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To: etlib
"Whether something has led to other discoveries is not of significance in whether it can be studied scientifically or not."

Sorry, but precisely that is the main error in the ID concept. For a scientific theory there must be at least one prediction you can test.

IC?
Sorry again. Imagine yourself standing on an ice block used as a bridge over ditch. It's summer time and so the ice is melting. You probably know what is going to happen? At some time the ice will break. But what did we have just the very moment before that happened? Before the very last crystal melts keeping the bridge alive? The bridge was irreducible complex. Well, someone may mention, that another crystal may melt. OK, let all crystals melt till that point, that independent on what is next crystal going to melt the bridge will break.

1. Do you need an intelligent designer to build such a bridge? No, just try and error, but you still don't know if this solution is the only one.

2. The aim. What was the use of the ice block? Was it the aim of block to be a bridge. Because without an aim you can't define what is the use of something. Maybe the ice was just for cooling the water in the ditch. So without an designer with an aim you can't have any kind of IC!

IC is a circular reference to ID.
241 posted on 09/30/2005 5:32:10 PM PDT by MHalblaub (Tell me in four more years (No, I did not vote for Kerry))
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To: MHalblaub
Your irreducible complexity example doesn't quite make sense. I get your point about about having an "aim" and having a designer. Function is integral to the concept of IC in that the whole machine performs that function, and is in a sense defined by its capacity to perform the function. You state that IC is a circular reference to ID. The same logic would mean that natural selection is a circular reference to evolutionism. Is that significant?

The example of a block of ice bridging a ditch doesn't quite rise to an irreducibly complex machine. Unless you refer to the atoms in the ice, the block of ice has no components. It is not complex. The argument for IC is that multiple components of a complex machine can't be accounted for by sudden, direct evolutionary paths (evolutionists don't dispute this) and cannot be accounted for by small successive steps (evolutionists do dispute this.) The block of ice idea just isn't an adequate example of IC. Try to make your argument with flagellum.

244 posted on 09/30/2005 5:48:51 PM PDT by DC Bound (American greatness is the result of great individuals seeking to be anything but equal.)
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