The human body does not fit that definition. While removing the liver
would kill, removing a kidney or a finger, for example, would not.

"Colin Day" <cday3@sc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:Uf%2f.2211$OM.123203@twister.southeast.rr.com...

Martin McPhillips wrote:

Prima facie, the specified irreducible complexity of
biological systems. It's right in front of you. If
you're so totally biased toward naturalism that you
can't see it, that's a philosophical barrier, not
a scientific one.

Again, is irreducible complexity prima facie?

Of course it is: remove an essential biochemical
step from the biochemistry of vision and you can't
see, or, to put it in a larger framework, take
out your liver and you can't live.

Prima facie, the specified irreducible complexity of
biological systems. It's right in front of you. If
you're so totally biased toward naturalism that you
can't see it, that's a philosophical barrier, not
a scientific one.

"Matt Silberstein"
<RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nospam@ix.netcom.com> wrote in
message news:0pkok1pododlnvi0vbnki9if5n8o8q0dpa@4ax.com...

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 23:14:09 GMT, in alt.atheism , "Martin
McPhillips"
<nospam@nospam.com> in
<5HX2f.13832$Fc4.10332@twister.nyc.rr.com>
wrote:

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote in
message
news:434C4631.1B2BB162@Hovnanian.com...

[snip]

Here's another thought: When asked to sign the statement
declaring their
skepticism about the evidence supporting Darwinism, I
wonder how many of
these people are actually willing to make the leap to
support
intelligent design?

How many of these people would be willing to sign a
statement requesting
examination of the evidence in support of ID?

That's not what you asked for, so your change
of subject and moving the goalposts is noted.

But 85 scientists have joined in an amica brief
in the Dover case supporting just that:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=News&id=2907&callingPage=discoMainPage

Let's get those goal posts moving again.

What a bizarre brief:

"Eighty-five scientists have filed an Amicus Brief in the
Kitzmiller
v. Dover trial asking the Judge to "affirm the freedom of
scientists
to pursue scientific evidence wherever it may lead" and
not limit
research into the scientific theory of intelligent design.
Not all the
signers are proponents of intelligent design, but they do
agree "that
protecting the freedom to pursue scientific evidence for
intelligent
design stimulates the advance of scientific knowledge.""

There is absolutely *nothing* in that case that would
restrict
scientists from research regarding anything. There is
nothing that the
judge could do that would restrict or not restrict
scientific
research. I happen to agree that scientists should explore
any
scientific evidence, even if it pointed to design. So, I
ask you, what
evidence is there that could point to design? Not Behe's
claim that
something could exist that could point to something. Not
Dembski's
math waving that is evidence free. But scientific evidence
for design.

Prima facie,

the specified irreducible complexity of
biological systems. It's right in front of you. If
you're so totally biased toward naturalism that you
can't see it, that's a philosophical barrier, not
a scientific one.

Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlinknospam.next> wrote:

Why is irreducible complexity cited as evidence against evolution when
it was first proposed as a predicted consequence of evolution?

Do you have a reference for this? I'm not sure how evolution
predicts IC.

http://www.christiananswers.net/catalog/bk-shattering-quotes.html

Quotes

from Shattering the Myths of Darwinism
by Richard Milton


Darwin's original conception ...has received too many mortal blows
from the ugly facts of scientific enquiry to remain viable. (p. 230)

SCIENTISTS. Most scientists privately accept that there are serious
objections to Darwinism... and privately they will admit to the
objections. However, they have become reluctant to discuss them in
public (and in a public forum like the Internet they will deny them
altogether) because they fear that they will aid their critics and
unwittingly discredit their own profession. In some cases, they feel it
is better to be discreet, pretend that there is nothing wrong, or even
tell a "little white lie" in the interests of the greater good of
science. (p. 269) ...Darwinism has never had much appeal for science
outside of the English-speaking world... its ascendancy in science, in
both Britain and America, has been waning for several decades as its
grip has weakened in successive areas: geology; paleontology;
embryology; comparative anatomy. Now even geneticists are beginning to
have doubts. (p. 277)

There is a strong streak of intellectual arrogance and intellectual
authoritarianism running through the history of Darwinism... It is seen
in the outrage and indignation with which they greet any reasoned
attempt to expose the theory to debate and to the light of real
evidence. (p. 277)

SEQUENTIAL FOSSILS. The case for Darwinism would be made convincingly
if someone were to produce a sequence of fossils from a sequence of
adjacent strata (such as ammonite species or sea urchins) showing
indisputable signs of gradual progressive change on the same basic
stock, but above the species level (as opposed to subspecific
variation). Ideally this should be demonstrated in a long sequence, ten
or twenty or fifty successive fossil species, showing major generic
evolution -- but a short sequence would be enough. But this simple
relationship is not what is shown in the sequence of the rocks. Nowhere
in the world has anyone met this simple evidential criterion... even
the world's foremost paleontologists have failed to do so with the
whole Earth to choose from and the resources of the world's greatest
universities at their disposal. (p. 110)

HUMAN EVOLUTION. ...the evidence for humankind's own evolution is
actually nonexistent. (p. 195)

INTELLIGENCE. In the baffling new world of modern physics, scientists
find themselves observing and examining a cosmos that has become less
and less like a clockwork machine and more like an intelligence. ...it
would surely be absurd to bestow intelligent characteristics upon the
behavior of nuclear particles yet fail to accord such characteristics
to living structures. (p. 234)

NATURAL SELECTION. Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is a
rationalization after the fact. (p. 130)

MUTATIONS AND EVOLUTION. I believe that Darwinists should muster the
courage to come clean... reserving the term mutation for any change in
genetic coding... and use some other term -- perhaps "novation"
(novelty-producing mutation) -- to describe the kind of mutation they
say is potentially useful. ...Can we estimate the rate of "novation" as
opposed to the rate of mutation? Yes, we can. The rate of novation is a
number that is vanishingly small (if not actually zero). It is a number
so small that in order to account for synthetic evolution by random
mutation, one has to have an almost religious faith... (p. 158-159)

I am seriously concerned, on purely rational grounds, that generations
of school and university teachers have been led to accept speculation
as scientific theory and faulty data as scientific fact... (p. 4)

To most students, teachers, and even some scientists it will come as a
surprise to learn that recent research into the age of the Earth has
produced evidence that our planet could be much younger than had
previously been thought:


existing methods of geochronometry such as uranium-lead decay and
radiocarbon assay have been found to be deeply flawed and unreliable
the extent of genetic change by selection has been found experimentally
to be limited
bacteria can be induced in the laboratory to mutate in a direction that
is beneficial to them -- without generations of natural selection
only a catastrophist model of development can account for important
Earth structures and processes such as continental drift and most
fossil-bearing rock formations -- most of the Earth's surface in fact.
(p. 6)
RATE OF DEPOSITION. Curiously, too, no geologist seems to have checked
out the geological column dates with an electronic calculator on a
commonsense basis. ...For instance the Cretaceous period is said to
have lasted 65 million years and is 15,000 meters thick -- an average
annual rate of deposition of 0.2 millimeters. Now look at the Siluarian
period: this, too, yields an average rate of deposition of about 0.2
millimeters per year -- as does the Ordovician, the Devonian, the
Carboniferous and the rest. ...about the thickness of a human hair in a
year ...such a slow rate would be quite incapable of burying and
fossilizing entire forests, dinosaurs, or even a medium-sized tadpole.
(p. 23)

RADIOACTIVE DATING. ...radioactive dating techniques are far less
reliable than was previously thought; the Earth could be much younger
than has been supposed by Darwinists; and nothing like the billions of
years required by evolution theory have elapsed since the Earth's
formation. (p. 30)

GEOLOGICAL PROCESSES. Most non-geologists (and perhaps even some
geologists) will be surprised to learn that observations of modern
geological processes show, however, that nowhere today are there rocks
being formed anything like those in the geological column. (p. 72)

SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYERS. According to Berthault, "These experiments
contradict the idea of the slow build up of one layer followed by
another. The time scale is reduced from hundreds of millions of years
to one or more cataclysms producing almost instantaneous laminae."
These innocent-sounding words are the death knell of the idea that the
existence of meters of sediments is by itself evidence for a great age
for the Earth. (p. 78)

NO FOSSILS. There is one final observation that can be made about all
the sediments of the geological column in relation to present-day
processes, and it is the greatest anomaly of all. Today there are no
known fossiliferous rocks forming anywhere in the world. (p. 78)

EVAPORITES. ...perhaps the most striking example of present processes
failing to explain the past, the case of so-called "evaporites."
Extensive beds of common salt, gypsum, and anhydrite occur on most
continents... no modern sea or lake is presently forming evaporite beds
in any way comparable to these geological deposits, which are of
immense thickness and great chemical purity. ...contain no organic
remains -- no fossils... The purity of these deposits and the absence
of material derived from surrounding land point to them having come
about not through evaporation... but through precipitation from
chemically saturated waters... again it implies a catastrophic origin
and singular or rare events. ...Perhaps instead of "evaporites" we
should ...adopt the name "catastrophites"! (p. 75-76

EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION. The problems that have bedeviled horse
paleontology also beset every other branch of the science. Indeed, the
gaps in the fossil record are reflected in the living world where many
major animal and plant groups are high and dry with no discernible
predecessors. The development of the entire order of mammals is missing
from the fossil record, from its supposed shrewlike ancestor of the
late Cretaceous until modern times. ...In fact, more than 100 years of
further intense collecting by well-funded professional expeditions has
not yet yielded any of the remains that Darwin envisaged... (p. 104,
109)

NATURAL VARIATION. The natural limit on the amount of variation that
can be induced in a species is merely the expression of the fact that
nowhere in the animal or plant kingdom is there a species that is
capable of the infinite biological plasticity demanded by evolution
theory, capable of unlimited adaptation to different environments and
different modes of life. Living organisms are systems with limited
potential for change in which variation of one characteristic reacts on
other characters, usually with unfavorable results. This finding is of
central importance because it is one that Darwinists will usually
accept, having considered the evidence, but will later on simply forget
all about when they are speaking of the Darwinian concept of variation
and natural selection. It seems to bring out the Jekyll and Hyde in
evolutionists from Darwin down to the present. (p. 137-138)



All of the above quotes are from Richard Milton's Shattering the Myths
of Darwinism (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1997), pp. 308.

http://www.christiananswers.net/catalog/bk-shattering-quotes.html

Quotes

from Shattering the Myths of Darwinism
by Richard Milton


Darwin's original conception ...has received too many mortal blows
from the ugly facts of scientific enquiry to remain viable. (p. 230)

SCIENTISTS. Most scientists privately accept that there are serious
objections to Darwinism... and privately they will admit to the
objections. However, they have become reluctant to discuss them in
public (and in a public forum like the Internet they will deny them
altogether) because they fear that they will aid their critics and
unwittingly discredit their own profession. In some cases, they feel it
is better to be discreet, pretend that there is nothing wrong, or even
tell a "little white lie" in the interests of the greater good of
science. (p. 269) ...Darwinism has never had much appeal for science
outside of the English-speaking world... its ascendancy in science, in
both Britain and America, has been waning for several decades as its
grip has weakened in successive areas: geology; paleontology;
embryology; comparative anatomy. Now even geneticists are beginning to
have doubts. (p. 277)

There is a strong streak of intellectual arrogance and intellectual
authoritarianism running through the history of Darwinism... It is seen
in the outrage and indignation with which they greet any reasoned
attempt to expose the theory to debate and to the light of real
evidence. (p. 277)

SEQUENTIAL FOSSILS. The case for Darwinism would be made convincingly
if someone were to produce a sequence of fossils from a sequence of
adjacent strata (such as ammonite species or sea urchins) showing
indisputable signs of gradual progressive change on the same basic
stock, but above the species level (as opposed to subspecific
variation). Ideally this should be demonstrated in a long sequence, ten
or twenty or fifty successive fossil species, showing major generic
evolution -- but a short sequence would be enough. But this simple
relationship is not what is shown in the sequence of the rocks. Nowhere
in the world has anyone met this simple evidential criterion... even
the world's foremost paleontologists have failed to do so with the
whole Earth to choose from and the resources of the world's greatest
universities at their disposal. (p. 110)

HUMAN EVOLUTION. ...the evidence for humankind's own evolution is
actually nonexistent. (p. 195)

INTELLIGENCE. In the baffling new world of modern physics, scientists
find themselves observing and examining a cosmos that has become less
and less like a clockwork machine and more like an intelligence. ...it
would surely be absurd to bestow intelligent characteristics upon the
behavior of nuclear particles yet fail to accord such characteristics
to living structures. (p. 234)

NATURAL SELECTION. Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is a
rationalization after the fact. (p. 130)

MUTATIONS AND EVOLUTION. I believe that Darwinists should muster the
courage to come clean... reserving the term mutation for any change in
gen