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To: jennyp
I don't fear evolution. I think materialism is a dinosaur. Phil Johnson has his views, and I have mine. In time, everyone will come to recognize how absurd it is to have faith in the idea that natural forces can create specified complexity from chaos. In fact, this is all but a done deal. It's really only a matter of time before Dembski perfects his ideas, and proves once and for all that specified complexity can only come from intelligence. However, even if he doesn't, the materialists still must prove that natural processes are capable of information creation, which they have not even attempted to do.
23 posted on 12/30/2001 3:43:29 PM PST by Exnihilo
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To: Exnihilo
In fact, this is all but a done deal. It's really only a matter of time before Dembski perfects his ideas, and proves once and for all that specified complexity can only come from intelligence.

LOL! OK, let me know when that happens. I'm no statistician or mathematician, so I can't mount a comprehensive critique of Dembski's Explanatory Filter, but I'll paraphrase a review of one of his books (which I can't find now): Velikovsky started out with an intriguing theory, but after being beaten down by critiques based on the laws of physics, he ended up arguing against gravity itself. Similarly, Dembski's theory started out with possibilities, but after being beaten down by critiques based on generally accepted mathematics & probability theories, Dembski is reduced to arguing against probability himself.

On a less combative note (perhaps), you should find this review of Dembski & Johnson interesting reading.

However, even if he doesn't, the materialists still must prove that natural processes are capable of information creation, which they have not even attempted to do.

Amino acids & nucleic acids spontaneously link & form longer & longer chains on the surfaces of minerals, even up to lengths where functional proteins & RNA start to be found. Genes duplicate & then diverge, one of which sometimes finds a new "job" in the organism. (See Miller, Finding Darwin's God, where he explains comprehensive detail Doolittle's feat of tracing the evolution of the blood clotting cascade.) Plants experience polyploidy (wholesale duplications of their chromosomes) all the time. (IIRC, not so much in animals.) What more does a person need?

32 posted on 12/30/2001 5:35:02 PM PST by jennyp
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To: Exnihilo
In time, everyone will come to recognize how absurd it is to have faith in the idea that natural forces can create specified complexity from chaos.

So you doubt thermodynamics? Every minor increase in complex structure has happened at the expense of vastly increasing the entropy of the universe. The energy the earth gets from the sun isn't free you know (in the thermodynamics sense).

34 posted on 12/30/2001 5:48:48 PM PST by tortoise
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To: Exnihilo
However, even if he doesn't, the materialists still must prove that natural processes are capable of information creation, which they have not even attempted to do.

Perhaps because they assumed that it was sufficiently basic as to be "obvious". The earth is an open system; you can tap any entropy gradient to do "information creation". The local decrease in entropy will ALWAYS be less than the total increase in entropy of the system. Thermodynamics 101.

35 posted on 12/30/2001 5:53:48 PM PST by tortoise
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