Complexity issue

Hi everyone, I am a new member to the forum, I live in Toronto, Canada. I am not a biologist, I am a computer engineer who has tons of interest in ID, although the Darwinian arguments are based on the premise of biology, I find engineering concepts and design principles can see right through those hard-cover soft-science text's the Darwinists are out publishing.

I have attempted several times to let evolutionists have a stab at my question, but they have always reverted to other subject matters, or other topics of insignificance. The question I have is based previous build up of complexity vs. the present amount of complexity variably between different features of a living system. DE predicts a increase or build up of complexity overtime in the "general sense", or at least an increase of efficiency based on a already complex feature but with minor modifications or alignments to that initial complex feature, such as an eye. Also, this modification for an increase of complexity/efficiency to be fairly distinguishable we would unleash the "time God" of evolution and let the forces of NS&RM play the dice, so my question is that if a feature that was found in the past (a descent range would be at least 50 million years, to give the "time God" more time to work upon and fulfill its magic powers) that was more complex in comparison to that same based upon feature that served the same general purpose function (ie: the eye or anything else, even intelligence), then wouldn't that already distort the magical cookbook spells of the Harry Potter witches, that alone as I see it, already falsifies DE. Your thoughts?...

Actually, Darwinists claim evolution is blind and thus a case like the blind cave fish is an example of evolution. In Behe's new book the majority of cases discussed involve destructive mutations that have a net positive selection pressure. We are looking for examples of mutations that are not only beneficial in relation to fitness but also in relation to the progressive/positive creation/heavy modification of existing CSI (and no, the recently reported partial restoration of the eyesight in those blind cavefish does not count). But that’s a different thing than the generally used term “beneficial mutations” since a destructive mutation can be beneficial under certain conditions. If there is a generally-accepted term that encapsulates what we are looking for I’m not aware of it (although "constructive beneficial mutations" is fairly concise). It’s not CSI in general since that could be negative in relation to fitness. For example, if I were to tack a spoiler (like on a vehicle) and a retractable anchor onto a bird although that would be the constructive generation of CSI I think that would not be too beneficial…

The bulk of the best examples of Darwinian evolution are destructive modifications like passive leaky pores (a foreign protein degrading the integrity of HIV’s membrane) and a leaky digestive system (P. falciparum self destructs when it’s system cannot properly dispose of toxins it is ingesting, so a leak apparently helps) that have a net positive effect under limited/temporary conditions. I personally believe that given a system intelligently constructed in a modular fashion (the system is designed for self-modification via the influence of external factors) that Darwinian processes may be capable of more than this, but we do not have positive evidence for this concept yet.

The facts are that we do not have positive evidence for Darwinian processes being capable of non-trivial constructive positive evolution. The positive evidence we do possess relegates Darwinian processes to a relatively minor role.

Yes, there is a definite reproductive benefit within the population. Behe uses the analogy of trench warfare: blowing up a bridge to gain a limited advantage under certain conditions.

Another example is the nylon-easting bacterium, where the new enzyme was many times less efficient than its precursor, making the minor advantage null outside a limited set of environments. It went from 100% efficiency to 2% efficiency to metabolize and it has a lower reproductive rate and efficiency. Thus, it cannot survive (compete) amongst the parent species in a "normal" environment.

Why is it that you think that Dembski's ideas of CSI have not caught on in biology?

The implications, mostly. If Dembski had developed his concept and only spoke about general applications or software engineering his ideas would probably have been readily accepted. But he jumped straight into applying his ideas to biology, with Darwinism as the main target. That's stepping on many entrenched toes. Personally, I think if he'd gathered support for his ideas based upon general usage and THEN applied it to biology the backlash "might" not have been so strong.

1. Dembski's work would mostly affect computer science in regards to genetic algorithms (although others have focused their careers on NFL theory). A generalized method for detecting design would be useful for AI, never mind archeology where recognizing designed objects is not always obvious.

2. Think of a mountain range. Sometimes you have creatures who are within a bowl-like valley surrounded by sheer cliffs. The variation seen within dogs is the bowl. The sheer cliffs represent the limitations of Darwinian processes. Dawkins claims that "Mount Improbable" can be climbed by finding winding (indirect) trails to reach the top. But so far there is no evidence for these "winding trails".

Also, I already noted that not everything is degeneration...just the majority of examples.

3. AIDS. Drugs attack various subsystems of such viruses or modify the host in some manner that harms the virus. Viruses replicate rapidly and have an average replication error rate (so many errors per virus created). If a subsystem in the virus is modified just enough that it barely functions (degenerative) but blocks the drug in some manner then overall that degenerative change will help the virus and allow it to survive and produce more viruses which will inherit this "helpful flaw".

But it's also possible the AIDS virus is generating constructive modifications to itself. So the question is, how big is the AIDS virus' "bowl-like valley" or where are the sheer cliffs located. So we'd then target something that would require AIDS to traverse a cliff in order to survive.