Not enough room in DNA

Hi Huntard,

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Actually, we know something like that would be designed because we can either reverse engineer how it was designed, or have examples of similar things that we know ere designed. None of this is true for living organisms. Or perhaps you could reverse engineer for us how they were designed?

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I disagree, so we will have to agree that we disagree.
You are making assumptions that are not valid.

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also does not applly here, becuase if we ever picked up a radio signal from aliens, we would probably be able to reverse engineer the kind of transmitter used based on the signal itself.
So, your analogies are false.

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Same scenario again, we will have to agree to disagree.The analogies are valid.Regards,CT

Hello CT, Would you mind explaining what is not valid about the assumption that if we can reverse engineer something we can say that that is probaly how it was designed? Asserting they are invalid does not make them so. No they're not, for the reason I pointed out. Seeing as you can't come up with arguments against my reasons, except with "I don't agree!", I don't see any reason to take your analogies as valid.

Hello Mr Jack,

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The problem with your analogy is that it's completely wrong; it's extremely rare for people to confuse human artefacts and natural objects. If you came across a watch in a forest, you're not going to confuse the human made watch with the trees all around it

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I don't believe that I have suggested at any time that people confuse human artifacts and natural objects.
Your assertion here is not relevant to identifying design.
Obviously no one is going to confuse a wrist watch with a tree.It is the sheer weight of fully functional and operational design processes and structures within living organisms that is screaming out design.
It's not just DNA, design is at all levels, micro and macro.
Take the ATP synthase motor for example, absolutely mind boggling, or the transport of protein assembly around the cell.
For some great computer graphics have a look at:- http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/
and remember, this is a simplistic representation of just a tiny part of what is going on inside every cell in your body, or in the plant cells in the trees in the forest.All the best,CT

So you must concede that natural objects do not resemble biological objects - that's why we never confuse them. And if they do not resemble each other why should we accept your argument that the design of one implies the design of the other. But this is simply wrong; at every level, biological systems do not resemble designed systems, they appear evolved. We find example after example of re-use, of mutation, of botch jobs and variation, we find scales of efficiency and simpler examples dotted through the natural kingdom.

Hi, CT. If wrist watches are not like trees, then there is no reason to think the processes responsible for the wrist watch are like the processes responsible for trees.----- ATP synthase is also not like a wrist watch in any meaningful way.That it boggles your mind does not mean that it must have been made by a greater mind. A lot of very simple and very obvious things boggle people's minds.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

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But this is simply wrong; at every level, biological systems do not resemble designed systems, they appear evolved. We find example after example of re-use, of mutation, of botch jobs and variation, we find scales of efficiency and simpler examples dotted through the natural kingdom.

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That's your interpretation from an evolutionary worldview.
I would say they appear designed.
This is the crux of the matter. At this point the interpretation diverges according to the preconceptions that one holds.
When I look at biological systems, I can see design everywhere; when you look at biological systems, you see evolution.Once again we have to agree to differ.Interestingly, many years ago my worldview was evolutionary just like you, but at some point I began to question evolutionary theory and then I realised that creation made a lot more sense of the evidence around me than evolution did.
Over the years I have noticed in myself that my whole way of perceiving what I see has greatly changed.
Never underestimate the effect that your worldview has on how you interpret evidence.
This applies to everyone, no exceptions.
It's the same evidence for everybody but a totally different interpretation, dependent on whether your viewing things in an evolutionary framework or a creationary framework.
To either camp the other side appears to be blind to the obvious.
It is not that either side are less intelligent or gullible but rather are strongly swayed by their worldview.That's my two bob's worth.Kind Regards,CT

No we don't. This isn't a question of interpretation - you are wrong. Biological systems are not like designed systems, they are like evolved systems. Multiple, independent lines of scientific evidence support the evolutionary explaination for the diversity of life; no lines of scientific evidence support the notion that life was created. Did any part of this change involve you studying biology or palaeontology?-----I realise we have wondered from the topic of this thread, perhaps you'd like to start a new thread on your claim that the support for creation and evolution boils down to interpretation and world view bias.Edited by Mr Jack, : Off topic

I can think of one important one right off the bat.Self-replicating means that they build themselves without outside assistance. A tree makes more trees. Gerbils make more gerbils. Forks, laptops and gravestones never make more of themselves. That's one reason why if you find a watch in the forest you know that someone made it and it didn't grow there on its own. Or do you think that it might have grown there on its own? You're begging the question. I asked you how you know whether either one of them was designed? It can't be by complexity, as a sphere is certainly a lot less complex than a tree - it can be described in full with very little information. You're already assuming that a tree is the result of design, without saying why. It appears that you believe that some insect activity is behind these markings. I see that you're not asserting that this supposed insect itself was the designer. Instead, you're simply begging the question again, asserting that whatever this insect does is the result of its own design. Begging the question means that you're assuming that which is to be proved as your means of proving it, and it's a logical fallacy.Try again. Say you came across this in the forest: How do you know whether this is the result of unpurposed natural activities, like an insect burrowing in the wood, or if instead it's the result of intentional design, say perhaps an inscription in some unknown language?

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John LydonWhat's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch

And if that picture doesn't work, tell us how this was designed:Just a moment...That's "patterned ground" in Spitsbergen. Is frost intelligent, CT, or was it Frost Giants?

Oh dear. Time to remind ourselves of the probabilities of the self-assembly of a single, simple living cell:

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Signature in the Cell- Stephen J Meyer — Excerpt:

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"the simplest extant cell, Mycoplasma genitalium a tiny bacterium that inhabits the human urinary tract requires ‘only’ 482 proteins to perform its necessary functions (562,000 bases of DNAto assemble those proteins). ,,, amino acids have to congregate in a definite specified sequence in order to make something that works. First of all they have to form a peptide bond and this seems to only happen about half the time in experiments. Thus, the probability of building a chain of 150 amino acids containing only peptide links is about one chance in 10 to the 45th power.
In addition, another requirement for living things is that the amino acids must be the left-handed version. But in abiotic amino-acid production the right- and left-handed versions are equally created. Thus, to have only left-handed, only peptide bonds between amino acids in a chain of 150 would be about one chance in 10 to the 90th. Moreover, in order to create a functioning protein the amino acids, like letters in a meaningful sentence, must link up in functionally specified sequential arrangements. It turns out that the probability for this is about one in 10 to the 74th. Thus, the probability of one functional protein of 150 amino acids forming by random chance is (1 in) 10 to the 164th. If we assume some minimally complex cell requires 250 different proteins then the probability of this arrangement happening purely by chance is one in 10 to the 164th multiplied by itself 250 times or one in 10 to the 41,000th power.

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And you, Coragyps, would attempt to compare this process with simple circles of gravel, or ZenMonkey's haphazard patterns in the bark of trees?None are so blind as those that will not see.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Why would we remind ourselves of anything so supremely irrelevant which only occurs in the fantasies of creationists? I'm sure we could extend the gravel and bark examples down to the levels of atomic bonds and Van der Waals forces and generate lots of really big numbers for their improbability, but they wouldn't be any more meaningful than Meyer's mathematical jiggerypokery.Hoyle's tornado in a junkyard was a ridiculous argument when he first made it and it still is today, no one has ever ascribed to the straw man theory of spontaneous random assembly of a cell that it counters.TTFN,WK

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.

M. genitalium is the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution. Of course it isn't simple. What you need to show is that it is impossible for any replicator to have fewer proteins, otherwise your argument is irrelevant. You haven't even shown that amino acids are necessary for life to begin with. RNA can serve as both an inheritable molecule and as an enzyme filling the role of DNA and proteins in modern organisms. How did you determine that they were haphazard patterns? Would you say the same of a Jackson Pollock painting?

So are you saying that the same phenomena - the marks inscribed on the tree trunk - that Calibrated thinker apparently believes are complex enough to be clear indicators of intelligent design are actually far too simple, in contrast to the workings of the cell, to be indicators of intelligent design?

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John LydonWhat's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch

Well, Charles Darwin, for one, started out as a religious person. Moreover, just before he sailed on the Beagle, everybody, including himself, thought he was destined for the cloth. And once on the Beagle, he cited the Bible regularly to the sailors. He was very fond of William Paley's watch argument, and he knew Paley's book almost by heart. So you could say that Darwin was very much viewing things from a creationist viewpoint.Yet, we know how history played out. During his five year voyage, and in the following years, Darwin took great pains to consider the evidence (your "same evidence for everybody") very carefully and from every angle, eventually to come to his remarkable insight.In my view, there is a great difference between the creationist viewpoint and the evolutionary (i.e. scientific) viewpoint: the former is inspired by ideology and inherited from generation to generation, despite the evidence, while the latter is derived from, and solely based on, the evidence, after the fact.In the creationist case, the viewpoint comes first and an interpretation of the evidence is made to fit that viewpoint. In the scientific case, however, there is no preconceived viewpoint. It emerges from an iterative process of theorizing and testing. You go wherever the evidence leads you, even if it leads you out of your comfort zone, as it did in Darwin's case initially. He started with a creationist outlook on life, but upon examining the evidence he gradually - and at first reluctantly - changed his mind.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.