackney]

[The_Reader_David]

I really wish critics of neo-Darwinism would stop getting complexity theory wrong: irreducibly complex, a technical term form Kolmogorov's algorithmic complexity theory, turns out to mean absolutely random -- a structure is irreducibly complex exactly when its description cannot be given using less data than completely setting out the structure element-by-element -- and this turns out to be equivalent to random. (Any non-random sequence can be specified by an algorithm of finite length, while a random sequence might as well be just read out in its entirety, as it remains infinite even after any conceivable form of data compression.)

The application of algorithmic complexity theory to evolutionary genetics (and I mean that in the narrow, uncontroversial sense of the study of the change in allele frequency over time, not the controversial materialist sense that the neo-Darwinist theory explaining the change of allele frequency over time provides a complete explanation for biological diversity and all properties of living organisms) is a good idea, but you have to get algorithmic complexity theory right to apply it.

Personally I hold the view that neo-Darwinism implies intelligent design (look up the definition of intelligent agent used in modern AI work, and consider the properties the neo-Darwinian synthesis attributes to the biosphere as a whole to see why).

[Errant]

The key to birds ability to “morph” is the feather, which don’t do well, as a covering, at high speed. :-)

[Kickass Conservative]

Wow, God’s wisdom strikes again.

[metmom]

Creation ping

[count-your-change]

Not only must the parts of a bird be designed for flight but entire systems must be in place and integrated as a whole to allow any to be of use.

That bespeaks a planner who can see how the finished product will function before it is made.