When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

I'm curious - if your alien encountered a radio signal pulsing in regular, constant intervals, would they arrive at the conclusion that it was an intelligent radio transmission?Should they?

Hi Ringo, But a pattern and DNA information are two different things.A snowflake has a pattern and no 2 are alike. Every cell in my body contains a copy of me. That is design. I know what you said. But I can not get confirmation from anywhere.I do know The salt crystal can grow only by taking from the environment material of the same composition as itself.But reproduce itself I can't find that information.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

And what would your hypothetical alien think of how the plan for the wires on this antenna came about?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

That's common ancestry, since every cell in your body is ultimately a descendant of the same single cell. Try a college-level chemistry textbook. I recommend Olmstead and William's "Chemistry", now in probably 5th or 6th edition (I have it in 4th.)

No. Every cell in your body does not contain a "copy" of you. Every cell contains DNA, which has the structure required to make the proteins that make up your body. There's no essential difference between the pattern of the atoms in the DNA molecule and the pattern of atoms in the snowflake. That's exactly how DNA replicates itself. It takes the constituent chemicals form the environment and joins them together to make replicas of itself. At the molecular level, there's no fundamental difference between replication of DNA and replication of a crystal. It's all chemistry.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can\'t find it.

In the vein of when does design become intelligent? How did the skeletal system end up being constructed with such intended purpose? Why would natural selection/ random mutation choose to build the skull with the perfect size and shape to house the brain?
What about the eye sockets? Which came first, the skull or the brain and the eyes? Why are their joints and why are they located in the perfect positions needed for body movement?The skeletal system is what you would expect to find as a result of intelligent planning and design. Natural selection and random mutations cannot account for this kind of design with purpose. Edited by ICDESIGN, : No reason given.Edited by ICDESIGN, : No reason given.

Hi subbie, I think it is a pretty fair assumption.Lets examine:The universe does not exist.There is no existence.The universe can not begin to exist.If you have a mechanism by which that could happen please email it to me.Now if there is existence.The universe can begin to exist.Either an intelligent designer had to create the universe.ORSomething in that existence be it a higgs bosom or an instanton or some other particle had to begin to expand into the universe we now have.If there was no existence for the vaccum for the higgs bosom or instanton to appear in the universe would not begin to exist.But the universe is here.I still go with the intelligent designer creating the universe.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi jay, This has to be a trick question but I will bite anyway.The answer is NO.Any two identical DNA molecules would have to have the exact same quanity of information that matched perfectly or else they would not be identical.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Ringo, Dumb me I thought the twisted double strand structure had to unwind and the strands separate. The nucleotides on each strand pair up with free nucleotides in the nucleus, creating two new strands. The order of nucleotides in the original strand specifies the order in the new strand. When this takes place we have two new double-helix molecules. Each one containing one inherited strand from the original and one newly formed strand.I'm so dumb I thought the cell used the gene sequence as a blueprint for the proteins it needs. The messenger RNA makes a copy of the gene sequence and carries it outside the nucelus. This information is read by ribosomes which assemble the protein out of amino acids in the cells cytoplasm, into a long chain to form the protein. The cell then uses the protein or sends it out of the cell to perform some job for the body.All that sounds like a very intelligent design to me. But what do I know?Sounds like a little more than chemistry is going on here.The problem is where did that information come from?Information requires intelligence and language.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

You have got to be kidding!The skeletal system is a mess. It is a kludge start to finish. An adaptation, but one that is adequate at best.One example: the ribs were designed to hold the innards of a quadruped, and in quadrupeds they form a nice solid support. When we started walking upright we lost that support and tend to sag a lot. Kludge!Knees! Lower back!If you think you can use the skeleton as an example of "intelligent" design you are exhibiting a woeful lack of knowledge of the human skeleton.(I've spent nearly 40 years examining human skeletons, and have worked with several thousand, so I bring some experience to bear.)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

What if this universe is an emergent property of another universe or endless string of previous universes?What if the human understanding of cause and effect is imperfect?Also, intelligent design is usually associated with a given deity continuously 'tweaking' the universe, which is a position that constitutes a direct assault upon all science.You don't have to take my word for it, ask the primary proponents, the DI.Now if one believes that any given deity caused the singularity to expand and then allowed it to fully develop over the last 13.7 billion years or so according to the original conditions this deity may have set up, how can anyone tell the difference between that and a completely naturalistic explanation, provided there is no 'tweaking'?

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

No, it's actually all chemistry. Enzymes can only increase the rate of a chemical reaction, it can't make a reaction occur that wouldn't occur spontaneously on its own.If you're interested in the biochemistry of DNA replication (in prokaryotes or eukaryotes), I recommend Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry. Natural selection and random mutation, two concerted processes that together are the way nature produces information without need of intelligence.

Hi crash, An existence where time can exist. How does time and the universe begin to exist if there is non-existence for them to exist in. I have never said I believe there was non-existence.God is the eternal existing intelligent designer.Now if God did not exist there would be non-existence.If there was non-existence the universe would not exist as there would be no existence for the vaccum to exist in that the instanton or higgs bosom requires to be able to appear and expand into our universe.Since the universe exists Eternal existence exists.That existence is the intelligent designer of this universe.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Allow me to inform you - you're well beyond making any approximation of sense.This is gobbledygook. Vacuum's exist inside the universe, not beyond it. We have no idea what is beyond the universe, or what kind of physics could possibly operate in that realm that leads to universes. Maybe the universe is an inevitability. Maybe the reason there's something rather than nothing is because there can't not be something.There's no reason to think non-existence is the default state of affairs if God never does anything. The fact that we exist is not evidence for the existence of any god. Why? Please be specific.

OK, that's great Coyote. I am looking for an expert to answer my very simple questions. The problem thus far is that you didn't answer even one of my questions.I disagree with your opinion. My knees and back work excellent and I don't sag. I'm sorry to hear you are unhappy with yours.Again, non of your comments address my legitimate questions.