Fifteen years from when?
From the initial publication to protocols if I recall correctly.
The part I wanted to adress is that the medical community first had one untested perspective on ulcers that didn't permit challange, and locked its practitionrs in a certain understanding of ulcers and of the GI tract....and I suspect, with broader ramifications on the understanding of the body's protective mechanisms.
But when a new possibility emerges, that restructures the understanding of the GI tract and the body, it was adopted after empirical testing.
There is no emperical testing of evolution nor of ID. There are only structures of understanding each theory. Evolution has held sway for many years...and it is a little bit like that stomach...no room for opposing theories. The gastro professor has spoken!
It would be interesting to see each aspect of Behe's presentation responded to...and not ridiculed.
One of the posters stated that IDs, not necessarily Behe, keep moving the goalposts. But in the example we are working with, a scientist states that Behe's irriducible complexity for a certain mechanism is 40 protiens and he has found the same mechanism functioning at 33. But this is trivial...for the bottom line issue is not the number of proteins, but rather that certain number..."x" ...is or is not irriducible.
I appreciate your civility.
There is no emperical testing of evolution nor of ID. There are only structures of understanding each theory. Evolution has held sway for many years...and it is a little bit like that stomach...no room for opposing theories. The gastro professor has spoken!
Here we disagree. The theory of evolution is subject to constant testing. It's not always direct, but it's always going on, and includes pharmaceutical companies, university labs, and those guys out there in the field digging up the fossils. It's all got to point in the same direction, it's all got to agree and add up the same way, or someone's going to decide to get famous by pointing out the errors. We remember the names of the people who come up with break-throughs and new ideas, not the ones who don't.
The theory of evolution, in one form or another, has been "holding sway" for a long time. This fact, in and of itself, has no bearing on the correctness of the theory. (To argue either way would be a logical fallacy).
It would be interesting to see each aspect of Behe's presentation responded to...and not ridiculed.
They have been to a certain extent, although I admit that posters here rarely get into that level of detail (Ichneumon excepted). There are a lot of articles on Behe's work. The problem of the flagellum has been addressed, and the blood clotting cascade. Behe can spin out new "what about this!!!" problems ad infinitum, but they begin to engender a sneaking suspicion he's come up with just another argument from incredulity. Maybe that's just me.
One of the posters stated that IDs, not necessarily Behe, keep moving the goalposts. But in the example we are working with, a scientist states that Behe's irriducible complexity for a certain mechanism is 40 protiens and he has found the same mechanism functioning at 33. But this is trivial...for the bottom line issue is not the number of proteins, but rather that certain number..."x" ...is or is not irriducible.
I agree that the proteins number is trivial. The argument really isn't about proteins, per se, but the notion that a structure that must have all of its current component parts or it will fail, and that it therefore couldn't have evolved because any more primitive version would lack some vital part. Two of Behe's examples have been demonstrated to be false, not because someone found fewer proteins in another example, but because steps leading to the current composition have been pointed out.
I appreciate your civility.
Thank you. I appreciate yours. I tend to respond in kind. No doubt you can appreciate that this can also be a shortcoming.
But you should see the love-fest Alamo-Girl inspires in everyone.