REVISE THIS:Two sides of the irreducible complexity argument (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, September 18, 2009, 03:55 (5544 days ago) @ David Turell


> > Ah, that's because the book I was referring to was "No Free Lunch," written by again, Dembski. (The error is on page 297, and if you remember basic algebra you'll find it very quickly. Sad when a man with no degree can do math better than a PhD in mathematics.) 
> 
> I found the page, thank you. The first time I got to that point in the book I had no idea what was going on. He is discussing perturbation probability, whatever that is, and I still have no idea of how to read it, but I don't see any simple algebra on the page. Dembski has an MS in statistics and a PH. D. in math and another in philosophy. What page are we really talking about?
> -It's 297 in the one I have at home. My notebook with the actual work is still packed from my last move. (Will have to wait.) -http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf-For some published Dembski refutations; light on math. -> > 
> > "Behe used a calculation to try to show that a protein like trypsin (which is a protein in your intestines and helps you digest food) could never evolve through natural selection. Trypsin contains a specific kind of bond (called a disulfide bond) that stabilizes the structure of the protein; if this bond isn't formed then the protein doesn't work. Behe decided he'd try to predict the probability of a disulfide forming throughout natural selection. His calculation requires that the protein form a disulfide only at one certain position in the protein's structure, which was his first scientific error. A disulfide bond can form not just in one specific place in the protein for it to stabilize the protein, as Behe presumes in his calculation. Additionally, a protein doesn't necessarily need a disulfide bond to be stable, there are many other mechanisms to stabilize a protein than Behe considers in his calculations. When you factor these 2 caveats into the equations, then natural selection suddenly becomes much, much more attractive as a model for biological change than Behe claims. This is merely a simple criticism of Behe's work; there are also many other, more complicated problems with his work that I won't go into here. "
> 
> This reference is in neither of his books. As an MD I know about pancreatic trypsin and its functions to digest protein.. Human trypsin has to have an exact structure to work as an enzyme. The disulfide bond has to be in its proper position. There are three disulfide bonds. The molecule itself is huge, molecular weight about 21,000. Behe is a full professor of biochemistry at Leigh U. I doubt that the university allowed him to reach tenure making the kind of imputed mistakes your biochemistry friend attributed to him. To accept any of the above paragraph I would need exact references, not off-hand quotes from a biochemistry friend. I would like to see your research of Behe, and quotations produced by Behe. Like you I can only believe what I find or what is presented to me by reputatble quotations.
> 
> You may not like Behe, or Dembski and their association with DI, but I feel they are raising important questions that need to be investigated. I don't reject anyone out of hand. You never know where an important but weird idea may come from.-Good ideas can come from anywhere, but they need to come honestly. I didn't catch Dembski's error (it was pointed out to me and I confirmed it for myself), but Dembski has publicly never acknowledged it one way or another. He hasn't tried to defend it as right, nor has he done anything to reconcile the issue.-In the end their ties to the DI are too many to discount. (As a note, LeHigh university has a disclaimer on their homepage in regards to Behe.) -The process theologian I know also suggested to me once to get a book from a guy who spends most of his writing career writing 9/11 conspiracy theories. -There's a point where you leave loons to their own business. I'm open to design theory, but God help me it's got to be fact-checked and reviewed, and at least in Dembski's case, that doesn't happen. -http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/king-of-bad-math-dembskis-bad.html

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