Help me understand Intelligent Design (part 2)

One thing that I can say about those of you subscribe to Evolution as the explanation of our existance - you have immense faith. Considering that 400 million years ago the planet was completely covered in ice in a run away ice age and even at the equator the ice on the oceans was 18 feet thick. The only life that survived was some algea that recieved just enough sunlight through the thick but unusally transparent equatorial ice. So in just 400 million years, life has successfully mutated from algea to humans who build space shuttles and Cray computers is quite amazing.Sure, saying that a devine creator was responsible for everything sounds highly simplistic compared to the endless explanation of the progression of evolution. But it is more plausible considering the mathmatical odds of so many beneficial mutations happening in a row and not being snowed under by all of the non beneficial mutations that happened along with them.Besides the shear number of beneficial mutations that is required to get from algea to an intellegent human being is uncalcuable. Consider that the 30,000 genes in a human alone are multifunctional and not singular in purpose, you still need the creation of raw information in the DNA to get from photosynthesis to the ability to visulize in 3D. The fact that each gene performs multiple functions in protein creation means that the DNA mechinism is highly structured and organized itself, the same as today's software is the result of intellegent design.Software mutation results in computer crashes, not new software applications being created. The complexity of DNA exceeds the most complex software application and the human brain is far more complex than any super computer. Nobody would ever say that computers came about by chance and mutation. The are intellegently designed.Edited for spellingThis message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 11-27-2005 04:55 PM

True that natural selection can be observed or at least the results of it. But it is still working within the realm of existing information and switching on and off different traits to best adapt to the stresses of the enviorment. To create or generate new information requires an influx of intelligence. The same as debugging a software program. Or altering it to serve a different purpose.Even if you use HMTL as an example. It is capable of displaying a wide variety of web pages. But HTML was created. It doesn't mutate. Any new instruction must be written into the code so that there is an agreed upon context for the instruction. A mutated instruction would have no purpose, for even if you could have a mutated html code, the computer would not know what do do with it since it's context was not agreed upon.The same with DNA code. It is information that represents instruction on how to create a protein. But there is a working context that allows the DNA instruction to be excersised into whatever it is supposed to be. A mutation in the DNA means that you have new instruction but with no context since it is an exapmle of random information or bio-noise. So the best that can happen is is the existing context attempts to excersise the code and you get birth deformities and defects. Natural selection depends on an abundance of original source material with an agreed upon context to work with, to addapt an organism to the best of it's resources. Similiar to a piano.You play the keys in the best way to create the best music for the audience. You cannot create new keys or notes, just the ones that are there. And the song played outside of the sheet music results in noise, not new beneficial songs. I don't know if you are a musician, but if you are, grap some sheet music and start playing it. Now play it again but randomly hit some different notes. You do not get new, beneficial music. You get discord, noise and a lack of harmony and functionality in the music.

I understand this. But we do not observe beneficial mutations. We only observe natural selection and assume that beneficial mutations are the mechanisms that got us from algea 400 million years ago to space shuttle designers today. What we observe in the mutation areana is natural mutation which appear as birth defects.ID says that mathmatically, this is impossible to beneficially mutate from algea to human. There is no enviormental stressor that would prompt algea to go anywhere except to more algea. If run away ice ages are common on this planet, it seems that the only life that can survive is sea algea. So after several of these ice ages, the algea that survived would be highly tuned to how to survive and any mutations would be sub minimal in effect on the host species definition. Making a warp jump from algea to humans would require far more than what the Earth's enviorment offers as far as mutational promptings.