John,

Here are some links related to what we discussed the other day.

A skeptical review of some of the key intelligent design arguments starting at the irreducible complexity arguement:
ttp://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050923_ID_science.html

Irreducible complexity and the eye:
ttp://www.geocities.com/lflank/halfaneye.htm

The site below sounds a litle bit amatuerish to me but contains a lot of links to different famous "missing links"

ttp://www.geocities.com/lflank/

I'd sum up irreducible complexity as a rational arguement against evolution because it uses a seemingly reasonable arguement to cast doubt on it, but it’s an unscientific one because any example of irreducible complexity is an assumption not a fact and assumptions don't prove anything. I think the links above demonstrates there is good reason to doubt if commonly used examples of irreducable complexity really are. The fossil record is full of examples of intermediate evolution yet no species has a record of fossil ancestors available to sample at selectable random time intervals to test evolution and find every transition of interest due to a discontinuous geological record. We have to make do with the the geological evidence available to us. The random sampling comes from the rare and infrequent instances of fossilization events in nature itself beyond our control. The closest thing we have to controlled testing of evolutionary theory is genetic testing which so far has backed up the vast majority of conclusions drawn from infrequent fossils.

One thing I only recently became aware of (through shows on ID and counter arguments) is that one of the pillars of Darwin's theory is the patterns of diversity in modern life and that specimens from his time were more than just a Galapagos based inspiration. My own interest has been primarily in the fossil evidence. As a result I can't provide you with much detail, but it is a side worth considering if you are highly skeptical of the accuracy of the fossil record. He used examples of modern life from around the world as part of the support for his theory. Genetic studies are building that case even more strongly in the current day.

While I’m sure based on our previous conversations that you have lot’s of other information that gives you reason to doubt evolution, I hope you’ll at least get a good feel for why I’m skeptical of the evolution skeptics.

Regards,
Mark

And FYI ER John is willing to discuss the evidence rationally, but it seems he gets most of his info from ID proponants and not the skeptics. I like this guy a lot and he's helped me adjust to the new job so I really don't want ro offend him. I've avoided this topic since we first discussed it feeling like it was playing with dynamite, but he asked me about this topic the other evening.