Intelligent Design

[Al_Moritz]

Al

But evolution itself as a physical process, up to higher animals and the human body, is (made by God to be) self-sufficient and as such does not directly show intelligent design which would have to steer the process a bit here and a bit there – at least as far as we can tell by science.

I don’t understand this. Why “steer” here and there? Why can’t intelligent design be a seamless cloth since it was in the mind of God even before the Creation? Only in time would you tinker. Tinkering suggests a person struggling to figure out what he wants to do with a particular task. Do you imagine God did not have a set design ready to implement from start to finish in the course of time?

How can you say that God planned the creation of the universe on the one hand, then turn around and say that the creation is “self-sufficient” and has no need of God.?

I did not say that the creation does not need God. I had said: “But evolution itself as a physical process, up to higher animals and the human body, is (made by God to be) self-sufficient”. God made it self-sufficient, i.e. it works as it does because God made it so. How is that saying that the creation does not need God? I also had said in a previous post:

However, intelligent design is certainly at work throughout the universe through the unfolding of the world according to the physical laws that God creates and sustains at every moment (God as sustainer of being is of course both Catholic doctrine and standard Thomistic philosophy).

What is there not to understand? If God sustains creation at every moment in its being, how can it not need God? Perhaps you should re-read all my posts from page 52 of this thread onwards so that everything is clearer.

granny

Why can’t evolution be intelligently designed? Even Darwin said you can be a theist and think evolution.

“It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.” Charles Darwin

I agree.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Then exactly what is it that you object to in Intelligent Design? If God created the universe to follow a plan of development that He designed, why split hairs about whether it was intelligently designed or self-sufficient? Obviously, it is not self-sufficiently following a plan without God. The universe wouldn’t even be here without God.

 

[rossum]

What you are calling junk DNA has function.

Please show us what the function of Poly-A is.

Please show us how your predictions derive from ID theory.

Please show us how the opposite of your predictions cannot be derived from ID theory.

For instance, what is preventing the ID designer from designing an organism with large amounts of useless non-coding DNA? I can think of a number of simple ways to do just that: increase the size of introns or increase the amount of exon following the final STOP codon. What is preventing the ID designer from doing either of these things?

rossum

 

[rossum]

The spirit however IS a property of the physical human.

Here we disagree. Buddhism believes in reincarnation, so the spirit (using the term loosely) is not confined to a single human, or indeed to a single species.

Evolution purports to tell us why organisms have the properties that they do.
It explains why giraffes have long necks, why birds have feathers, etc.
So how exactly would evolution explain this property of living things?

Evolution explains physical properties. Do you consider spirit to be a physical property?

rossum

 

[rossum]

You’re joking, right? DNA, no matter how you want to define it to get away from it being designed is a set of instructions telling something what to do. Information theory applies here

Certainly DNA contains information. Evolution is a process which copies information from the environment into the DNA of organisms living in that environment. Information such as “white things are difficult to see against a snowy background” is copied into the DNA of animals living in snowy environments. Specifically into the parts of their DNA that control the colour of their fur.

May I send you some RCIA materials, you would make a fine mind for the church. Stranger things have happened in your life, no? :hey_bud::ballspin:

Don’t bother. I have been Buddhist for a long time, and it works well for me.

rossum

 

[JDaniel]

Thank you for the welcome.

I agree with you when it comes to the rational soul. The point is that the rational soul of humans is not something physical, and therefore cannot be explained by evolution, which solely guides the material processes under the laws of physics (which, in extension, are the laws of chemistry and biology). The rational soul is a direct creation by God, as the Church affirms, but as also can be deduced from philosophical reasoning.

In fact, next to cosmological arguments for the existence of God the Argument from Reason is essential for me as a rational foundation upon which my faith in God can rest securely.

See also:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm

(Section ‘Background’)

But evolution itself as a physical process, up to higher animals and the human body, is (made by God to be) self-sufficient and as such does not directly show intelligent design which would have to steer the process a bit here and a bit there – at least as far as we can tell by science.

Welcome, Al:

Started to read your paper, but must leave now for Church. I will finish it later. I’d like to comment, if I may, on your last sentence directly above:

It is, from what I can gather, mostly the Protestants that want to admit to an ID that includes God’s tweaking, so to speak, of nature and of the universe. And, although I can admit also that He certainly can do whatever He wants, the Catholic perspective should be, in my opinion, more centered on the realities of Creation. By that I mean, Creation is “not” a singular, past event. Rather, it is an ongoing event - that started for us, as creatures embedded in Time, at or before the Big Bang… For God, it is an event that is always occurring, in the present tense but within God’s infinite Now. So, in that sense, it might appear to us that there is tweaking going on, when in fact it is really just the next phase of the roll-out.

God bless,
jd

 

[vz71]

Evolution explains physical properties. Do you consider spirit to be a physical property?

rossum

Then you have just defined a failing of evolution.
The failure to explain the properties of human beings.
The failure to be able to explain the non-physical properties that humans have.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

JDaniel

By that I mean, Creation is “not” a singular, past event. Rather, it is an ongoing event - that started for us, as creatures embedded in Time, at or before the Big Bang… For God, it is an event that is always occurring, in the present tense but within God’s infinite Now. So, in that sense, it might appear to us that there is tweaking going on, when in fact it is really just the next phase of the roll-out.

 

[grannymh]

Then you have just defined a failing of evolution.
The failure to explain the properties of human beings.
The failure to be able to explain the non-physical properties that humans have.

It is not the province for science to examine the spiritual realm; therefore there is no failure when it comes to explaining functions of the human spiritual soul. What Catholic Apologetics needs to learn is how to defend the unique Catholic doctrines when the discussion points to recent scientific research.

 

[buffalo]

Please show us what the function of Poly-A is.

Please show us how your predictions derive from ID theory.

Please show us how the opposite of your predictions cannot be derived from ID theory.

For instance, what is preventing the ID designer from designing an organism with large amounts of useless non-coding DNA? I can think of a number of simple ways to do just that: increase the size of introns or increase the amount of exon following the final STOP codon. What is preventing the ID designer from doing either of these things?

rossum

Nothing - architects design buildings all the time with spare rooms to be used when needed.

 

[buffalo]

I really like the wording of “the next phase of rolling out.”

 

[buffalo]

Please show us what the function of Poly-A is.

Please show us how your predictions derive from ID theory.

Please show us how the opposite of your predictions cannot be derived from ID theory.

For instance, what is preventing the ID designer from designing an organism with large amounts of useless non-coding DNA? I can think of a number of simple ways to do just that: increase the size of introns or increase the amount of exon following the final STOP codon. What is preventing the ID designer from doing either of these things?

rossum

An interesting paper just released. Notice the interesting use of the word ZIPCODE.

A Two-Step Process Gets mRNA Loaded and Ready to Go

…Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, but to get the most work out of them, they need to be in the right place. In neurons, for example, proteins needed at axons differ from those needed at dendrites, while in budding yeast cells, the daughter cell needs proteins the mother cell does not. In each case, one strategy for making sure a protein gets where it belongs is to shuttle its messenger RNA to the right spot before translating it. The destination for such an mRNA is encoded in a set of so-called “zipcode” elements, which loop out of the RNA string to link up with RNA-binding proteins. In yeast, these proteins join up with a myosin motor that taxis the complex to the encoded location. While this general picture has become clear in the past several years, details of the transport complex itself have remained murky. In this issue of PLoS Biology, Marisa Müller, Dierk Niessing, and colleagues show that the complex forms in stages, with the final protein added only in the cytoplasm, an event crucial to ensuring the transport complex doesn’t pick up passengers who weren’t meant to travel.
The authors began by showing that a known zipcode element binding protein, called She2p, bound in a similar way to RNAs without the elements as to those with them, suggesting that the job of keeping non-transported RNAs out of the transport complex fell to another protein. Tests of another known complex protein, called Puf6p, were negative, leading the authors to look elsewhere.

 

[tonyrey]

Because from a scientific point of view (and I am a scientist myself) I see no evidence for a tinkerer God who constantly has to intervene with “Intelligent Design”. However, intelligent design is certainly at work throughout the universe through the unfolding of the world according to the physical laws that God creates and sustains at every moment (God as sustainer of being is of course both Catholic doctrine and standard Thomistic philosophy).

Even the archsceptic David Hume acknowledged that evil cannot be directly attributed to God because the universe functions according to the laws of nature rather than divine fiats. The immense complexity and multiplicity of beings in the universe entails dysteleological coincidences, i.e. negative consequences. The odds against survival on this dangerous planet are so great that life has nearly become extinct several times. The fact that it has survived and developed to such an extent requires explanation. The fact that it has survived does not imply that it must survive. Sheer coincidence is less credible than** continuous control of events**.

 

[rossum]

Then you have just defined a failing of evolution.
The failure to explain the properties of human beings.
The failure to be able to explain the non-physical properties that humans have.

Catholic Theology does not claim to explain the origins of the American Revolution, hence it is not a failing of Catholic Theology that it fails to explain the origins of the American Revolution.

Evolution does not claim to explain the spiritual properties of human beings.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Nothing - architects design buildings all the time with spare rooms to be used when needed.

Then you have just invalidated one of your alleged predictions. ID both predicts and does not predict that functions will be found for junk DNA.

You cannot have a two-way bet on things in science. A two-way bet is not a scientific prediction.

Next question. What is preventing the designer placing life on 75% of suitable planets. This is in relation to your ID prediction that life will be rare.

rossum

 

[rossum]

An interesting paper just released. Notice the interesting use of the word ZIPCODE.

Yes. To quote exactly: ‘The destination for such an mRNA is encoded in a set of so-called “zipcode” elements’

Note the ‘so-called’ and the scare quotes round “zipcode”. This is very obviously a metaphor. Do not build too many hopes on a mere metaphor.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

tonyrey

"Sheer coincidence is less credible than continuous control of events."

 

[buffalo]

Then you have just invalidated one of your alleged predictions. ID both predicts and does not predict that functions will be found for junk DNA.

You cannot have a two-way bet on things in science. A two-way bet is not a scientific prediction.

Next question. What is preventing the designer placing life on 75% of suitable planets. This is in relation to your ID prediction that life will be rare.

rossum

What? Spare rooms are not useless.

 

[buffalo]

Yes. To quote exactly: ‘The destination for such an mRNA is encoded in a set of so-called “zipcode” elements’

Note the ‘so-called’ and the scare quotes round “zipcode”. This is very obviously a metaphor. Do not build too many hopes on a mere metaphor.

rossum

Well let us look at this a little closer. What this means is walking down the street and looking for a specific address and performing a function when found. Much different that just bumping into the address don’t you think?

We are just beginning to get a sense of the immense sophisticated communication, signals, and interactions in the cell.

 

[balt_orioles54]

Back in post 762, I commented: (bold has been added). One can look at a strand of ATCG and consider that it is specialized information leading to a specific result. I am not sure if a type of “information” theory would apply to DNA." Or are all of the information theories the same kind of thing? Thank you.

Information theory is broad, yes. Click here. Biology and information theory is mentioned as a subarea. Top of the marnin’ and a Happy but Pensively Reflective Good Friday to you.