Re: IC (Challenge)

Ami Chopine (
Thu, 18 Mar 1999 10:55:10 -0800

>Here's a puzzle for ID supporters: can you solve it? Proteins contain
>functional domains that must interact with each other in order for the
>protein molecule to function properly. Remove even one domain and the
>protein effectively looses its function. Would this mean that, generally
>speaking, proteins are IC? If not, why not?

They are, indeed, an example of IC.

>Recently, however, the technology has now made it possible for biochemists
>and molecular biologists to take different functional domains from
>proteins, combine them, and get functional proteins

Is this supposed to be an argument against intellegent design?

>The puzzle then is this: assuming that this proteinaceous chimera is IC,
>how can you get an IC structure by assembling random non-functional parts?

Were they random? And if random, did you have a particular function in mind
for the molecule produced within an intellgently designed enviroment?

This is an old argument: "See, the floor can become the base of the
moustrap." Something else can substitute for a part, but that something
else performs the same function as the substituted part.
Not only that, someone with a purpose substitued the floor, or domain, for
the original part.

>Or put another way, how can a functional structure that looses its function
>when even one piece is removed be made out of a random assortment of
>non-functional pieces that were never "designed" to work together in the
>first place, assuming that IC is a real concept?

In this marvelous technology you described, you described design in the very
nature of the experiment. Please give us more details to support your
assertion that this experiment, or groups of experiments, had as part of
their design, total randomness in how the molecules were rebuilt.

snip analogous argument with same question. Was it truly random, or did our
inherently intellegent behaviors affect the system?


Ami Chopine