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

It doesn't matter much whether the explanation (evolution) is clear to YOU. It probably isn't clear to the turtle mentioned above either but that's a reflection of his intelligence, not a measure of how clear the explanation is.Call it a paradox. It takes more intelligence to understand the explanation than it does to see intelligent design.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

There's no mystery there. Any cell-like (or otherwise life-like) structures that didn't have reproductive capability would simply die and never be heard from again. They weren't life until they had all of the characteristics of life, including reproduction.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

No. Nobody said "suddenly". As I said, many different chemical compounds with some of the characteristics of life would have formed naturally and broken up ("died") naturally over long periods of time. That sort of thing is happening right now.Eventually, some of them developed the capability of replicating themselves. Then, though each individual molecule would still "die", the "species" of molecule would go on "living".Now that we do have all sorts of living things, those almost living things would be tasty morsels for something or other, so they'd be eaten as soon as they developed. Otherwise, you'd be seeing it happen in your back yard. The chemistry is inevitable.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

No. As people have been trying to tell you, there is no fine line between "almost life" and life. We have viruses and prions today that may or may not be "alive" depending on your precise definition of life.As I said, there would have been, for a long time, "almost alive" molecular structures that injested and processed nourishment. If they disassembled ("died") without leaving offspring, they were just gone. At some point, after assembling and nourishing and processing and disassembling for thousands or millions of years, if they developed a system to reproduce themselves, only then would they be considered life.There's nothing sudden about it. It's a slow development of processes, a slow accumulation of processes.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

As I've been trying to explain to you, the whole noursihment thing was going on long before the chemicals could be called life. Chemical reactions crave nourishment. Fire craves nourishment. And yes, as I have said, if the nourishment runs out, the chemicals "die", the fire dies. Fire doesn't "want to live". It's a pretty simple reaction, really, and it doesn't need any intelligence.So, once again, those reactions, becoming more and more complex, continued for perhaps eons before the molecular structures developed the ability to replicate themselves. Despite your derision, they couldn't be said to be alive until they had all of the properties that we now think of as life. They were almost alive but not quite.The only way that your "sudden development" strawman makes any sense is if you assume a priori that life must have arisen suddenly.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

No. DNA is a molecule, like water or hydrogen. Molecules are composed of atoms and functional groups which allow them to do various reactions. DNA is a bit more complex than hydrogen or water, so it's capable of a wider variety of reactions but the chemical principles are the same.The only "information" contained in molecules is their structure, how the atoms and functional groups are arranged. The only "code" in DNA is a kind of shorthand that scientists use to talk about that structure. There is certainly no need for any intelligence to "put it in".

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

I'm saying that there is no "information" except for the structure of the molecule. All of the information required for hydrogen to burn is contained in its atoms and the way they are connected. Similarly, all of the information required for the DNA molecule to do its reactions is contained in its functional groups and its atoms. There is no additional "information" written on the surface of the molecule, as you seem to suggest. It's more like a template than a blueprint. It's like making a pattern for a glove by drawing around your hand. It's the shape that determines how a DNA molecule reacts with its surroundings. There are no "instructions" per se. As I said before, the "code" is just a shorthand way for scientists to describe the structure of the molecule. There are no "letters", "words" or "sentences". There are atoms, functional groups and sequences of functional groups. It's just a molecule. The Hindenburg's hydrogen came from a reaction between metal and acid or from electrolysis of water. The information in the hydrogen molecule is inherent to its structure.It's the same with DNA. There is no information except for the structure of the molecule, which allows it to do certain reactions. Your DNA molecules are similar to your parents' DNA molecules in the same way that your water molecules are similar to your parents' water molecules.There is no intelligence outside the molecule required for any of its reactions to happen.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

I didn't say you did. Since this is an Intelligent Design topic, I'm just saying that there's no intelligence required for molecules to do what they do. There's no designer required to design molecules or give them instructions. No. Molecules don't "tell" anything to do anything. They are capable of doing certain reactions because of their shape, nothing more. Again, there is no "information", only the shape/structure of the molecule. And there's no "accident" about it either. A molecule can do a specific set of reactions based on its structure. Under a specific set of conditions, the reactions are highly predictable.A complex molecule like DNA has a complex set of reactions and a small change in conditions can cause a radical change in the exact series of reactions. A change in the structure of the molecule - i.e. a mutation - causes a change in the series of reactions that it does.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.

I'm saying that DNA replicates itself according to its molecular properties. The concept of "information" is redundant to the process. The structure of the DNA molecule comes from the structure of its parent molecule(s). That's what replication means. You'd be better off forgetting about information entirely and trying to understand the chemistry. As I have said, the only "information" involved is the structure of the molecule. Yes, it occurs naturally, like it does in every molecule, in every grain of sand. No, it doesn't require intelligence for hydrogen and oxygen to bond together in the only way they can to form water. It's the same for every molecule. No, lots of things have patterns without being designed, like salt crystals and water molecules and DNA molecules. It doesn't. DNA is just a molecule that can react with other molecules to form other molecules.

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

I have said more than once that the information in a molecule - any molecule - consists of the structure of the molecule. The sources that you quoted (some of them, anyway) understand that. You don't seem to, so you'd be better off forgeting about the whole information side of it and just thinking about the structure. A grain of sand doesn't reproduce itself, so it doesn't need any information for that purpose. A grain of sand does contain information, of course.A salt crystal does contain all the information it needs to reproduce itself. Of course. Its structure is information in the same sense that DNA's structure is information. What makes you think the new cells aren't produced by the old ones?

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

We haven't failed to create life any more than we've failed to put a man on Mars. We haven't tried to do it yet because we're still busy figuring out how to do it.When we do it - and it seems quite likely that we will do it some day - it will be because we figured out how nature does it. And the same applies to any "designer" that you can postulate. Even if you do come up with empirical evidence that some "designer" created all of the life on earth, all that will show is that he figured out how nature does it.Edited by Ringo, : Added missing word "out".

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

And I said that a salt crystal can reproduce itself. The DNA molecule is not unique. As I've said, it's all about the structure of the molecule. Every molecule has structure. Every molecule has "information".The topic is "When does design become intelligent?" The answer, as far as chemistry is concerned, is that even if molecules have a pattern, there is no intelligence involved.

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

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.

Yes, it's very mechanical, just like all chemistry. Again, it isn't a "blueprint". It isn't separate from the structure of the molecule like a blueprint is separate from the structure of a house. The "information" is the shape of the molecule. All molecules do the same type of thing in every reaction they do. I've told you several times already, the only "information" is the structure of the molecule. It "comes from" the molecules that joined up to make it. There is no separate "blueprint". Not at all. All of the "information" required in the reactuions that you described comes from the shape of the molecule. That's all. It's the same principle as two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom combining to form water.

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

Thought is an electrical process as much as (or more so than) a chemical process. Chemistry can alter the electrical processes of the brain but it doesn't "produce" thought.You need to let go of your romantic "ideas" about "thought" and really 'think" about it.Edited by Ringo, : Fixed quote.Edited by Ringo, : Fixed quote again.

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