Testing the biotic message

Jeffrey S. Kramer (75242.2067@compuserve.com)
21 Nov 95 20:37:27 EST

RECAP:
1) Walter ReMine challenged Loren Haarsma to suggest how a living system
could be so designed as to "resist all naturalistic (or evolutionary)
explanations";
2) Loren suggested a "signature" could be incorporated in genetic
structures, like "a sequence of 1000 'non-coding' base pairs which match a
binary sequence in the first 100,000 digits of 'pi'.)
3) Walter objected that this would be an example of "really awful,
terrible, worthless, non-functional design", revealing the willingness of
evolutionists to use contradictory criteria when it suits their tactics (bad
design is evidence of evolution, and the lack of bad design is evidence of
evolution).

My own response:
A given design can obviously be "worthless" in terms of one function but
superb in terms of another function. A copy-protection feature in a
word-processing program, for example, is "awful, terrible, worthless,
non-functional design" in terms of the application, but quite functional in
terms of safeguarding the designer's claims. If Loren's "signature" feature
would in fact "resist natural explanation," then it would plainly be quite
functional, in terms of the specific function which Walter requested!

Jeff