Biological Design Argument?

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buffalo said:
The language of DNA is excellent evidence for design.
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DNA is not a language, it is a chemical. Some of the human models of DNA have some of the features of human language, but that is a property of the models not of the DNA itself. Some chemical compounds link better, or worse, with some other types of chemical compounds. Humans model that behaviour by using analogies with language, words like “translate”.

rossum
 
rossum said:
DNA is not a language, it is a chemical. Some of the human models of DNA have some of the features of human language, but that is a property of the models not of the DNA itself. Some chemical compounds link better, or worse, with some other types of chemical compounds. Humans model that behaviour by using analogies with language, words like “translate”.

rossum
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DNA is a chemical. The DNA language is not.

DNA Language

Nucleotide Character
Codon Letter
Gene Word
Operon Sentence
Regulon Paragraph

DNA is (aka DNA code) is a code. Codes have a sender, a receiver and a key.

Again, languages, codes, symbols etc… always come from a mind.
 
rossum

1. Lack of independent evidence for a designer. You cannot have design without a designer.

Why not? The evidence of design does not require that we know the designer up close and personal. Consider Stonehenge.

2. Sufficiency of chemical or biological mechanisms to explain observed phenomena. A designer is not required, and so can provisionally be eliminated using Occam’s razor.

Chemical and biological explanations are not sufficient to explain abiogenesis. No one has shown that they are. Rather, it is assumed that they are without being designed. Don’t get too married to Occam’s Razor. As Einstein said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

3. A designer fails to solve the problem which the design proponents assert that it does: the origin of complexity. Where does the complexity of the designer itself originate?

That is irrelevant to the question of whether a thing is designed or not. What you are doing is the same thing Bertrand Russell did with the existence of God, when he asked, “Who caused God?” We know the Big Bang happened without being able to trace back before the Big Bang the complexity of what caused it. We can know if a thing is designed without being able to explain the complexity of the designer. Again, consider Stonehenge.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
rossum

What you are doing is the same thing Bertrand Russell did with the existence of God, when he asked, “Who caused God?” We know the Big Bang happened without being able to trace back before the Big Bang the complexity of what caused it. We can know if a thing is designed without being able to explain the complexity of the designer. Again, consider Stonehenge.
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Did you know that Bertrand Russell was an atheist?
 
nmgauss

**Did you know that Bertrand Russell was an atheist? **

Yes, though he preferred to call himself an agnostic. The remark I cited above is more or less a question he asked in his famous essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian.” According to his autobiography, it is also a question he cited in his teens when he was first studying philosophy. “If everything has a cause, what caused God?”
 
ngill09 said:
How about this? Is this designed?

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/94838main_8702.jpg
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This is why philosophy fails (at least in my cynical opinion) as a tool for evangelization. It seems the way we use words differs so dramatically based on our relationship with and understanding of God and His creation, that at times it looks as though ppl are just talking to themselves.

I take it the poster is not being purposely thick when he asks, “Is this designed?”

Consider the following:
  • God’s word manifests itself in the structure that is the physical, mental and spiritual universe
  • it does not correspond exactly, but you can think of the laws of physics as God’s word in that they are nowhere and yet everywhere and cause everything to exist in its particular form
  • man has a soul; there is no soul in a snowflake. It does not happen in the same way, that every human being is different. We are completely different entities. There may be many different personalities that are so similar to yours that one could not distinguish between them, but no one ever, ever, ever will feel the pain when you stub your toe other than you, yourself.
You are obviously going to integrate this information into the world view that you have, but I imagine I am writing to people who can share this with me.
 
Aloysium said:
This is why philosophy fails (at least in my cynical opinion) as a tool for evangelization. It seems the way we use words differs so dramatically based on our relationship with and understanding of God and His creation, that at times it looks as though ppl are just talking to themselves.

I take it the poster is not being purposely thick when he asks, “Is this designed?”

Consider the following:
  • God’s word manifests itself in the structure that is the physical, mental and spiritual universe
  • it does not correspond exactly, but you can think of the laws of physics as God’s word in that they are nowhere and yet everywhere and cause everything to exist in its particular form
  • man has a soul; there is no soul in a snowflake. It does not happen in the same way, that every human being is different. We are completely different entities. There may be many different personalities that are so similar to yours that one could not distinguish between them, but no one ever, ever, ever will feel the pain when you stub your toe other than you, yourself.
You are obviously going to integrate this information into the world view that you have, but I imagine I am writing to people who can share this with me.
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The point is that mere complexity, even specficity, does not infer an explicit designer.

Snowflakes, we know, require no divine intervention in order to have the complex, seemingly designed structures that we do. Chemistry and crystallography explain their structures. Now, if you want to talk about why chemistry behaves the way it does, that’s another issue.
 
Everything in the universe is ordered. If it were not, there would be no laws. There would be chaos. :eek:

Even free will is ordered to be free, rather than chaotic.
 
buffalo said:
DNA is a chemical. The DNA language is not.

DNA Language

Nucleotide Character
Codon Letter
Gene Word
Operon Sentence
Regulon Paragraph
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Which is what I said. You have a model based on language, so it is not a surprise that your model looks like a language. As you agree, DNA is a chemical. It is neither a model nor a language.
Again, languages, codes, symbols etc… always come from a mind.
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Human minds built the model to look like human languages. That helped humans understand some of the ways DNA works – many models are useful. You are still making the mistake of confusing the model with the original.

There are a great many designed models of God; they are called paintings. All of those models are designed. Does the existence of those models mean the God Himself is designed? The properties of the model are not always the properties of the original.

rossum
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Why not? The evidence of design does not require that we know the designer up close and personal. Consider Stonehenge.
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Where did I specify “close and personal”? We have evidence of humans living in the area of Stonehenge before and during the time Stonehenge was being worked on. The presence of humans is enough to provide evidence of the presence of designers for Stonehenge.
Chemical and biological explanations are not sufficient to explain abiogenesis.
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And your evidence for this is? We have chemical explanations for amino acids, lipid bilayers, ribozymes, purines and pyrimidines. We have zero evidence for any non-human designer producing any of those chemicals, all of which are involved in living cells. Given the presence of some, albeit incomplete, evidence on one side and a complete absence of evidence on the other side then I am happy to, provisionally, wield Occam’s Razor. There is still time for all those design research labs to produce some evidence for their side. They are in a gap, but science is reducing the size of the gap. Once the gap is closed there will be nowhere for them to go.
That is irrelevant to the question of whether a thing is designed or not.
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But it is not irrelevant to the complexity based arguments coming from the Discovery Institute.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Which is what I said. You have a model based on language, so it is not a surprise that your model looks like a language. As you agree, DNA is a chemical. It is neither a model nor a language.

Human minds built the model to look like human languages. That helped humans understand some of the ways DNA works – many models are useful. You are still making the mistake of confusing the model with the original.

There are a great many designed models of God; they are called paintings. All of those models are designed. Does the existence of those models mean the God Himself is designed? The properties of the model are not always the properties of the original.

rossum
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Are you conceding evo is a model?😉

Wire is a an element. Yet it transmits power and data. DNA stores and transmits information, complex information. In addition the DNA language has both frontwards and backwards meanings. It is very efficient and complex. For you to simplify it in such a way discredits you.

These words are just ones and zeroes yet they convey contextual information. A martian would not understand this message unless he had the key. We have yet to find more about the DNA code. As time goes on the model will get more precise. Just recently junk DNA went away. Just recently a DNA storage system was built that could store terabytes of info. You can hold out, but you and I know as an honest person what the truth is. We can keep duking it out though. 🙂
 
rossum

Where did I specify “close and personal”? We have evidence of humans living in the area of Stonehenge before and during the time Stonehenge was being worked on. The presence of humans is enough to provide evidence of the presence of designers for Stonehenge.

We know virtually nothing about these people except that they designed Stonhenge. Stonehenge didn’t just fall in place by accident.

** We have zero evidence for any non-human designer producing any of those chemicals, all of which are involved in living cells.**

We have zero evidence of a fortuitous combination of chemicals so complex as to produce the first life form. The Urey experiment produced something, but far from a living life form. And **that **was an intelligently designed experiment intended to show that life could first form on its own without intelligent design.

But it is not irrelevant to the complexity based arguments coming from the Discovery Institute.

The complexity of the designer is not at issue here. We are talking about the complexity of the first living organism and whether it appears to have been designed, whereas it certainly does not appear to have been the product of pure chance. The complexity of the designer would fall into the realm of philosophy and theology.

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Albert Einstein

That is Einstein speaking as a philosopher, not a scientist.
 
A snowflake is not a living organism and next to a living organism pales in significant complexity. It does not contain the power of gestation and reproduction. Nor does it contain the seeds of a many grand lines of evolution throughout the earth.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
A snowflake is not a living organism and next to a living organism pales in significant complexity. It does not contain the power of gestation and reproduction. Nor does it contain the seeds of a many grand lines of evolution throughout the earth.
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. . . nor have the ability to form relationships with its environment and its Creator (I cannot forget about Reality), and be capable of loving.
 
rossum

You have not answered a point I made earlier. The Big Bang was the first event in the history of the universe. We know that from that event a finely tuned and ordered universe was created, one capable of supporting life in its most complex forms. You would say this fine-tuning of the laws of the universe was not designed, but accidental. I say the fine-tuning was designed with the utmost attention to complex laws of physics, so as to produce order rather than chaos.

Now neither of us can get inside the first moment of the Big Bang and understand how those laws were put together. Does that mean that because we cannot explain the complexity of how those laws were created, we have to assume that they were not created by an intensely complex Mastermind?

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.” Albert Einstein
 
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Rocking the foundations of biology

A major revolution is occurring in evolutionary biology. In this video the President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, Professor Denis Noble, explains what is happening and why it is set to change the nature of biology and of the importance of physiology to that change. The lecture was given to a general audience at a major international Congress held in Suzhou China. The implications of the change extend far beyond biology itself.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
A snowflake is not a living organism and next to a living organism pales in significant complexity. It does not contain the power of gestation and reproduction. Nor does it contain the seeds of a many grand lines of evolution throughout the earth.
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Can anything that is not alive exist without being designed? A snowflake has many more molecules than a virus, yet a virus requires a design but a snowflake does not?
 
nmgauss

**Can anything that is not alive exist without being designed? **

Not really, if by design you mean everything that follows a plan God has set down for the universe…

A snowflake has many more molecules than a virus, yet a virus requires a design but a snowflake does not?

As I said, everything has its purpose and fulfills the will of God. I would never put down the snowflakes. Sand and oil and wood all have a destiny for human use as does the pretty snowflake. The idea that these things just exist without a purposeful design for them does not convince me. The sun also exists for a purpose, to heat our planet and bring life to it and preserve it. The gravitational pull of the moon and the light it gives at night serve a purposeful use. On and on, through a thousand different coincidence in our solar system, these things give the appearance of being designed for us by a Designer God.

“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton
 
nmgauss said:
Can anything that is not alive exist without being designed? A snowflake has many more molecules than a virus, yet a virus requires a design but a snowflake does not?
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Why is it that when I think of a question, what immediately follows is a wealth of understanding about that issue?
It seems that formulating a question means you are beginning to grasp the matter.

Here, people keep asking the oddest things and it seems that no thought is given to very reasonable responses.
They seem to be posting just to argue with no intention of seriously mulling over the feedback they are given.

God is obviously behind all creation.
This is Truth; meditate on it, pray for illumination.

To come back and harp over the same things time and time again, what is the point?

Consider that what you view as understanding is actually preventing you from seeing the Truth.

I am no philosopher, I admit it; this would be torture if it weren’t for the fact that it allows me to think about God.
 
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