Respect due to you for accepting my criticism of your argumentation against evolution by cherry picking Bill Bryson's book. Maybe I was a bit harsh is questioning your motives but using one quote to support your point but missing out another quote from the same source that refutes your point does seem questionable at the very least. From your edit it is now clear that you are arguing from the creationist's intelligent design theory by writing " For me, billions of years don’t solve the problem of irreducible complexity"
This takes me back years when I was looking into this but for those of your followers the issue of Irreducible Complexity is explained by the example of the bacterial flagellum - the appendage like structure which allows the bacterium to 'swim'.
It is a highly complex molecular machine protruding from many bacteria as long spiral propellers attached to motors that drive their rotation. The only way the flagellum could have arisen, some claim, is by design.
Each flagellum is made of around 40 different protein components. The proponents of an offshoot of creationism known as intelligent design argue that a flagellum is useless without every single one of these components, so such a structure could not have emerged gradually via mutation and selection. It must have been created instead.
In reality, the term “the bacterial flagellum” is misleading. While much remains to be discovered, we now know there are thousands of different flagella in bacteria, which vary considerably in form and even function.
The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a “designer” created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up.
What’s more, of these 23 proteins, it turns out that just two are unique to flagella. The others all closely resemble proteins that carry out other functions in the cell. This means that the vast majority of the components needed to make a flagellum might already have been present in bacteria before this structure appeared.
Without a time machine it may never be possible to prove that this is how the flagellum evolved. However, what has been discovered so far – that flagella vary greatly and that at least some of the components and proteins of which they are made can carry out other useful functions in the cells – show that they are not “irreducibly complex”.
More generally, the fact that today’s biologists cannot provide a definitive account of how every single structure or organism evolved proves nothing about design versus evolution. Biology is still in its infancy, and even when our understanding of life and its history is far more complete, our ability to reconstruct what happened billions of years ago will still be limited.
Think of a stone archway: hundreds of years after the event, how do you prove how it was built? It might not be possible to prove that the builders used wooden scaffolding to support the arch when it was built, but this does not mean they levitated the stone blocks into place. In such cases Orgel’s Second Rule should be kept in mind: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
Sure we can’t create life but that doesn’t mean we won’t ever. Absense of something is not proof of absense!
And I wonder whether you have quoted properly from Bryson because if you have read anything about evolution , you will know that given billions of years, complicated chemicals such as collagen can quite easily be explained as can human beings.
You write, “But Jesus rose again….There were witnesses. At least eleven more than witnessed the creation of life “ , but there is no contemparary proof of this. There only appears to be word of mouth which we all know can easily be corrupted.
In the end it doesn’t make sense and the whole of creation, if viewed as part of some supernatural plan just sounds very nasty and evil!
I think the trailer for the God Particle shows a degree of closed minds on behalf of both characters and I suggest if the Lady Doctor part had been written by an atheist it would have been written differently. But what do I know, maybe it was! But it doesn’t sound like it to me
OK, thanks for the link. But like all conspiracy theorists you selectively quote. Later on he says collagen didn't spontaneously appear. It took billions of years of gradual evolution.
Your argument is therefore fraudulent, just like the Covid conspiracy believers.
I haven't read the whole chapter yet so maybe there will be some revelations ( joke/pun?) but I doubt it.
I don't really want to take a turn since our conversations are both fruitless and your comments are in bad faith. You've just accused me of being a conspiracy theorist. (I don't think you know what a conspiracy theorist it.) I simply hold a different position from you. And the you use the word 'fraudulent'. You then say you haven't read the whole chapter yet - so maybe you should actually do the reading before commenting and impugning my quoting of it. I clearly edited it for length since I don't want half of my piece to be quoting Bill Bryson. (In fact, a longer and fuller quotation would have made my case even better) In your original comment on this post you make a valued judgment of The God Particle which is also not especially pleasant. I'm trying to write an interesting, good-humoured series of posts, and your comments are normally rude and nitpicking and relatively abusive towards me and my motives. Words have consequences. Our interactions here are consistently utterly fruitless. Perhaps if we met in person things would be different. I'm suspecting they wouldn't be. So in response to 'your turn', I'm saying 'pass.'
Well I have read chapter 19 and it does appear to support what I poster. He creates a straw dog by saying proteins can't spontaneously and then explains how it occurred over billions of years. I don't quite understand how that supports you position so maybe I have misunderstood you?
This reminds me of a case a few years ago when a religious article in our Girton parish magazine made a mistake about Darwin and some of us tried to get a rebuttal published, but at that time they did not have letters to the editor. Can't remember exactly the mistake, maybe It'll come back to me.
Well, sounds as if I've really rattled your cage! You seem to take offence rather easily. Sorry you take it that way. I prefer to speak honestly when I say the god concept is evil but then I turn the other cheek and say I forgive you because you can't help it.
I'm currently composing a long rebuttal to a Covid conspiracy theorist involving reading and trying to understand a lot of scientific papers, so I think I do have some idea of how they work, by taking some true facts and then twisting them to make a bigger falsehood.
Yes, I will read Bryson in full and see if the meaning is different from what I thought.
I did try some humour ( revelations!) but perhaps you missed that or took offence
It's not a question of cage rattling or even offence. I'm quite hard to offend - as I explain in this post. And I've literally written a book on Christians not being offended. It's not me. It's you. You probably don't realise you're doing this, but you continually impugn my motives and accuse me of being deceptive - as if I know what I'm saying is not true but that I'm sticking to it and manipulating evidence accordingly in bad faith. I think it's because you can't imagine anyone genuinely believing what I believe in good faith. So this is your problem and not mine. The result of this lack of empathy is that you continually accuse me of techniques and tricks, like trying to change the subject when I don't really want to talk about an unrelated topic that you brought up. It's not offensive. It's unpleasant and exhausting. And I'm not engaging with it, because it's not about the ideas, but motives. So, I wish you well but we're done here. Best wishes, J
Oo. Getting grumpy now because I question your motives when you apparently selectively quote from Bryson. Posting such on a public forum you surely can't not to expect criticism of your motives. On the one hand you quote Bryson as saying collagen isn't created spontaneously as if that argues for a creator whilst missing out his explanation of how evolution leads to complex structures. That surely is fraudulent reasoning. Sounds as if you are a creationist, which would explain your views.
Sorry but I can't let you get away with that. And you don't need much energy to.ecplain you motives from this selective quote
James
Respect due to you for accepting my criticism of your argumentation against evolution by cherry picking Bill Bryson's book. Maybe I was a bit harsh is questioning your motives but using one quote to support your point but missing out another quote from the same source that refutes your point does seem questionable at the very least. From your edit it is now clear that you are arguing from the creationist's intelligent design theory by writing " For me, billions of years don’t solve the problem of irreducible complexity"
This takes me back years when I was looking into this but for those of your followers the issue of Irreducible Complexity is explained by the example of the bacterial flagellum - the appendage like structure which allows the bacterium to 'swim'.
It is a highly complex molecular machine protruding from many bacteria as long spiral propellers attached to motors that drive their rotation. The only way the flagellum could have arisen, some claim, is by design.
Each flagellum is made of around 40 different protein components. The proponents of an offshoot of creationism known as intelligent design argue that a flagellum is useless without every single one of these components, so such a structure could not have emerged gradually via mutation and selection. It must have been created instead.
In reality, the term “the bacterial flagellum” is misleading. While much remains to be discovered, we now know there are thousands of different flagella in bacteria, which vary considerably in form and even function.
The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a “designer” created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up.
What’s more, of these 23 proteins, it turns out that just two are unique to flagella. The others all closely resemble proteins that carry out other functions in the cell. This means that the vast majority of the components needed to make a flagellum might already have been present in bacteria before this structure appeared.
Without a time machine it may never be possible to prove that this is how the flagellum evolved. However, what has been discovered so far – that flagella vary greatly and that at least some of the components and proteins of which they are made can carry out other useful functions in the cells – show that they are not “irreducibly complex”.
More generally, the fact that today’s biologists cannot provide a definitive account of how every single structure or organism evolved proves nothing about design versus evolution. Biology is still in its infancy, and even when our understanding of life and its history is far more complete, our ability to reconstruct what happened billions of years ago will still be limited.
Think of a stone archway: hundreds of years after the event, how do you prove how it was built? It might not be possible to prove that the builders used wooden scaffolding to support the arch when it was built, but this does not mean they levitated the stone blocks into place. In such cases Orgel’s Second Rule should be kept in mind: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex/#ixzz6t4NzIC7E
Will be interesting to read your take on Irreducible Complexity
Hugh
Come on you supporters of James. Refute my criticism. Or maybe you don't care!
Hugh
Sure we can’t create life but that doesn’t mean we won’t ever. Absense of something is not proof of absense!
And I wonder whether you have quoted properly from Bryson because if you have read anything about evolution , you will know that given billions of years, complicated chemicals such as collagen can quite easily be explained as can human beings.
You write, “But Jesus rose again….There were witnesses. At least eleven more than witnessed the creation of life “ , but there is no contemparary proof of this. There only appears to be word of mouth which we all know can easily be corrupted.
In the end it doesn’t make sense and the whole of creation, if viewed as part of some supernatural plan just sounds very nasty and evil!
I think the trailer for the God Particle shows a degree of closed minds on behalf of both characters and I suggest if the Lady Doctor part had been written by an atheist it would have been written differently. But what do I know, maybe it was! But it doesn’t sound like it to me
Hugh
I have quoted Bryson correctly. You can read the full text here: https://erenow.net/common/shorthistory/21.php
OK, thanks for the link. But like all conspiracy theorists you selectively quote. Later on he says collagen didn't spontaneously appear. It took billions of years of gradual evolution.
Your argument is therefore fraudulent, just like the Covid conspiracy believers.
I haven't read the whole chapter yet so maybe there will be some revelations ( joke/pun?) but I doubt it.
Your turn!
I don't really want to take a turn since our conversations are both fruitless and your comments are in bad faith. You've just accused me of being a conspiracy theorist. (I don't think you know what a conspiracy theorist it.) I simply hold a different position from you. And the you use the word 'fraudulent'. You then say you haven't read the whole chapter yet - so maybe you should actually do the reading before commenting and impugning my quoting of it. I clearly edited it for length since I don't want half of my piece to be quoting Bill Bryson. (In fact, a longer and fuller quotation would have made my case even better) In your original comment on this post you make a valued judgment of The God Particle which is also not especially pleasant. I'm trying to write an interesting, good-humoured series of posts, and your comments are normally rude and nitpicking and relatively abusive towards me and my motives. Words have consequences. Our interactions here are consistently utterly fruitless. Perhaps if we met in person things would be different. I'm suspecting they wouldn't be. So in response to 'your turn', I'm saying 'pass.'
After the alpha course I attended at STAG some years ago a small group met up with the Vicar on a number of occasions.
Well I have read chapter 19 and it does appear to support what I poster. He creates a straw dog by saying proteins can't spontaneously and then explains how it occurred over billions of years. I don't quite understand how that supports you position so maybe I have misunderstood you?
BW
Hugh
This reminds me of a case a few years ago when a religious article in our Girton parish magazine made a mistake about Darwin and some of us tried to get a rebuttal published, but at that time they did not have letters to the editor. Can't remember exactly the mistake, maybe It'll come back to me.
Well, sounds as if I've really rattled your cage! You seem to take offence rather easily. Sorry you take it that way. I prefer to speak honestly when I say the god concept is evil but then I turn the other cheek and say I forgive you because you can't help it.
I'm currently composing a long rebuttal to a Covid conspiracy theorist involving reading and trying to understand a lot of scientific papers, so I think I do have some idea of how they work, by taking some true facts and then twisting them to make a bigger falsehood.
Yes, I will read Bryson in full and see if the meaning is different from what I thought.
I did try some humour ( revelations!) but perhaps you missed that or took offence
Best wishes
Hugh
Yes it would be good to meet you sometime
It's not a question of cage rattling or even offence. I'm quite hard to offend - as I explain in this post. And I've literally written a book on Christians not being offended. It's not me. It's you. You probably don't realise you're doing this, but you continually impugn my motives and accuse me of being deceptive - as if I know what I'm saying is not true but that I'm sticking to it and manipulating evidence accordingly in bad faith. I think it's because you can't imagine anyone genuinely believing what I believe in good faith. So this is your problem and not mine. The result of this lack of empathy is that you continually accuse me of techniques and tricks, like trying to change the subject when I don't really want to talk about an unrelated topic that you brought up. It's not offensive. It's unpleasant and exhausting. And I'm not engaging with it, because it's not about the ideas, but motives. So, I wish you well but we're done here. Best wishes, J
Oo. Getting grumpy now because I question your motives when you apparently selectively quote from Bryson. Posting such on a public forum you surely can't not to expect criticism of your motives. On the one hand you quote Bryson as saying collagen isn't created spontaneously as if that argues for a creator whilst missing out his explanation of how evolution leads to complex structures. That surely is fraudulent reasoning. Sounds as if you are a creationist, which would explain your views.
Sorry but I can't let you get away with that. And you don't need much energy to.ecplain you motives from this selective quote
BW
Hugh
Well this looks right up my street... A science & religion rom-com! Thanks James.