so are motors. and yet…you believe that some motors (flagellum) arent the result of design.
“So are motors”? No. If we use your expanded definition of “motors,” then motors of some types are the products of human manufacture while others are not. There simply is no evidence at all that flagella are manufactured products, and, indeed, when we watch bacteria reproduce there are no designers or manufacturers involved.
But why are you still harping on this? Understand: an argument by analogy can at BEST be an invitation to investigation. One might look at a flagellum, say, “that looks like it was designed by someone,” and then look around the lab for the mischievous scamp who designed it and stuck it under the microscope. The analogy would establish nothing; the investigation inspired by the analogy might. So if you think it’s a good analogy, despite the fact that it’s obviously a horrible one, then you should DO THE FOLLOWUP WORK. Go find the designer. Get his name. Get copies of the original drawings and the notes from the original prototyping work. Find the designer, show his work, show how he did it (and/or still does it). Even a good argument by analogy is only an argument, and arguments mean nothing without evidence.
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and who has the burdon of proof in that case? someone who claim a motor can evolve or someone who claim a motor needs design?
this isnt analogy but a reality: the flagellum is a motor. this is your mistake.
we dont need that in order to know that motor is the product of design.
Concepts like “burden of proof” surely aren’t helpful here. I said that some types of “motors,” using your expanded definition, are manufactured by humans while others are not. Unless you are now contending that flagellar “motors” are manufactured by humans, I should think that we are agreed on that point.
No, it’s an analogy, based upon multiple uses of the same word to describe different things. Indeed, it’s such a poor analogy that it’s more like a tragic form of a pun than it is like an analogy. Nothing is ever empirically demonstrated by mere word-shuffling: EVIDENCE is what you need.
Well, if there were a known manufacturer known to manufacture the very type of thing in question, and the thing itself bore all the characteristic marks of manufacture, the way, say, a Studebaker 289 V-8 does, then indeed the inference to manufacture would be very strong even if the plant had burned down with the engineers and the drawing. But since none of that is true here, I am sure you can agree that we can make no such inference of manufacture for flagellar “motors.”
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It might also be described as a Equivocation fallacy – using varying definitions of “motor” (stricter ones might require human manufacture, looser ones might admit the flagellum as a motor).
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Yes. And I’m perfectly fine with saying the flagellum meets the definition of a motor. And there is evidence that the flagellum evolved. So it’s a motor that evolved.
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I agree. The widest definition of “motor” I’ve come across to date is (as I have mentioned before):
One who or something which imparts motion.
I wonder what the simplest “something” that meets this definition would be. A simple lever would appear to meet it.
One of the four fundamental forces of nature. Strong or weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, or gravity.
Hmmm – can a force, as opposed to something ‘physical’ (with mass, dimensions, etc), be considered a “motor”? Interesting question. I was considering a lever to be a bit of a stretch – it is not typically considered one, but would probably be considered somewhat analogous to physiological ‘motor action’. 
The molecular motors myosin and kinesis share a common ancestor with G proteins, which transmit signals by conformational change. Put simply, the motors have added a lever to to that enzymatic core; a better functional metaphor is a ratchet.
So as complex as they are, their origins are very clear.
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Tables really do have legs. That is not an analogy, but a reality. But they only walk in Disney animations.
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so please explain why under your definition flagellum isnt a motor.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a motor, under your definition of a motor. And since we are using your definition, I am sure my own definition could have no relevance here. The fact that the term “motor,” as defined by you, is capacious enough to include things that are very unlike one another doesn’t help you.
The form of your argument is this:
(1) a comic book is a “thing”;
(2) a comic book is designed;
(3) ergo, “things” are designed;
(4) a naked mole rat is a “thing”;
(5) ergo, naked mole rats are designed.
If the horrifying, bizarre, fatal error in your reasoning is not clear to you, I am sure I do not know how to make it clearer. Suffice it to say that word shuffling will in itself NEVER convince biologists that living things are designed. For that, you need evidence that living things are designed.
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but i want to hear your definition. so according to your definition, flagellum is a motor or not?
I would say that “motor” has many definitions, depending upon the particular context and usage. However, when one is conversing with someone who cannot understand that a word having many definitions does not mean that those definitions are all equivalent, it would be better to use a narrow definition. So, in order to prevent you from becoming as deeply confused as you now are, I would prefer a definition of “motor” which refers to the motors of common experience: devices manufactured by human beings which accept some type of energy input and use that input to cause some type of mechanical motion.
But, as I have said, we are using your definition. Under that definition, pretty much anything which moves is a motor. We can use that definition; however, since it refers to many things which are completely unlike one another (e.g., Studebaker 289 V-8s and flagella) it tends to be nothing but an aid to blurry thinking such as that which you’ve exhibited here.
I really don’t understand why you think there is any point to this at all. Bad analogies have never convinced anyone to overthrow a major scientific paradigm. Why would you think they would convince anyone now? Instead of bad analogies based upon verbal ambiguity, how about showing that flagella are the products of manufacture by a party known to have designed them? The only reason you can’t do that is that there’s no evidence that it’s so; but that lack of evidence is the end of the matter.
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so where you put the limit between a flagellum and a real motor then? according to this definition an artificial flagellum will also be a motor?
Really, now. Why bother? I feel we are rearranging the deck chairs on your personal Titanic after it has already hit bottom.
Very simply: definitions matter to the statement of a problem in reasoning. But they do not matter to the reasoning as such, which is about the things referenced by the definitions rather than about the words. Making a flagellum a “motor” will not transform it into something manufactured. Or, as the old joke goes:
“How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?”
“Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it so.”
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But of course it does. It just changes the meaning we assign to that arbitrary sound. What you can’t do is call a tail a leg and then suppose that means that a tail has toes, an ankle, and so on, or that the dog can use that particular leg to support its weight while walking. @scd’s problem is that he wants to equivocate between two meanings of a word in that same way, asserting that a dog’s tail is a leg, so it must have toes.
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One of my favorite tales involves Bertrand Russell proposing that any false statement can be demonstrated from any other false statement. Someone challenges him, saying that the “fact” that 2 plus 2 equals 5 cannot equate to Russell being the Pope. Russell responded along these lines: 2+2=5, so 4=5; subtract three from each side and you get 1=2. The Pope and I are two, ergo, the Pope and I are one, ergo, I am the Pope.
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so why do you think the flagellum isnt a motor? do you think for instance that artificial flagellum is a motor by your definition of motor?