Re: [asa] How big a deal is homology?

  *Neither of these really correspond to the God I worship. But to pull of
a trick like defining the laws and constants of the universe so that
everything assembles itself automatically - now that's really impressive!*

But it assembles itself in what seems to be a messy, haphazard way.
99.99%of the time stuff doesn't assemble into anything new and useful,
and more
often than not when the code changes through a mutation really bad things
happen. And even when things sort of work out, you end up with things like
eyes that are wired upside down and such.

So, if God is a bodger of a programmer or artist, he's also a bodger of an
engineer -- his self-assembly machine doesn't work terribly efficiently or
well. This kind of argument is as good for the gander as it is for the
goose, which is why I think TE's shouldn't use it against the ID goose.

On 3/27/07, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/27/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > *For this reason, though I once thought that software-module re-use was
> > a good explanation (and several creationists I've tried to argue with have
> > made such arguments as Jim presents below), I no longer do so.
> > *
> > This is one thing that bothered me about Collins' book. He certainly
> > establishes beyond doubt the genetic relationships that tie all of life
> > together and that fact that the human genome has changed over time. But I
> > still think there's a big leap between those facts and a complete
> > evolutionary story that necessarily elides any acts of progressive creation.
> >
> >
>
> To be sure there are gaps, but it is the job of science to fill the gaps,
> and not really to give up and say that God is in the gaps.
>
>
>
> >
> >
> > And also, computer code is only one metaphor for creation. We could
> > also think of God as an artist working on a canvas, striving for sweep,
> > grandeur, and pure expression, rather than a computer engineer striving for
> > the most parsimonious code. If we were to examine a master
> > painting carefully with x-rays and such, we'd be able to see early sketches,
> > foundational color layers, and the like, which were part of the creative
> > process, but which aren't all directly functional in the finished work. We
> > might even find bits of whimsy -- "easter eggs" and graffiti -- that have no
> > functional relationship to the finished work at all. Whether we view these
> > things as wasteful mistakes, or as flashes of creative spirit, depends on
> > how we approach the artist and his work.
> >
>
>
> I don't really find the artist metaphor any more convincing than the
> computer code one. It's not a question of early sketches being found under
> the layers. The pseudo-gene that is a working gene in other species is not
> beneath the surface - it's directly in the code. It is as if your artist
> had clumsily scribbled over a bit of the picture that you're now supposed to
> ignore. I think your illustration merely replaces an incompetent computer
> programmer with a bodger of an artist. Neither of these really correspond
> to the God I worship. But to pull of a trick like defining the laws and
> constants of the universe so that everything assembles itself automatically
> - now that's really impressive!
>
> Iain
> ----

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Received on Tue Mar 27 18:13:35 2007