This is just my overall impression.
I think @Guy_Coe is trying to say something that does not cause me any concerns and that would be a normal view for a theist. But somehow he is finding very argumentative ways of saying it, and he is rejecting attempts to get him to reword it in a less provocative way.
At least that is my take on the dispute.
@Rumraket I feel like this recent post by Axe May run into the problems posed by your Everest analogy. He’s even using rocks to make his point:
Why the Conclusion that Life Is Designed Really Is Inescapable | Evolution News
Well, if it doesn’t cause any concerns, and is, in fact, a normal view, how can it be labeled “provocative?” It’s true I don’t dance around uncomfortable truths, and I agree that I can be argumentative (since simple assertions lack the potential to persuade), especially in the light of so much intractible avoidance of my logic, or outright minimizing. I also can have a sense of humor about it.
Did you hear the one about the evolutionist and the theist who walk into a bar, and both wake up a bit later, rubbing their heads? : )
What am I missing, @swamidass ?
Axe says:
Crude math is perfectly adequate here. The hundreds or thousands of small fractions representing the individual probabilities *inevitably* multiply to a probability so small as to constitute an outright impossibility.
How many small cracks make up the surface of the Mt Everest? Probabilities greater than zero can never add up to an impossibility. Case closed.
Axe says:Crude math is perfectly adequate here. The hundreds or thousands of small fractions representing the individual probabilities inevitably multiply to a probability so small as to constitute an outright impossibility.
Dear Dr. Axe,
Crude math tells us that if we take any sufficiently long sequence of events and call them random (equivalent to ~500 coin flips), that sequence constitutes an “outright impossibility”. Given that you have easily experienced thousands of events in your life prior to this moment, it is an outright impossibility that you are reading this message now.
Sincerely,
Mathematics
i think that actually we do. we can think about this analogy: say that a designer want to add a gps system to his bike. he cant do that by mixing parts in his bike or by a stepwise way. the same is true with the flagellum. the same isnt true for mt everest since we a mountain doesnt have ic systems. by the way english isnt my native so i dont understand some words here and there in general.
I don’t think you have shown that the same is true for a flagellum. You have merely just declared the conclusion you seek to establish as true, you have not shown that a flagellum is like a bike.
Here are some facts that show that a flagellum is not at all like a bike:
First of all, the flagellum is made of proteins. It is not made of steel and aluminium that is welded or bolted together. Proteins have natural electromagnetic affinities that make them able to attract or repel each other in certain ways, and the kinds of forces that dominate at the molecular level are wholly unlike what our intuitions tell us should happen when we just randomly toss together macroscopic objects. Most macroscopic objects, like pieces of metal and wood, don’t naturally “stick” together through electromagnetic attractions, in the way molecules that have electrons and protons that attract or repel each other, do. So a flagellum is completely unlike a bike in that respect.
Proteins are also replicated when cells divide, and the genes that encode them can mutate, so the amino acid sequence of proteins can change over time, in turn altering the functional properties of the proteins. Again there is nothing like this with bikes or GPS computers.
the same isnt true for mt everest since we a mountain doesnt have ic systems.Your analogy has failed before we ever got to consider the prospect of irreducible complexity.
by the way english isnt my native so i dont understand some words here and there in general.
Don’t worry about it, I understood it well enough I think. 
Part of the problem is this approach is a way of avoiding questions. For example, I could claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. You start to provide all of this evidence linking HIV to AIDS, but in response I demand that you first need to produce evidence for the origin of all life before you can evidence HIV causing AIDS. Afterall, if you have a materialistic worldview of what causes AIDS then you must also have a materialistic origin of life, and without that explanation the rest of your materialistic explanation is problematic, right?
Using this method you could reject each and every theory in science by demanding a materialistic origin of the universe, and lacking such evidence you can declare that no theory in science can be accepted. It is simply a way of avoiding evidence for the causes we do understand.
You seem to think I have somehow rejected the workings of evolution altogether. Why would you think that, in light of what I’ve written? My point has only been about the sufficiency of it. Unless your goal really is to persuade me of an entirely materialistic worldview? You already know mine. Maybe neither of us is that far apart, only emphasizing different meta-theses?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but you’ve claimed literally that the evidence supports your point without offering any, or even any suggestion that you have the slightest familiarity with the evidence.
Then you switched to probabilities, without any calculations, which also are based on evidence.
So my question is: how is it that you understand that your opinions SOUND better to others when you claim that they are based on the evidence, but apparently reject the idea that your opinions will BE better if you base them on the evidence?
I could be reading your posts incorrectly, but you are arguing against evolution because of the insufficiency of abiogenesis. That’s like saying HIV is an insufficient explanation for AIDS because infection does not explain abiogenesis.
My goal is to understand why you think evolutionary mechanisms are insufficient for evolving features like the bacterial flagellum.
Because, literally, no matter what evidence I offer, it will only bait those who so decide into a denial or a minimization. The complexity of even the simplest hypothetical cell has so far thoroughly eluded every attempt to account for it via evolutionary processes alone --and the claim is that all we have to is constantly apply the best minds and grant funding over another 50-plus year period, so we can to prove no intelligence was necessary in the first place. Anything sound fishy to you?
What I treat as evidence, is disregarded by saying that it is out of bounds, that evolution is not about a prebiotic world, and that science has not (yet) solved the problem of abiogenesis --but that’s my point, and partly what I offer as evidence, along with the question of how, even in the face of a possible eventual explanation, nature got to be this way --because literally, everything has to be “just so” for biological life on earth to even be possible.
Look at the observations for the fine-tunung of the universe which proceed from the Anthropic Principle, for example…
I can’t help but take a full-orbed approach that tries to see the forest and the trees.
Complexity has nothing to do with it. Evolution is what happens to things that are alive and reproduce, it then obviously can’t explain the origin of life, whether that life is complex or simple is besides the point.
--and the claim is that all we have to is constantly apply the best minds and grant funding over another 50-plus year period, so we can to prove no intelligence was necessary in the first place. Anything sound fishy to you?Yes, that description. It's wrong in every specific claim it makes about research into the origin of life. It is a tiny field that gets very little funding, few experiments have been done, what research takes place isn't done so as to "prove no intelligence was necessary", and how would you even establish that the people who have done work in the field are "the best minds"?
What you write is all gibberish here I’m sorry to say.
Think of all the things that had to be “just so” for the Mt Everest to come out the particular way it did. It could have been different in an uncountable number of ways.
Have you checked out this paper?
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7116
Why would we need to know how abiogenesis occurs in order to determine how the bacterial flagellum evolved? The evolution of the flagellum would start with an already existing bacteria that lacks a flagellum.
That makes no sense, as you haven’t offered a speck of evidence.
Yes, everything you wrote. Have you considered offering actual evidence or addressing what people actually write/say, instead of beating on a straw man?
I haven’t seen you offer any evidence.
You’re taking an evidence-free approach as far as I can see.
Who has made such a claim?
Maybe you are missing nothing.
I wonder, however, if you are missing the better arguments for insufficiency. A lot of our posts seem to fit this description (no offense meant):
I wonder if the reason is just that you are used to presenting this in an ID sort of way. There is a stronger argument to be made. This doesn’t actually have to be a fight, because science doesn’t actually tell us one way or another.
