[Alamo-Girl]

Snowflakes are physical systems. Crystals are physical systems. They arise from purely disordered precursors.

To the contrary, both snowflakes and crystals require space/time, physical laws and physical causation. At the very least, these are guides to the system.

As I recall there are external factors as well which are included in that application of self-organizing complexity. (temperature, wind, etc.)

However, in biological self-organizing complexity (Rocha, Kauffman, et al) - the emphasis is on self, external factors are not included in the model.

[Right Wing Professor]

To the contrary, both snowflakes and crystals require space/time, physical laws and physical causation. At the very least, these are guides to the system.

That's truly vacuous. Everything is subject to physical laws. All physical laws are ordered. Therefore, if the mere existence of physical laws lead to order, how can chaos exist?

The molecules in water vapor are subject to precisely the same ordered set of laws as the snowflake. Therefore, how can you say the ordering of the physical laws is what leads to the order in the snowflake.? Why is the water vapor disordered? The same laws apply!

[RogueIsland]

To the contrary, both snowflakes and crystals require space/time, physical laws and physical causation. At the very least, these are guides to the system.

And this applies to Evolution as well, which is the subject of the thread. I'm not sure why on every Evolution thread you want to deflect the discussion to some esoteric ruminiation on the origin of the universe, when there are occasional cosmology threads for that. I can only assume that the handful of IDers who have actually taken the time to form an intelligent and studied opinion on the matter, such as yourself, have concluded that they must retreat that far back to hold the line on ID given its utter lack of empirical or observational success in the rather more immediate sphere of speciation.