Continuing with Salamantis at #189.
As to Kirschner and the original cell, I did not say the cell was a template. What I meant was that it had all the necessary hardware. It used the same 20 proteins, it had the same G, C, A, T structures, etc. In modern term, the cell has been conserved. That came as a big surprise to Darwinists. To quote Kirschner (p. 34): “A big surprise of modern biology has been conservation-that even distantly related organisms use similar processes for cellular function.” The reason that finding is important is that it explains parallel evolution. That’s because just about the same genetic structure from the cell is used over and over again. For example, takes eyes in vertebrates, arthropods and squid. Nearly the same set of genes is use for each of those. Yet that flies in the face of the Darwinian model which posits random mutation as the starting point that should lead to eyes. But conservation puts the Darwinian cart before the Darwinian horse. The genes are already there to be used later. A comparable puzzle - Why do sharks have genes for fingers?
At #190: You gave me four examples that you think would falsify the Darwinian model. I don’t see how 2, 3 and 4 (especially 4) would falsify it. The definition of a species makes 2 an impossibility, and similarly it would suggest that in 3 they are nearly the same. (We do, however, have example of the same genome sequentially producing two entirely different phenotypes: butterflies and moths.) That only leaves 1, and I’ll have to think about that. When we turn to the issue of time, I’ll use Lenski’s experiment. One mutation (that might or might not be favorable) in 20,000 generations. In human terms, say about 400 thousand years. That means 12 favorable mutations in 5 million years; and can 12 mutations takes you from money to man? (I am ignoring the population difference between the gazillion bacteria Lenski was using and the few million hominids that became man.) Lee Spetner, in chapter 4 of Not By Chance, goes through the probabilities regarding the changes that have to occur to go from hyracotherium to horse. He concludes it is simply not possible for it to have happened randomly in the 65 million years that elapsed between the two. Put another way, it should have taken a lot longer. Note, 65 million is more than 10% of the time from the Cambrian explosion to the present. So, it really was Spetner’s calculations I had in mind, and not Dembski’s, when I said 530 million years is to short.

Two final thoughts. One I notice some questions about Dawkins’ computer model. Before you even bring it up, just remember how it was constructed: a program made by intelligent agent, run on a machine made by intelligent agents. That doesn’t cut the mustard.

Second, the hexagon example is from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (CJ). In the second half of that he discusses teleology (which is sort of like intelligent design). The book was a response to Spinoza’s Ethics in which Spinoza had constructed a paralytic God who could do nothing. That allowed him to reject teleology. Kant’s CJ was a partial resurrection of teleology. In it, Kant did not see the non-living aspects of nature as showing a purposeful intelligence, and that was because they were explicable by fixed laws of nature. Where he did see intelligence was in living organisms and in the exquisite coordination of all the parts. He then went on to say that while you cannot conclude there is a God from that (although one might subjectively be inferred), you can conclude there was an intelligence at work. To provide and example of what he meant, he used the hexagon (and the watch). Similarly, when I look at a cell with all its intricacies and the exquisite coordination of all its parts, I conclude that it could not have happened by chance based on current knowledge. Hence, by default, I see an intelligence as having made the cell. Maybe I’m wrong and someday we may have a naturalistic explanation, but so far there isn’t one.