Re: >RE: What does ID mean?

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Sun, 19 Apr 1998 19:57:54 -0500

At 01:05 PM 4/17/98, E G M wrote:

>---Glenn Morton <grmorton@waymark.net> wrote:
>
>> Ed, You have equivocated DNA sequence with reproductive system.
>
>Sections of the genetic code are copied for protein production, etc.,
>and DNA get replicated with every cell division. I have not
>equivocated anything, I was talking of both to show that the sequence
>is not static, it defies entropy, it guards against mutations, it
>repairs itself, etc., performed hundreds of functions non-randomly,
>that's the message.

Actually as Prigogine showed, the 2nd law does not even apply to a living
system. So far from defying entropy, entropy is not applicable to living
systems.

>
>
>> That might
>> be a different question. But the human DNA sequence which is quite variable
>> from person to person, was still manufactured originally by some process
>
>Well, I don't want to sound like a creationist, but isn't this the
>kind of affirmation that assumes MN. Couldn't it have been created
>"de novo"? But let's assume MN (since I don't want to get the same
>message that Will Provine just got), we do have a genetic code and it
>appears that we can't know whether it was designed or randomly
>assembled. At this point, since we can't really repeat the experiment
>that Nature performed through ages, we can only "guess" or have a gut
>feeling ....... Or is there a way to be sure (now) ?

That is the problem that the anti-evolutionists miss entirely. Looking at
the DNA chain, it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell whether or not it was created by
design or created randomly. This is not to say that this means that Will's
position wins. It is to say that we cannot beat that position via this argument.

>
>> either a random one or designed. Mathematically we still can't tell
>how >it was made.
>
>Could mathematics ever be able to tell?

never.

Consider this though. Some very quite complex things appear to have arisen
without design. Who designed the world's economy? No one. It just
happened as the result of all the individual people trying to better their
personal condition. No one set down 10,000 years ago and drew out a plan or
gave information for the interacting parts of the economy. No member of the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic wrote a manual for how to have petroleum and cars and
trade and money and a banking system and ships, etc, etc etc. Yet if you
remove one single item from the world's economy suddenly, the system will
collapse. If tonight all ball-bearings dissappeared, transportation,
pumping of petroleum, electrical generation and farming would cease
instantly. The economy would die.
Destroy all computers right now. You would not be able to get the money out
of your bank because no one would know how much was there for you to
withdraw. And because you and others couldn't get their money, no one would
sell anything and we would be back to person to person barter. Try that on
a global scale!

Complexity can arise on its own and it very well might be that God used this
trait of nature to create us.

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm