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Author Topic:   Is there a legitimate argument for design?
vimesey
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Posts: 1398
From: Birmingham, England
Joined: 09-21-2011


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Message 237 of 638 (725267)
04-25-2014 8:16 AM
Reply to: Message 233 by Ed67
04-25-2014 7:55 AM


Let's see if we can get through with an analogy.
I don't know if you learned any languages at school, but I learned French and German. When you start out at school, you're taught the "rules" of the language - how verbs are conjugated, how words are ordered, how cases are constructed. It helps you to learn how to speak the language.
But here's the thing - no one created those "rules". They're simply an orderly description of how the language has evolved to operate. No one sat down with a pen and paper and determined how those "rules" would operate - they're simply descriptive tools that a teacher employs.
And as you become more educated in the language, and more fluent, you stop referring to the rules, and instead start using the language fluently to hold a conversation. In fact, you begin to realize that the "rules" have exceptions, that they get broken and that they change sometimes. They are simply an inadequate descriptive overlay of something which was never created using those "rules".
The situation is exactly the same with genetic "coding". This is a descriptive tool, used to assist the understanding of those starting to learn about DNA (or those who simply need a basic understanding of it).
As a scientist's expertise in the field grows (to the extremely high levels of many of the contributors here), the descriptive tool of "coding" becomes meaningless to their depth of understanding - and entirely misleading.
The use of the term "code" does not imply any writing of a code of any sort, in exactly the same way as the use of the term "rules" does not imply anyone creating the French language by inventing rules for it.

Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 233 by Ed67, posted 04-25-2014 7:55 AM Ed67 has not replied

  
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