Is DNA Designed?

[IWantGod]

Natural selection will without any underlying intent produce a goal directed outcome.

No it does not. If a thing has an instinct to survive and moves to that end, it is because that quality is actualized in its nature. It is being moved by instinct or desire. It’s irrelevant that natural selection plays a part in what survives and what does not. The mere fact that anything has goal direction in it’s nature implies that physical reality was created by an intelligent cause.

 

[IWantGod]

No, it implies that certain survival strategies are superior to other survival strategies.

Natural selection states that if an organism has attributes that allows it to survive in a particular environment, it is more likely to pass on those traits. Natural selection is not itself a cause of the existence of those traits.

I don’t understand why you brought it up.

And what relevance does that have? It’s irrelevant. If a thing is trying to survive, has an instinct to survive, has a desire to survive, has an intelligent reason to survive, and moves to that end, this is evidence of a goal directed nature. Since physical reality is blind to any end, and goal direction such as the survival instinct has emerged within the natural processes of physical activity, the fact that a thing is actually moving to the goal of survival can only make intelligible sense if an intelligent being created physical reality and designed it to behave that way under certain conditions.

 

[Bradskii]

oldnskeptical:

No, it implies that certain survival strategies are superior to other survival strategies.

Natural selection states that if a thing has attributes that allows it to survive in a particular environment, it is more likely to pass on those traits. Natural selection is not itself a cause of the existence of traits.

I don’t understand why you brought it up.

And what relevance does that have? It’s irrelevant. If a thing is trying to survive, has an instinct to survive, has a desire to survive, has an intelligent reason to survive, and moves to that end, this is evidence of a goal directed nature. since physical reality is blind to any end, and goal direction such as the survival instinct has emerged within the natural processes of physical activity, the fact that a thing is actually moving to the goal of survival can only make intelligible sense if an intelligent being created physical reality and designed it to behave that way under certain conditions.

Let’s say there’s an isolated island with a lot of people. Now and then some strange fruit wash up on the shore. Free food! But not everyone likes the taste. Whether they do or not is purely arbitrary. It’s not instinctive to eat it or instinctive not to. But those who do eat it happen to die younger. And nobody realises the cause of the early deaths.

Now whether you like the taste or not is passed on to your children (this is a hypothetical - we’re just using this as an analogy).

So there are less children born to those who eat the fruit and more to those that don’t. Eventually, there is no-one who looks forward to eating it and everyone avoids it.

You roll up onto the island and know about the effects of the fruit because you have studied it. And you are find that everyone thinks it tastes bad. So you join the dots and conclude that people have an instinct to avoid bad tasting food because it’s harmful - which is true, without actually needing to know why.

Now if someone religious were to land on the island, they might say that God had designed their dna in such a way as to help them avoid forbidden fruit. And in a way you might be right. But at least you can see that it’s natural selection at work. And natural selection is completely indifferent to any goals.

But if you want to say that God is directing the process then no-one can argue against that. But as you can see, this:

‘Natural selection is not itself a cause of the existence of those traits.’…

…is wrong.

 

[Bradskii]

buffalo:

Is the DNA code designed? yes
Is the DNA molecule designed? yes

By God. Now the $64,000 question:

Name something in the natural world NOT designed by God.

Your time starts…now.

The clock is still ticking…

 

[IWantGod]

Whether they do or not is purely arbitrary.

But it’s not arbitrary. Usually If a human being eats things it is because they desire it, unless they are doing it for some other goal directed reason. Animals eat things because of instinct. If there was an organism that didn’t have a desire to survive and didn’t eat anything and didn’t replicate, none of this would have any relevance to the fact that goal direction exists and it’s existence has metaphysical implication that cannot be explained away by a mere wave of a materialistic hand or two.

 

[IWantGod]

Now if someone religious were to land on the island, they might say that God had designed their dna in such a way as to help them avoid forbidden fruit.

I am not arguing that God configured someones DNA to have them behave a particular way.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Whether they do or not is purely arbitrary.

But it’s not arbitrary. Usually If a human being eats things it is because they desire it, unless they are doing it for some other goal directed reason. Animals eat things because of instinct. If there was an organism that didn’t have a desire to survive and didn’t eat anything and didn’t replicate, none of this would have any relevance to the fact that goal direction exists and it’s existence has metaphysical implication that cannot be explained away by a mere wave of a materialistic hand or two.

Don’t take the analogy too literally. It’s there to explain a process. Not to be used as an example.

Some animals do one thing, some do another. Some animals are curious, some are not. Some eat everything, some are more picky. Some like fighting, some do not. Some are fearless, some are timid. Some like wandering some distance from home, some prefer to stay close to it.

Whichever arbitrary trait increases survival, then that trait is passed on. If enough animals exhibit the same trait (because all those without it it die off) then we call that instinctive behaviour.

I’m at a loss to explain that in any simpler terms.

 

[IWantGod]

Things do that which best enables them to survive.

Goal direction.

It’s just a matter of chemistry and natural selection, and voila

You are not understanding the argument. I’m not arguing against natural evolution. I am not arguing that these traits do not exist in conjunction with natural processes. I am arguing that your philosophical position on the matter (materialism/metaphysical naturalism) ultimately makes no intelligible sense their existence.

primates who attempt to make sense of what they are, and where they came from.

That’s goal direction. And since natural processes are fundamentally blind to any end, there is a philosophical/logical error in your materialistic position.

There doesn’t appear to be any intelligent design to it at all, just mindless self-ordering natural systems that come to an irrational belief in a designer.

I’m still waiting for you to refute my argument and not just say you have.

If there were an intelligent designer, one would expect that such intelligence would be reflected in their creation, but alas, there’s no evidence of any here.

You are not making any sense here.

 

[IWantGod]

Don’t take the analogy too literally. It’s there to explain a process. Not to be used as an example.

Some animals do one thing, some do another. Some animals are curious, some are not. Some eat everything, some are more picky. Some like fighting, some do not. Some are fearless, some are timid. Some like wandering some distance from home, some prefer to stay close to it.

Whichever arbitrary trait increases survival, then that trait is passed on. If enough animals exhibit the same trait (because all those without it it die off) then we call that instinctive behaviour.

I’m at a loss to explain that in any simpler terms.

No need to give further explanation because i didn’t reject natural selection and natural selection has no relevance to the argument. I rejected natural selection, not as a scientific explanation of why we see different traits in different environments (science). I rejected it as metaphysical argument as for why those goal directed traits such as an instinct or desire to survive exists at all.

Any goal directed behavior implies a plan of action. Clearly physical reality does not plan what it is doing and thus by itself it cannot be considered to have goal direction in its nature. But organisms are goal directed insomuch as they act for their survival and reproduce; even the flight and flight response is directed toward the survival of an organism. From a philosophical point of view, It is not enough to simply say they have these traits and so they survive, since these traits should not exist if physical reality is blind to any end. Goal direction should not exist. Herein lies the problem for materialists.

 

[po18guy]

Well, it’s certainly not random.

 

[IWantGod]

Why?

Since physical reality is blind to any end, and goal direction such as the survival instinct has emerged within the natural processes of physical activity, the fact that a thing is actually moving to the goal of survival can only make intelligible sense if an intelligent being created physical reality and designed it to behave that way under certain conditions.

 

[PickyPicky]

If, as you said, combining into complex objects is, or may be, simply the way physical things sometimes behave, why cannot what you call “goal direction” simply be the way living things behave?

 

[IWantGod]

why cannot what you call “goal direction” simply be the way living things behave?

Because when a thing is trying to survive or protect its babies from predators, it is not just behaving, it is trying to survive and protect it’s being, and no where is this more evident than in ourselves. But if only blind physical processes exist; if that is all that constitutes a biological organism, then a thing trying to survive and sustain its being, and protect it’s offspring, and being moved by instinct or desire to procreate, makes no intelligible sense, because objectively there is no physical context for survival or desire or even instinct. There is no such a thing as being alive or dead because in the case of the materialist there are only blind physical processes involved, and the atoms that constitute matter are neither alive or dead; there is no direction or end. There is no goal. And yet, despite the materialists position, we see that things are directed towards the end of staying alive. And some of us even have an instinct or desire to live. We even have flight or fight responses! loool

In other words, there is no physical reason for these traits to exist, and if metaphysical naturalism is true it makes no rational sense that they do.

 

[PickyPicky]

In other words, there is no physical reason for these traits to exist

Plants that depend on sunlight frequently have the trait of bending towards the sun. Here your “goal direction” is a particularly apt metaphor. Science suggests that acquiring this trait would give a plant an advantage in growth and setting seed. There is what you see as an “instinct or desire” to live and procreate, in a setting where the presence of instinct and desire is, at the least, difficult to identify. There is indeed “a physical reason”.

Whether there is also a supernatural hand in all this is not a matter I’m keen to debate in this place, but at any rate we can see that there is no absence of “physical reason” such that we are impelled towards the metaphysical.

 

[IWantGod]

Science suggests that acquiring this trait would give a plant an advantage

This only entails that a thing may have an advantage if it has a particular trait or set of traits in a particular environment. It gives no explanation for why there is such a thing as goal direction.

This does not provide a physical reason for its existence or it’s possibility. In fact Science begins with the fact that things exist and does not try to give metaphysical explanations for why such things exists at all. Science simply identifies the physical relationships between things and does not argue whether or not a materialist interpretation of their reality is the correct one, as that would be philosophy.

 

[PickyPicky]

It would seem to me that the selection of that trait provides the goal direction.

 

[IWantGod]

It would seem to me that the selection of that trait provides the goal direction.

And yet, metaphysically speaking, it is not the reason why that trait has a possible existence and is therefore not the reason why goal direction exists in nature.

 

[rossum]

Is DNA designed? Some is, by Monsanto and various biologists tweaking DNA for various purposes. Most DNA is not designed.

People like Drs Dembski and Behe have been trying to show that all DNA is designed as part of the Intelligent Design movement. So far they have not succeeded in providing any convincing evidence that it is.

Obviously to a theist the whole universe is designed by God/YHWH/Vishnu. That makes DNA no different from the rest of the universe; DNA is just as designed as a grain of sand or a galaxy. That makes design detection very difficult, there is no undesigned thing anywhere in the universe, so there is no way to test that a design detector is working correctly. Whatever you point it at, the green light shows, never the red light.

To an atheist the universe is undesigned, along with most DNA.

rossum

 

[PickyPicky]

And yet, metaphysically speaking, it is not the reason why that trait has a possible existence and is therefore not the reason why goal direction exists in nature.

But, physically speaking, does not DNA determine the existence of such traits, and is the content of DNA therefore not an adequate reason for “goal direction”?

 

[Wesrock]

IWantGod:

That a thing survives or not, is not what is being questioned here, but rather it is the fact that a thing has goal direction in it’s nature at all, a self moving, self-sustaining system that tries to survive and acts to that end and is compelled by instinct of desire to replicate.

What you have said here is irrelevant to my argument.

No, it underscores the fundamental flaw in your argument, that that which produces those self-sustaining characteristics must be intelligent. Such intelligence isn’t necessary. Natural selection will without any underlying intent produce a seemingly goal directed outcome. There’s no need for a designer.

It’s not the results of the game that is being pointed to, but that there is a game and rules for it (of any sort) at all.