Hey, I just thought I would reply to this post as I think it is a common misconception to use an analogy such as a building as evidence for a designer.
It is important to understand that we know the building had an intelligent designer(s), as there are many examples of buildings from intelligent design. We can go to the planning office and view the original architectural layouts and verify who designed it.
When applying this to natural life, it is important to remember that no scientific evidence to date suggests that a creator was at hand. This of course, doesn’t rule it out and scientists do not have an agenda to “disprove” it. If sufficient evidence was to be discovered tomorrow that proved intelligent design, scientists would admit their error. So far however, all evidence points to a natural process. Evolution at this point can be deemed fact, like gravity.
Aye, but there’s the rub.
All evidence does not point to a natural process, at least not one that demonstrates everything that is associated with it.
Natural selection as a mechanism for adaptive change is pretty much indisputable, but in order to arrive at a conclusion that random mutations coupled with natural selection have the power to fuel the variety of life forms, behaviours and morphology extant in nature, Darwin used a philosophical argument, one that infers random mutation coupled with natural selection as the “best explanation” for the variety of forms in nature. This is an inductive argument that attempts to “rule” out all other possibilities as being inadequate. However, modern science has a far different understanding of cellular function than it did in Darwin’s time, which casts a different light on his argument “to the best explanation.”
The evidence, at best, only “points towards” NS actioning on RM as but one possibility. The sufficiency of RM is by no means, a scientific “fact.” Adaptive change IS a scientific fact, but the claim that random mutation coupled with natural selection can account for all change is NOT. It is, in fact, more and more contentious in biology today than ever because we know so much more about the complexity of cells and the genetic code required to organize and “run” them.
Meyer, as a philosopher, correctly views Darwin’s argument as an inference to the best explanation. He uses Darwin’s argument exactly to argue for intelligent design on the basis that IT is the “best explanation” for genetic code since nowhere in nature - except in cellular functioning - do we have evidence of “information” of the level of complexity and function found in cells ever arising except when produced by an intelligent agent.
The fact that the probabilistic resources of the universe would be insufficient to produce the level of DNA coding found in cells is an argument against such complex and highly specified information arising due to “random” events.
This argues against the claim that genetic code found in cells demonstrates that complex specified information could come about in nature due to random events.
Certainly, this argument is a philosophical one, but NO MORE a philosophical one - AND NO LESS a scientific one - than Darwin’s claim that random selection acting on random mutations has the power to engender the variety of life forms that currently exist.
Darwin’s claim cannot be “proven” scientifically, either.
For example, if the genetic code, itself, is found to have the specified means, i.e., embedded code, within it to adapt itself to changing environmental pressures, that would demonstrate that mutations do not account for positive change, but the code itself has the capacity inherent in it to do so.
One strong argument for debunking the idea that random mutations can consistently bring about positive change is the fact that making random changes to computer code never (or almost never) improve functionality. It is far more likely that random mutations, on their own, would have brought about the degeneration and extinction of life rather than continual improvement.
To say the fact that we have successful life forms today is evidence that random mutation IS effective begs the question entirely. We do not know, except by presumption, that that success was, in fact, solely due to random mutations selected by natural mechanisms.
This is not “pure science,” either. It IS conjecture regarding what “best explains” the evidence, which is precisely what IDvolution presents to legitimately counter the philosophical claims of Darwinism.
Rob
