Fine tuning/ programming

Variation and selection. There's no requirement. If there were, the programmer would require a programmer, and the programmer of the programmer a programmer, and so on ad infinitum.So, obviously, the existence of "intricacy" and "complexity" cannot be dependent on the phenomenon of intelligence, which has more "intricate complexity" than anything else we know.In addition, our evolutionary view is supported by the simpler precedents of the human heart that we can observe in other creatures, and the fact that complexity is always preceded by simplicity in the fossil record (hardly necessary if your programmer were responsible, as both could appear instantaneously in geological time). It does to me too. It is very fanciful. You made the idea up.Welcome to the site.Edited by bluegenes, : typo

DNA sequencing is something we do. Did you mean sequences?Were you referring to my comment on this phrase? If so, I agreed that it's fanciful because mutations do not work together toward a goal. They just happen.Mutations are the source of the "variation" in my answer to your O.P. question (1).It's a common mistake to see things nature in terms of goals or purpose, both words that you use in your second post.

No. Remember, my answer to your question (1) in the original post was "variation and selection". The mutations cause the variation, and are certainly not caused by natural selection. Natural selection acts on the variations, with a bias for what works, and for what works best.Nature is biased in favour of function, not "intricate complexity" per se, but when variations increase intricacy and complexity in a way that improves function they will be selected for.Over long periods of time, the effects can be impressive, hence, perhaps, your incredulity in the O.P. in relation to the human heart, a product of hundreds of millions of generations of evolution (most creatures in the history of its development had relatively short generations).It's worth remembering that the average increase in "intricate complexity" per each thousand generations in that history is actually minuscule, and that each small increase in intricacy or complexity takes place initially in one organism out of millions. Far more individuals would have received random variations relating to their hearts which were useless or negative.This mutation/selection process has no goals or purpose, as I said before. What functions will survive.Edited by bluegenes, : typos!

Sort of. But the hot spots themselves are subject to selection, so their existence can be part of the "evolved evolvability" of genomes.The flexibility provided by the tendency to mutate frequently in a certain area could have proved advantageous in the past, and the characteristic could have "piggy backed" to fixation on the back of advantageous mutations it produced.There are also stress induced mutations, and again, the tendency to mutate under stress could be a characteristic which itself has been selected for.So, it's useful to regard mutations as random in a sense, but the tendency to mutate in useful areas and at useful times can be the product of past selection, and therefore, in a sense, not entirely random. The same applies to the varying mutation rates, as these vary within species as well as between them, and can be subject to selection (an increased general rate "piggybacking" like the hot spots when environmental pressure makes change advantageous).I mention all this because such things can contribute to the illusion of design in the system, when really it's because all modern organisms have had plenty of time to evolve evolvability itself!

But, my dear Doctor, you've just spent a lot of time building up to your claim that "intricate complexity" does require intelligent design. Either it does or it doesn't. If you're going to make arbitrary unevidenced exceptions, your whole "intricate complexity" argument falls apart.My view, that intricate complexity can exist without intelligent design, fits both a no-god and a god scenario, and has no such contradictions. But you present no evidence in support of this. Ah, good. There sometimes are goals if we consider the things made by intelligent animals who can design with intent and purpose. I'm pleased that you seem to be agreeing that computers, and therefore their intelligence designers, are natural in the broad sense of the word.The mistake I was referring to is the human tendency to see design and volition where it isn't, which is how we end up with gods who control the weather, evil spirits which cause disease, and, more recently, intelligent designers of intricately complex pathogens, etc. Edited by bluegenes, : punctuation!

But if you're here to express your religious faith, why bother explaining to us that the heart is an intricately complex organ, something we know anyway? You mean that there's no evidence to support evolutionary theory? Really? I didn't know that all people who think that evolutionary theory is a very strong theory were atheists. Are you seriously suggesting this?I'm certainly one though, and I assure you it requires no faith to lack a belief in gods or any other supernatural beings. I can also tell you that my lack of belief in gods has nothing to do with my view of biology, as it's easy to conceive of a god who could create a universe in which chemical and biological evolutionary processes happen.If there is a god, and this god wanted life, he got the physics of the universe right. Not at all. You seem to be implying that an interventionist god is required in the life system of this planet in order to achieve "intricate complexity". The opposing view is that "intricate complexity" would be part and product of this universe, whether or not the universe was created by gods.You can find atheist v. theist debates on this site with the evolutionists lined up on both sides. By all means start a thread on the subject, and you'll see what I mean. A good title might be "Atheism requires Faith", because that's like a red rag to a bull for some of us, so you'll certainly get participants. Easy. You have to evoke a supernatural being whom you exempt from your arguments in order to claim that "intricate complexity' requires intelligent design. There is nothing we know of that has more intricate complexity than intelligence itself, so this is special pleading. Anyone can argue anything with an "argument from magic", which is why such arguments are meaningless.If I were to claim to be a wizard with special insights into the universe which told me that the human heart evolved naturally, and then pointed out that you could not disprove my magic claims, what value would that argument have?Yours is on the same level.Welcome to EvC, if I didn't say so before.

Yes, I understand this. What you've done is described some of the intricate complexities of the heart. I agree entirely that they are "intricately complex". However, what I've missed is the bit where you've demonstrated that the heart and/or intricacy and complexity cannot be "attained by nature".Are you putting forward the argument that the human heart cannot be built up naturally over time because it contains "irreducible complexity?" If so, I'll ask you to give us a definition of irreducible complexity (because those given by intelligent design advocates have varied in the past).I'd also need to ask you if you think that mutations never subtract features, but always add them. Do you think this?Then we can perhaps see if you can demonstrate that the heart is unnatural. Agreed. You brought up something called "god", not me. I'm glad. My forgetfulness has actually produced something positive, for a change.

No you haven't. Claiming that foreknowledge and intelligence are required in the system that you're describing is not "demonstrating" it. "Irreducible complexity", by any description, is not evidence for intelligent design. This is why I asked you whether you thought that mutations only added features and never subtracted them. If you accept that evolution subtracts as well as adds, then you can forget irreducible complexity as evidence for design. I have read it, and it in no way demonstrates that the heart cannot evolve, or that it requires intelligent design. Systems that appear "irreducibly complex" in modern organisms can exist in reduced versions in other organisms alongside features (and in environments) that the modern organism doesn't share. Isn't someone around here arguing that the heart contains systems that cannot be "attained by nature"?

Yet you seem to be arguing the opposite; that your god got it wrong, and needs to intervene in order to achieve complex human organs (and equally complex parasites).

I've pointed out to you that the fact that mutations subtract features as well as adding them destroys your argument. That is not the same as not acknowledging your argument. Your post could be read as an attempt to avoid answering my point.Do you understand the concept of scaffolding in evolution as applied to complex systems like the one you're describing in the heart? You have not "demonstrated" that nature cannot attain the intricacy and complexity of the human heart, and your claim is an extraordinary one. There is a "Dr.Sing Posts Only" link on the thread that can be read by anyone. You are claiming that, in the 17 posts made here, that you have achieved what no human has ever achieved before, and demonstrated that an apparently natural phenomenon cannot be "attained by nature".That would be bigger than Einstein's contribution to science. But there's only one problem. You haven't actually demonstrated anything at all, just made an argument that is easily dismissed.

Not just sometimes, Doc, but frequently, as the absence of tails and many other ancestral features tell us, along with the presence of the modified genes that once made these things. And you have had some succinct statements from me in relation to your claim. Stuff about how arguments from magic are meaningless, and how nature will select for intricacy and complexity if they improve function. My original answer to your O.P. question was the very succinct "variation and selection".So, you know that mutations subtract features. Therefore, it's odd that you make the "irreducible complexity" argument.Here's a simplified theoretical example of scaffolding. A mutation causes simple and crude characteristic A, which is advantageous. Over time, further mutations add characteristics B,C,D, and E, each one of them combining with A to improve its function, but each on their own useless, both individually and collectively without A. Then mutation F arrives, also creating something useless on its own, but combining with B,C,D and E to perform the function in a way that is more practical and economical than the A through E system, rendering A obsolete. A is dead wood, and is eventually selected out, leaving a neat little five component system which, to the observer, would be irreducibly complex.That's just an illustration, to demonstrate that "irreducible complexity" arguments are useless to anyone trying that "demonstrate" that any living system "cannot be attained" by nature.Now, what about the real world? Here's another succinct statement from me that you might have missed. There are known examples of this. One is the human blood-clotting cascade, highly intricate and complex. It appears to be irreducible. Take away any component, and we are seriously handicapped, hemophiliac at best, or worse. A species of hemophiliacs would certainly become extinct rapidly. So, it appears to some creationists that the cascade cannot have a simpler evolutionary precursor.Yet there are versions in modern fish which do lack some of our components, jawless fish managing (I think, from memory) without 4 of our ten proteins. So how is this?Evolution has added, subtracted and modified, and we are no longer fish. Whatever it is in jawless fish and their environment that enables them to function on a reduced version of our blood-clotting cascade has been lost in our lineage, and could be described as the scaffolding on which the more recent part of our system was built.Another more general comment on your use of the word "demonstrate" which may be causing some confusion.It is impossible to demonstrate that phenomena that we have observe in the universe "cannot be attained by nature". It would require complete knowledge of the universe, the end of science, in order to do so. I think that you've set yourself an impossible task. Edited by bluegenes, : missing word!