>>>Chris Cogan: ... Thus, Bertvan's argument ends up undercutting her own
position, because, if organisms *were* designed, there'd be no need whatever
for such a degree of adaptability to changes in genes; each set of genes
could be *precisely* tuned from the start so that every part would work
*perfectly* with all the
others, and thus never need to adjust to errant genetic changes.
*******************
DNAunion: This is false (or at the least, you left out something that I was
supposed to know from following the discussion between Bertvan and you:
sorry, I go back and pick up posts one at a time sometimes). For example:
Chris: "if organisms *were* designed, there'd be no need whatever for such a
degree of adaptability to changes in genes".
DNAunion: This is true if one holds that each organism was designed as it
currently exists and was intended to remain static also. It is not true in
other cases (for example, if the original cells on Earth were designed, and
then evolution took over): it would make *sense* to design in adaptability
from the start.
Chris: "each set of genes could be *precisely* tuned from the start so that
every part would work *perfectly* with all the others, and thus never need to
adjust to errant genetic changes."
DNAunion: But researchers have designed into some computers the ability to
evolve by running through numerous, numerous "random mutations" followed by
selection: that ability to "adjust" was a *desirable* trait and they went out
of their way to accomplish it. (I am referring to the evolvable circuits
using FPGA, or field programmable gate arrays: they gave that system great
flexibility, intentionally, by design).
*************************************
>>>Chris: The fact that there is such flexibility does not, of course
*prove* that there is no designer, but it certainly argues against the need
for one, and makes the designer (in yet another way) superfluous.
******************************
DNAunion: No, it makes the designer superfluous for "everyday evolution"
only. How did life itself arise and obtain the ability to evolve? You need
to explain this by purely-natural means before you can make a designer truly
superfluous (well, then there is the issue of anthropic coincidences).
Many of your statements require that you first be handed a living organism.
You then claim that evolution of that preexisting, functioning organism is
possible by purely natural means and there is no need for a designer. Don't
you see the logical flaw in that? Where does the living organism come from?
For example, you recently presented a long post in which you drew an analogy
with computers undergoing changes. Great, so how did a computer come into
existence and become capable of evolving? How does the ability for a
pre-existing and functioning computer to evolve make a designer superfluous?
Did some natural process separate oxygen from silicon in sand to form pure
silicon, with some of the pure silicon having aluminum and other having
phosphorus impurities added, and these 3 forms then lined up in NPN and PNP
style, with potential differences running across the emitters and bases, with
the output channeled into the collector, all to form transistors by purely
natural means?
Even if we grant that the generation of the "monomers" is plausible by
naturaly means (which we shouldn't), did millions of these "buliding blocks
of computer life" then just happen to become arranged in the correct
orientation, all hooked up and interconnected properly, as to form closed,
functional, switching circuits and logic gates? Did the natural source of
energy have enough energy to power them, yet not enough to overheet them?
And did the binary representations of instructions (the CPU instruction set)
just arise naturally? And did the various components - like the ALU, the
system clock, the memory, and data bus, control bus, etc. - just happen to
form naturally and interconnect, each performing its function properly and
working together to accomplish the whole system's united function? Where did
the program code - which interacts with the CPU's instructions set - that
instructs these components how to mutate and select come from?
Do we just look at a computer and say, "well, all a computer is is a bunch of
silicon, aluminum, phosphorus, carbon, and iron atoms that just happen to be
in a specific arrangement - so what's the big deal? All that has to happen
is for the proper arrangement to occur by natural means, and trillions of
atoms are bumping together every second - surely they would eventurally hit
upon just the right combinations". I don;t think so. We are forced to
conclude that computers are the products of intelligent agents. And not
because we know they are, but because we know they HAVE TO BE.
And I personally believe the same reasoning holds up for cells. This is
disputable because in this case, we don't know for sure that they were
intelligently designed (we don't know their actual history) and many people
claim that they can in fact arise purely naturally (though their concerted
efforts have failed to even come close in over 50 years of experimentation).
The designer is still very much in the picture, and has not (and I believe,
will not) be made superfluous.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 04 2000 - 21:43:06 EST