Not enough room in DNA

Yes.Would you like to argue for the contrary, or would you just like to pretend that just because you don't believe something, it can't be true?

Your argument seems to be based on the idea that the information in the human genome is just too small to define the complexity of a human being.Well, show me the math. Specifically, I should like to see you figure out how large it would have to be to do so. Once you have done so, then you can complain that the human genome is smaller than the figure that you've arrived at. Until then, I think you're just blowing smoke.You're offering up an argument which by its very nature is quantitative, but you haven't showed us any actual math.---This is a perennial problem with creationist arguments. For example, they tell me that if evolution was a fact, then we would have found more intermediate forms than we have. And then I ask them two things:(1) Please would you do the math and tell me how many intermediate forms we would have found if evolution was a fact?(2) Do you have any idea how many intermediate forms have been found?Now, your argument is slightly less bogus in that you can answer the equivalent of question (2) --- you do know how large the human genome is. But you're nowhere on the equivalent of question (1), because you haven't provided a shred of a scintilla of an iota of reasoning to say how big the human genome should be. You just say that however big it is, it should be bigger than that.---On the theological questions that your post raises, I associate myself with slevesque. Why should God make the world so badly that he needs to tinker with it and prop it up every time a zygote grows to become a child? Wouldn't a smart God make a universe that actually works?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You know, it's not too late to switch sides. What you've just said to J. Patterson is just what I've been trying to say to you --- only it seems that you can only recognize the fundamental error he's making when it's not you who's making it.So much of the EvC debate seems to me to boil down to this: Wouldn't a smart God have made a universe that works? But no, not according to creationists. For example, according to creationists God wanted a universe with life in it. So (they tell me) he made a universe in which it was absolutely impossible for life to arise. And then he did a miracle to make life. First he made a bicycle with square wheels, and then he carried it to the place where he wanted it to go.Fred is awesome!

You confused the Red Sox with the Minnesota Twins?This will probably mean war. I'll leave it up to you.For myself, I think that one of the best things about living in Las Vegas is that we have no professional sports teams whatsoever, which means that I don't even have to pretend to be interested in this stuff.

Nothing whatsoever. I'm here because I fell in love with a woman who lives here and married her. Until we get the paperwork sorted out, which is taking a lot longer than I thought it would, then it isn't even legal for me to get a job. Which I think is stupid, but there you go.

But I have addressed it. I've pointed out that this assertion is, apparently, based on no calculation or evidence whatsoever. No, as you appear now to have accepted. And this has of course been done. The human genome has been sequenced, and there's your "200 books".Now, I want to hear what you think is left over. If the "200 books" can't account for everything they're supposed to account for, then there must be some specific biological processes they can't account for. Can you show us one? Magic biology pixies --- which is basically the function you're attributing to God.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Not particularly. You attribute some things to natural causes, do you not? Such as the issue that this thread is about --- you're satisfied that the genetic information is sufficient to account for development and metabolism, and you don't complain that it's misleading for God not to have left some sort of Gap for him to be a God of in this particular instance.And nor, you will note, have I ever suggested any such thing about any natural process. The fact that some things in nature work wouldn't make it misleading for God to have created them. He could just have made a universe that works. 'Cos of being omniscient. No...ooo ... I don't think that's what I said. That's my objection to fiat creationism, not to God. The problem with fiat creationism is that according to the creationists much of the universe is properly attributable to a miracle, and yet I'm meant to believe that God chose to do all the miracles in such a way that it seems perfectly reasonable for scientists to attribute them all to secondary causes.It's not misleading for God to do a miracle, and neither is it misleading for him to work through secondary causes. It is misleading for him to work miracles in such a way that they look exactly like the operation of secondary causes. That's just jerking scientists about. Well, if it comes to that, a universe in which tiny little pigs with wings suddenly start flying round my head singing show-tunes is also more consistent with the existence of the supernatural. But I don't complain about this not happening as being misleading.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yes. I think you've missed the point. And now I think that you've got it, apart from your choice of phraseology.Look, suppose that two people argue for different gods. One guy believes in a god that has made everything in the universe pink, the other says that his god made things all different colors.And one of them says: Yes ... true ... and ... ?

Sorry I didn't answer this, I was too interested in talking philosophy.I have never, not even once in my whole life, played cards for money. I have my vices and my follies, but that isn't one of them.

Perhaps you could tell us what you're talking about. This would require some sort of link to a reputable source, not just your vague memory of something you think you read about somewhere which turns out to be about bacteria. Perhaps you could show us your math.Oh, wait, you're a creationist. You're making what looks like a quantitative claim without being able to produce any actual figures whatsoever. Compactness? Of a eukaryotic genome? Surely you kid.As to whether it is "a very strong argument for brilliant design", that would depend on whether or not you are inclined to commit petitio principii. "Very interesting"? No, there is a mundane, nay, even boring explanation, which is that up until now no creationist on this thread has bothered to make your particular mistake, which is, in fact, off-topic.

Alternative gene splicing would have been my second guess.But I don't know if I actually need a second guess, since I still don't know what he was trying to be wrong about in the first place. Heh, I've seen that one. Even if transcription and translation were the same thing, they'd still just be jumping up and down crying "Evolutionists have spoonfed us another fact that we didn't know and couldn't possibly have found out for ourselves! How stupid those evolutionists are!"

I do comprehend what you're trying to say. I should just like you to provide some evidence for it. It actually sounds kind of interesting, and for some creationist to say something that was both interesting and true ... well, it's been a few months since that happened round here. I'm rooting for you. Really. "Many"? Then could you produce one? Just one? Nothing on a creationist website is informative, and you are also lying about it being simple and concise.I asked you for a reputable source. Yeah, it's like assuming that my legs are the only things that help me stand upright. It's a great leap of faith. It excludes the operation of invisible magical pixies for which there is no evidence whatsoever.Oh, wait, that's not what "faith" means, is it? "Faith" means kind of the exact opposite, doesn't it? Ah ... that's faith. Hope, and indeed lunatic self-confidence, that you will one day be proved right --- without a scrap of a shred of a scintilla of evidence suggesting that this might ever happen. Faith.

Well, this is funny. On the one hand it seems that DNA is one of the glories of creation: On the other hand, it's insufficient: This is one and the same creationist. We are meant at the same time to think that DNA is so wonderful that we can only attribute it to fiat creation, and to think that it's so pathetic that some other mechanism must surely be involved.

And your willful incomprehension of the statements to which you are failing to reply will stand forever as a monument to that immortal fact.---Does anyone want to discuss the topic, or are we done here?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, it's fairly obvious that Darwin didn't start out as a Darwinian --- how could he? He'd never read The Origin Of Species, because he hadn't written it.Darwin studied theology at university ... in the Voyage of the Beagle you can read him giggling about Lamarck's crazy ideas about evolution ... and he was a young-earther. I'm too lazy to look up the reference, but I do remember his reaction when he came across the first suggestion that the Earth was old. He was shocked and perplexed. He wrote (I quote from memory, but something like) "I had always thought that the date of six thousand years was generally accepted".Darwin wasn't born a "Darwinian", rather, he slowly came around to the views that we now attribute to him and call "Darwinian". He was forced to become "Darwinian" by the weight of the evidence. And when he did, he wrote "It is like confessing a murder". He hated the idea that he was forced to believe. He spent decades concealing it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.