[continued from previous message]   
      
   > teeth and hair.  The whale's tail had to bend and horizontal fluke's had   
   > to evolve where nothing existed before.  Behe can't demonstrate that   
   > these new structures did not evolve by Darwinian mechanisms because he   
   > notes that Darwinian mechanisms were obviously working to select for the   
   > broken genes.   
      
   I tend to agree. Whether one considers whales to be designed or evolved,   
   they are clearly highly suited to their environment such that   
   progressive functional subtractions from an aquatic anscestor as a   
   primary source of adpaptations is surely inadequate.   
      
   >   
   >>   
   >> The nature and measurement of information seems slippery. As you   
   >> mention, is it Kolmogorov complexity or Darwkin's "incomplete record   
   >> of the historical environment", or something else?   
   >   
   > No matter how the ID perps have tried to measure information, nothing   
   > has panned out for them.  At one time Dembski admitted that natural   
   > selection could be the designer.  None of them have been able to   
   > demonstrate that any of their examples of information could not have   
   > evolved by descent with modification.  They aren't even dealing with the   
   > information that they need to deal with when they lie about the genetic   
   > code.  The information required for life is not in the genetic code, but   
   > in the 3 dimensional structures created by the string of amino acids   
   > produced using that code, and as the ID perps themselves admit life has   
   > only had to explore a very small portion of possible protein space in   
   > order to evolve the diversity that it has.  It is just a fact that only   
   > a very small bit of protein space has had to be tested in order to do   
   > everything that needs to be done.  This seems to be due to the fact that   
   > the vast majority of protein genes have evolved from existing protein   
   > genes, and that sequence has only had to be changed a little in order to   
   > create the new function.  Your adaptive immune system would not work by   
   > mutation and selection if this was not the case.   
   >   
   > Ron Okimoto   
      
   "Dembski admitted that natural selection could be the designer" - do you   
   have reference for that?   
      
   The issue though is not what fraction of the possible protein space life   
   has explored, but rather how explorable is it? E.g. is it sparse plains   
   with occasional local maxima, or is it a rugged terrain of endless   
   valleys and ridges? In either case, the maxima will be mostly   
   undiscoverable to incremental search relying on incremental improvements   
   each conferring survival advantage sufficient to drive the associated   
   mutation to fixation in the population.   
      
   The way to and up countless Mount Improbables need to be largely smooth   
   and monotonically increasing.   
      
   I realise too that this not a settled question, and in some instances a   
   random polymer can be effecively to function, e.g.   
   https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.p   
   ne.0000096&utm_source=chatgpt.com   
      
      
   >   
   >>   
   >> ID posits a lawlike conservation of information, which I find   
   >> intuitively appealing, but Dembski's efforts to formally define this   
   >> have yet to land it seems.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >   
      
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