iman

Yakk,

That was all really interesting, but I think you've missed my point - which was pretty small.

Nobody [well, nobody with eyes and a brain] would deny your bacteria example. Nobody says that just because a scientist sets up an experiment to study gravity, gravity only exists in lab conditions.

Maybe you didn't actually read the article Lebell linked to (by the way, the link posted by brianna doesn't work. You have to go back to Lebell's post).

The 13-letter word argument tries to show how a selection mechanism that "harnesses" chance could produce something as complex as proteins/DNA/cells/human beings. ID'ers have, apparently, used the argument before that a million monkeys each typing one word per second would take up to 79,000 years to come up with a single 13-letter word. So how could something as complex as a protein, with all those amino acids that have to be in a particluar sequence and particluar shape, have arisen by chance? And that's just *one* protein out of thousands (millions? billions? I don't reallly know), and we haven't even gotten to DNA yet, not to mention RNA, mRNA . . .

To counter this, the smarties at Scientific American have asked us dummies to consider the analogy of coming up with a 13-letter word using the selection-mechanism I described in the last post.

What I'm saying is that the selection mechanism mentioned in the article - generating sequences of 13 letters, and preserving the ones in the right place - works to explain INTELLIGENT evolution, not natural evolution. Yes, you're right - believing in natural evolution does not mean that all evolution is non-intelligent. But evolution must be, at bottom, non-intelligent. How the hell do the guys at SA think they can argue against ID by coming up with a selection mechanism that depends on intelligence?

The argument does not support natural selection over intelligent design.

You wrote that:

"Natural evolutionists don't disagree intelligence can harness evolution and direct it."

Well, I never said they did. The 13-letter word argument does not directly refute natural selection. But natural evolutionists need something more - they need to say that, at bottom, there is no intellegence that directs evolution. IDers, I'm guessing, would be fine having evolutionists show how they can make things easily evolve the way they want in experimental settings - that's *intelligent* design. Natural evolutionists have the further problem of proving how evolution takes place outside of experimental settings.

"IDers DENY the possiblity that Natural evolution could result in specification and account for the fossil record. For them to use the 13 letter word arguement as a weapon, they'd have to show how it provides evidence against non-intelligence directed evolution..."

Here's how an IDer could use the 13-letter word argument as a weapon: If the sorts of mechanisms behind evolution are like those selecting for certain words, then evolution is intelligent. If you Natural evolutionists cannot come up with mechanisms that aren't, at bottom, dependent on intelligence then you are just IDers in disguise.

[please note that I'm just addressing THIS argument for natural selection - the 13-letter word argument. Most of the stuff from Lebell's link was pretty convincing. I just thought they were pretty dumb to include this particular argument]