Amazing insect with meshing gears, and other evidence of I.D.

A thread has been started at EvC forum on a remarkable insect that has actual meshing gears as part of its body design, used to synchronize the movements of its hind legs as it makes a high leap.  Of course this will be treated as a remarkable instance of what evolution can do, although of course it is really much better evidence for design than for evolution, design in this case by God, a really good instance of Intelligent Design.

Here's the source information

But they are so convinced of evolution all that thread is going to get is one rationalization after another for how evolution coulda brought it about:  the time-honored Coulda Argument.  They've convinced themselves that the complex human eye evolved simply because they can point to eye designs all over the range of living things that they are able to mentally arrange into a sequence of steps or stages of complexity, although most of them don't even occur in the same Linnaean lineage.  No matter, if you can mentally assemble utterly separate designs into some semblance of a sequence that's all they need to justify belief that the eye evolved and convince them no Designer is implied. 

There is another instance of a remarkable creature, the one used by Michael Behe in his argument for Intelligent Design, the bacterium with a rotating flagellum.  The way they argued that one was to find other creatures that could plausibly be said to have one or another of the parts of the complex rotating apparatus as part of their design, so that they could say that if any of those parts exist as a functioning unit in any other bacteria, then all of them could have been part of an evolutionary sequence to the final rotating mechanism.  But of course there isn't an iota of evidence that this occurred, again it's just a mental arranging of features of completely unrelated creatures into a sequence, a purely mental sequence:  the Coulda argument again, though in fact it really couldn't. 

So we can expect that for this amazing jumping bug with its amazing gear mechanism they'll try to put together some kind of sequence out of just as much fluff as in the other cases and declare it evidence for evolution.  If they can't find anything that resembles a stage on the way to the gear mechanism, they won't have any problem declaring it evolved anyway.

Sigh. 

While I'm at it, since I do not want to be tempted to post at EvC any more (and thankfully there have been very few temptations since I left), I'll answer something here:  Coyote who always says he misses me, which is nice except we never agree on anything, claimed that I place the Flood at the time of the "KT boundary," which is absolutely false.  I've so many times said that I place it where the Bible genealogies place it, about 4300 years ago, that I'm amazed anyone could misquote me. 

Michael Behe Meets Science in Wonderland

Another delightful exercise in fantasyland science from EvC:

A number of Behe's claims have been falsified. His claim that the human blood clotting system was "irreducibly complex" was proven wrong for example, right in front of his face, at the Dover trial. His claim that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex was likewise demolished. This doesn't seen to worry Behe or his supporters as much as one might hope it might, given that honest scientists are supposed to discard falsified notions.

It's really interesting that they will say Behe's claims to irreducible complexity were PROVEN WRONG when ALL that was brought forward to prove this is the usual collection of examples of other systems in nature that have some similarities with the system in question, that is, other discrete designs are ASSERTED to demonstrate evolution only because one can mentally arrange their operations in a hypothetical line of descent based on completely subjective judgments of their homological similarity. This SHOULD be laughed out of court and out of the scientific journals.

Funny how they'll affirm that argument by analogy is a fallacy and yet completely accept subjectively determined gradations of physical homologies as Science, which is the same thing. The delusions of Evolutionist Science are magnificent, really.

William Paley already did it for intelligent design and irreducible complexity years ago. It's completely a matter of clear-headed ability to judge such things, they do not lend themselves to Scientific Method.

What predictive power does Behe's work give us? What observation would support or falsify his claims?

ONLY evidence that a complex functioning system did in fact descend genetically from a functioning system built on only some of the same functioning parts. Homologies don't cut it, that's like taking dozens of models of cars and arranging them in a graded series according to subjectively assessed similarities and saying they developed one from another although we know they were independently intelligently designed. Oh yeah, they'll nitpick the flaws in THIS analogy to death while swallowing whole the same kind of reasoning as long as it supports evolution.

So he says the Dover trial determined that Behe was wrong. How odd that the courts have any power to define Science -- which could only happen with "science" that isn't science or it could determine it just fine on its own. Oh well. That's the way it goes in Evolutionland.

So I looked up Dover to find out just how Behe's claims were supposedly defeated and at Wikipedia I found, surprise surprise , that all they have is subjectively defined HOMOLOGIES and a whole raft of COULDAWOULDAs.

...even cases where removing a certain component in an organic system will cause the system to fail do not demonstrate that the system couldn't have been formed in a step-by-step, evolutionary process ... the possibility that seemingly irreducibly complex biological features may have been achieved with a period of increasing complexity, followed by a period of simplification.

Because they are able to IMAGINE such things they think they've arrived at PROOF? Because they are able to MENTALLY SUBJECTIVELY CONSTRUCT POSSIBILITIES they think they've arrived at PROOF? They have a HYPOTHESIS AT BEST which I argue a couple posts down is ALL they can have. It's all Behe has too. That's the best that can be done with this sort of thing. You can never have proof because you can never have experiment or replication, you cannot apply Scientific Method to these things. IT REMAINS A JUDGMENT CALL, NOT SCIENCE.

"As expert testimony revealed, the qualification on what is meant by "irreducible complexity" renders it meaningless as a criticism of evolution. (3:40 (Miller)). In fact, the theory of evolution proffers exaptation as a well-recognized, well-documented explanation for how systems with multiple parts could have evolved through natural means." (Page 74)

COULD HAVE. Yet, read on, this sort of purely conjectural reasoning is now referred to as "evidence" which they say "refutes" intelligent design and meets the criteria for "testability." What universe do these people live in anyway?

Professor Behe has applied the concept of irreducible complexity to only a few select systems: (1) the bacterial flagellum; (2) the blood-clotting cascade; and (3) the immune system. Contrary to Professor Behe’s assertions with respect to these few biochemical systems among the myriad existing in nature, however, Dr. Miller presented evidence, based upon peer-reviewed studies, that they are not in fact irreducibly complex." (Page 76)

Using "evidence" duly sanctified by published articles put out by the community of true believers in evolution, he declares Behe's conclusions simply NOT irreducibly complex. It's because NONE OF THIS IS TESTABLE SCIENCE in the true sense that they can get away with this delusional thinking!

It's all woulda coulda shoulda analogical reasoning with not a shred of actual evidence or proof.

Oh well. As long as we are dealing with a self-validating subjective analogical authority-sanctified system we might as well give up on trying to have any kind of discussion with them, there's no point in continuing to beat our heads against this brick wall of a fantasy. I can't wait for Judgment Day sometimes to see the looks on their faces. (Of course I do wish them salvation, and then they'd see the error of their ways before it has eternal consequences.)

The Scientific Method is Not Applicable to Questions of Origins and the Unwitnessed Past.

As I've reported recently, I no longer care what Science has to say about anything Biblical. Science is out of its proper sphere when it says anything along those lines. They can stand me up against a wall and shoot me dead, which seems to be their attitude toward Bible believers anyway, I've given up on Science completely when it comes to these concerns. Science does fine with technology, medicine, etc. (for which we should thank God), but it has nothing to say about the history of this planet or life on this planet. They don't even have the wit to recognize that it CAN'T pronounce on such things because there is no way to replicate the past to subject it to experimentation, therefore no way to falsify any conclusions they come to, violating all the supposed essentials of the scientific method.

A big razzberry to the pretensions of almighty Science!

They are tediously pedantically mind-numbingly self-congratulatory about their supposed standards and methods which they themselves cannot meet when it comes to questions of origins and events in the pre-historic past. Here is one such typical tedious litany of their creed, from one of the darkest places on the web:

We already have the ground rules for scientific inquiry. They are well known and easy to find.

1: Observation/Question
2: Hypothesis/Prediction
3: Experiment
4: Conclusion (tentative)
5: Publication/Peer Review
6: Repetition
and if that repetition continually provides the same conclusion,
7: Consensus (still tentative, but less so as evidence accumulates).

The topic is whether Intelligent Design meets scientific standards. I'm not a follower of Intelligent Design because Christian versions of it usually fudge the time frame of the first verses of the Book of Genesis to make room for billions of years, and some of them also make room for evolution as well. Their main concern -- which I CAN agree with -- seems to be to demonstrate that some elements of Nature exhibit qualities that could only have been designed, which implies that there must be a Designer. They refuse to identify the nature of this Designer, because they want to keep within scientific standards and not venture out into "religious" questions. (I'm not even going to give a moment's consideration to the ridiculous claim made by Scott Johnson that ID originated with some occultic theory about "aliens" seeding this planet. Although I appreciate much of what he has to say, Scott Johnson is unfortunately illiterate on many things as well, including the origin of Intelligent Design, so he lumps things together and jumps to conclusions based on the mere similarity of terminology although it supports completely different ideas. He apparently knows nothing about Michael Behe or anything else in this field. He also has the unfortunate habit of denouncing his critics so he never will learn any of it). *

As for this list of scientific ground rules ...

1: Observation/Question
2: Hypothesis/Prediction
3: Experiment
4: Conclusion (tentative)
5: Publication/Peer Review
6: Repetition
and if that repetition continually provides the same conclusion,
7: Consensus (still tentative, but less so as evidence accumulates).

...when it comes to questions of the origin of this planet and life on this planet about as far as Science can go is through Rule 2. They have gone this far. They have their hypothesis of Evolution to explain all the variety of living things as having developed one from another. Some will claim that God set it in motion, some will postulate some kind of biochemical origin, but all their theorizing rejects the simple straightforward Biblical account of the Creation.

So they have their hypothesis. They really have nothing more. They can't meet Rule 3, Experiment, as I say above, because you can't replicate unknown one-time events in the past. Whatever experiments they do in the present in an attempt to reconstruct past events still involve purely hypothetical application to the past, the mere bald assumption that they apply. In contrast, the experimental method has established all sorts of scientific facts over the centuries, facts in chemistry and physics particularly, that have become the basis of our sophisticated technologies. But it's a delusion to think they can extrapolate this method to the unknown past to make it known. At best this is an untestable hypothesis in itself, but that doesn't stop them. They go on assuming they can penetrate the past too and that they have in fact done so.

Since they can't meet Rule 3, of course Rule 4, any Conclusion they may come to, cannot be scientifically established either and remains a conjecture or a hypothesis. Rule 5, Publication and Peer Review OUGHT to illuminate the fallacy of their claim but it only validates their same errors of assumption because they all share them and don't see that the scientific method is not applicable. The assumptions can't be falsified so they can just go on building their fantastic belief system without correction.

Then I have no idea how Rule 6, Repetition, could be meaningfully applied here since the only repetition possible is a repetition of the same fallacious procedures and erroneous reasonings and bald assumptions. If they do arrive by this means at Rule 7, Consensus, it can only be because they've all been deluded along the same line of reasoning. Or perhaps if they don't all come to the same Consensus, as long as they are following out this same fallacious notion that they have a method that can penetrate the past, alternative theories are simply going to suffer the same fate and remain ONLY alternative theories. Until of course Consensus IS arrived at by the same illegitimate means and the whole Scientific Community endorses it no matter how delusionally derived.

Since Science with respect to the Origin of Species can't meet these criteria, it's high nonsense for them to hold Intelligent Design to them. They have a Faith system they delusionally believe is based on Science so it's interesting that's what they accuse IDers of. And Creationists in general of course.

In this particular case, the straw man of ID is more ridiculous than usual:

Now one could spend a lifetime finessing that definition of the scientific method (and indeed, philosophers of science do just that) but those are, more or less, the ground rules. ID fails to meet just about every one of them. Here is how ID functions;

1: Conclusion; Jesus loves you (not tentative).
2: Observation; Gee, lots of stuff is really complex!
3: Conclusion; See 1.
4: Publication; Popular press only. Peer review is such a pest!
5; Conclusion; Still the same as 1.

Actually, no, this is not how ID functions. For one thing IDers are not all Christians. ID really does start with the Observation of design in living things, meeting Rule 1. I believe it was Behe who made the observation of the intricate mechanism of the bacterial flagellae as an example of Irreducible Complexity which implies Design. They go on from there to hypothesize that therefore there must be a Designer, meeting Rule 2. As with mainstream Evolutionist Science there are no Experiments, Rule 3, that can be done to verify or falsify this, so the scientific method comes to a halt with the Hypothesis here just as it does with the hypotheses of mainstream Evolutionist Science.

What we have are competing Hypotheses, competing Interpretations between Evolutionism and Creationism. We do NOT have the scientific method because the material does not lend itself to that method and to keep on insisting on it is simply to dig deeper into delusion. Which this person of course goes on to do:

For ID to be taken seriously, it must adhere to the scientific method. It doesn't so it isn't. It really is that simple. Anyone who disagrees should provide details of those ID experiments and peer reviewed publications that directly address design.

And as long as they continue to insist on such criteria although there's no way to apply them to unknown one-time past events, they will continue in their delusion.

ALL there is from a scientific perspective on the questions that have been answered by Evolution is Observation and Hypothesis. There is no testability, no falsifiability possible. You come to a conclusion, if you do, simply on the basis of your judgment as to which Hypothesis best accounts for the Observation. Science bends over backwards trying to prove that Irreducible Complexity isn't really irreducible but COULD HAVE evolved, by pointing to this or that other biological system that appears to have some part of the same design fully operational in itself. Then they declare this pure hypothetical to be established fact: therefore it DID evolve.

Different sorts of eyes found all over the biological world are pulled out of context and mentally arranged in a series of hypothetical stages based on a very rough assessment of their mode of function and level of complexity, and this bit of mental juggling is taken to PROVE that the human eye evolved through some version of these hypothesized stages. All they have is an hypothesis as usual but they declare it Fact and that's ALL evolutionist Science has, the pronouncement of hypotheticals as Fact. Which of course is NOT science according to the list of rules I'm addressing.

That's all Darwin had too, just a hypothesis for how evolution COULD have happened, by which it has been declared to have happened in fact, and that's all his followers continue to have, although an elaborate system of sophisticated hypothesizing has been built up around it that further obscures this simple truth by giving the illusion of scientific validation. (Lots of science DOES go on AROUND these hypotheticals without changing their status as hypotheticals). They really believe it. But it is NOT derived from the scientific method.

Since they don't have an established fact, ID can of course quite reasonably continue to answer them with their own hypothesis: Irreducible Complexity still looks irreducible to them (as it does to me) still looks like it had to be designed. This is on EXACTLY the same plane of reasoning as puffed-up Science's. It's just as good reasoning in other words. The jugglings to prove it evolved are clearly just mental gymnastics that could prove just about anything you want since there is no objective test they could be subjected to. All Science has over ID (or Creationism either) is Establishment clout, a bully system and a history of mutually self-confirming peer-validated delusion. It does not have scientific method, it does not have superior reasoning.

But I'm not an IDer. I'm a straight Biblical Creationist. I believe Genesis as written, I don't find billions of years hidden away between any of its verses, I do not find evolution implied in any of it. I still believe that as far as one CAN go scientifically on these questions, Creationism's scientific reasoning is far superior to mainstream Science's. I think for instance that Observation of many quite visible characteristics of this planet should lead inevitably to the Hypothesis that the planet was once destroyed by a worldwide Flood. Of course I originally had help to this hypothesis by the Biblical revelation, but I do believe as far as scientific Rules 1 and 2 go, these are clearly met by the simple observation of a wrecked planet and the hypothesis that the worldwide Flood did the wrecking.

But the bottom line is always this: Jesus said we are to become as little children, and that means believing the revelation of God as simply true because He gave it. The more one follows this simple belief the more vistas open up to which the unbeliever can never have access. What to arrogant Science is myth or at least prehistoric -- the Creation, the Flood and so on -- is Witnessed History to Bible believers. Having Witness Testimony gives us a source of evidence the unbeliever forfeits.

The Bible shows many marks of authentication as God's word, and believers embrace those wholeheartedly no matter what "contradictions" unbelievers dig up against it. That's the way the Bible was designed, as Blaise Pascal said: to give enough light to lead the believer, along with enough obscurity to mislead the unbeliever. God rewards simple trust based on simple recognition of His work, He does not honor entrenched skepticism.

God showed us what happened in the past. It's far far from contemporary Science's idea of it. I trust God, not Science.

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Addendum:
Here's another post at deepest darkest EvC demonstrating that they have no idea what subject matter is amenable to the scientific method and what is not:

An IDer poster there said:

If I had my druthers, science classes should have the freedom to apply all of the evidence supportive to ID, including that evidence which conventional science disallows.

And the owner of the board replied:

... but then it wouldn't be science anymore, would it.

As I have argued above -- and throughout this blog for that matter --by the strict definition of science, neither is evolution science.

The Opening Post of this thread is excellent and well worth a read. It provides three examples of theories that took time to gain acceptance within the scientific community: continental drift, dark matter, and mitochondrial origins. Acceptance was gained by doing more and more research and gathering more and more evidence and publishing that evidence in more and more scientific papers in the scientific literature.

In the case of continental drift and dark matter I believe there WAS good evidence that supported their case and eventually won the day -- because they are subjects to which scientific method can be applied (though I'm not sure about continental drift since it implies a lot about a past that can't be studied). In the case of mitochondrial origins it seems likely that it wasn't science but simply the acceptance of the hypothesis that established it, that is, it won consensus just because the interpretation began to grow on the Scientific Community, since theories about origins are about the past as I say above, which isn't amenable to the scientific method as spelled out in the seven-point list of rules above.

Approaches to gaining acceptance that were notable by their absence:They did not lobby school boards and legislatures to teach their theories in public schools.

They did not conspire and plan ways to change public perception of their theory.

They did not hold seminars and debates to promote their theory to the public.

Intelligent Design is not science. If it were science you wouldn't be forced to propose changes to the definition of science so that it could squeeze in.

Those particular scientific propositions didn't use this sort of approach but I'm not sure that's because they had such solid scientific credentials. Perhaps they did. But the same can't be said for the theory of Evolution. If Evolution were actually founded on the scientific principles that are constantly being trumpeted for it his point would apply there, but it isn't and it doesn't.

It shouldn't be too hard to make the case that Evolution WAS in a sense promoted by a conspiracy to change public perception, if not an organized conspiracy certainly an informal conspiracy of true believers determined to make everybody else a true believer too. Evolution isn't lobbying for inclusion in the schools now because they are now the Establishment and don't need to, but that is pretty much what they did back in Darwin's day and for some time afterward. It was polemics galore that launched it, from Thomas Huxley's polemics to the Scopes trial which was popularized by a movie, along with ridicule of religious belief. It was all propaganda, intellectual bullying, browbeating the public and especially the intelligent young -- not science, not the scientific method -- that put Evolution in the schools. Or really, kicked the Bible out of the schools, since Evolution was already being taught. So they dressed up Evolution as True Science -- Emperor's New Clothes of course -- and the argument continues to rage. You know why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T SCIENCE! If it really were science nobody could argue against it, but it's patently NOT SCIENCE.

Darwin had ONLY a hypothesis, a very simple idea for HOW evolution MIGHT have happened, and that's all Science has for Evolution even now. In the days of the Scopes trial it should have been even more obviously the case, yet Evolution won, having no science, only propaganda. But you now fault ID for using the same methods Evolution used (and truth be told, still uses, since it has no scientific foundation whatever).

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* After doing this post I went and heard Scott Johnson's talk on this subject and I report on it at End Times Monitor.

Kenneth Miller, Intelligent Design, Constitution Twisting and then maybe some science Part 1.

Kenneth Miller on the Collapse of Intelligent Design

He's showing [24:00] how the Kansas Board of Education rejected naturalistic definitions of science. Obviously they want to preserve the supernatural component. But it seems to me they are misjudging the problem here and making their own situation harder. The problem with evolution is that it doesn't STICK to naturalistic assumptions and methods, although it happily embraces the concept as if it applied to evolution theory. But that's an illusion. Evolution theory relies on imaginative speculative homological/analogical and other nonscientific methods which it mistakes for evidence. We should ALL stick to the naturalistic ground rules and we should insist on identifying every deviation from them, because evolution doesn't hold up on that basis. We should keep hammering away at this fact. So the school board's attacking naturalism unfortunately undercuts their own strength and adds credence to the illusion that evolution is supported by tons of evidence from naturalistic science.

By the way, I'm not a follower of Intelligent Design, I'm a Biblical Creationist who takes Genesis literally, but ID's proposition that design implies a designer is indisputably true, it seems to me, axiomatic, and there's nothing about that definition that goes outside naturalistic assumptions: Look at nature, recognize design, conclude it must have a designer. We don't have to get into the nature OF the designer at that point. Likewise I appreciate their formulation of Irreducible Complexity as evidence against incremental evolution of complex living systems such as the flagellum-propelled bacterium. Evolutionists of course knock themselves out answering these claims and assert with a great deal of heat and elaborate cogitation how it's wrong wrong wrong and wrong again, but WATCH HOW THEY DO IT, watch carefully, learn not to take their reasoning as uncritically as people do. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's all speculative hypothetical imaginative reasoning about how it COULDAMAYBEPOSSIBLY happened by natural selection, with very little that even comes close to being ACTUAL EVIDENCE.

But Miller's next topic is what I want to think about now.

However, I am still reeling from Miller's reminder that the verdict in Kansas was that Intelligent Design is "Unconstitutional." This is nuts but I'm going to have to take up the political side of all this at some other time. Well, maybe I should give a hint here:

I'm not for creationists trying to change the public schools, because it's a huge hassle that only makes for hostility between separate parts of the community and this is not going to go away as long as evolution is as entrenched as it is. I do believe that IDers and creationists are acting on their rights under the First Amendment and that these very rights are denied by such a verdict as came down against ID in Kansas, which was a classic case of government prohibiting the free exercise of religion which the First Amendment specifically disallows, and interfering with their citizen rights to have a say in their community. Citizen concerns unconstitutional indeed! It's the citizens the Bill of Rights were meant to protect from government but they're knocking themselves out these days protecting government from the citizens, things are that upside down.

BUT this particular conflict has many tentacles, and one of them is the whole question of whether we should have public education in the first place. There's some good thinking on this going back to the 19th century I should dig up whenever I get around to this discussion, but the gist is that you can't have uniform education for both believers and unbelievers -- the unbelievers will always win and the right of believing parents to instruct their own children will be taken out of their hands. A scriptural expression of this is the command not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers (I Cor. 6:14).

So what we need is for Christians to remove their children completely from the public schools and find other methods of education. This should be Number One Priority, with committed energetic focus on inventing ways this can be done with minimal problems, and no compromising. Leave the public schools to the evolutionists and take pains to give Christian children a much higher level of education than the public schools can give anyway. Christianity was the inspiration for universal education in the first place, so we need to get back to that concept. Ultimately the unbelievers should benefit from whatever solutions we come up with too.

Anyway, NOW I want to get to Kenneth Miller's next topic, how the number of chromosomes in the ape and human genomes shows we're related.

Next post.