Intelligent Design & the Odds of Life

[swansont]

Glad tomake your acquaintances, you are going to get a lot of flack from these Atheists who do not seem to know that 90% of the American people believe in an Intelligent Designer or God. They give man credit for intelligence but dismiss the idea of God as silly nonsense

 

It's not a matter of not knowing. It's a matter of not caring. This isn't like Tinkerbell; clapping hard enough won't make it be true.

[Phi for All]

How do you possibly KNOW ?

Doesn't it make sense that a much less sophisticated nucleic acid existed before DNA? Early life didn't need sequences with so much structural purpose. Life started simple and evolved to current complexities over billions of years, we have observed the evidence of this.

 

Since you capitalized KNOW, you should learn something else about science. It's not about KNOWING or PROOF, it's about the explanation that's best supported by reliable evidence. Again, you really should learn more about the things you ridicule with such fervor.

[mooeypoo]

It's not a matter of not knowing. It's a matter of not caring. This isn't like Tinkerbell; clapping hard enough won't make it be true.

 

Doesn't clapping result in fairicide?

[Bill Angel]

Also, if an intelligent designer did the blueprints for our bodies, then the intelligent designer is a really bad engineer. The blueprints suck, quite honestly, with vestigial organs and a combined plumbing, I wouldn't pay a dime to this designer if he offered to design anfything for me.

Even if there was a designer, he (or she) seems either incompetent, or with a really bad sense of humor.

 

That's well put, and similar thoughts occurred to me while reading about the biology of the garden slug.

 

Here are some facts about the biology of slugs that would seem to make a joke about any assertions of "intelligent design" rather than natural selection :

 

Slugs, like all other gastropods, undergo torsion  (a 180° twisting of the internal organs) during development. 

 

The presence of a vestigial shell:

Most slugs retain a remnant of their shell, which is usually internalized. This organ generally serves as storage for calcium salts, often in conjunction with the digestive glands.

 

One can understand how the biology of an earlier snail type of organism would adapt under the pressures of natural selection to internalize its shell and modify its purpose. The same with the reorienting of its internal organs during development.

 

Lest I be accused of attacking a straw man, fundamentalist Christians do subscribe to a literal acceptance of the biblical story of creation as depicted in Genesis, as well as using the "Argument from Design" to assert the existence of a Divine creator .

[swansont]

Doesn't clapping result in fairicide?

 

According to the doctrine of the PeterPantheon, it's the opposite. Clapping shows belief.

[Phi for All]

According to the doctrine of the PeterPantheon, it's the opposite. Clapping shows belief.

If you believe you have the clap, you can get a Peter Pan at your doctrine's office.

[Elshamah]

First, as has been said many, MANY times, pure chance was not involved. The natural laws of chemistry preclude the idea of pure chance.

 

So you have a clue, how the natural laws of chemistry created life ?

 

 

 

Second, even assuming that pure chance was at play, when you have trillions of molecules trying trillions of combinations simultaneously, the chance of any given outcome becomes very close to 1.

 

http://www.detecting...biogenesis.html

 

Even if a lot of fully formed proteins and strings of fully formed DNA molecules were to come together at the same time, what are the odds that all the hundreds and thousands of uniquely specified proteins needed to decode both the DNA and mRNA, (not to mention the needed ATP molecules and the host of other unlisted "parts"), would all simultaneously fuse together in such a highly functional way? Not only has this phenomenon never been reproduced by any scientist in any laboratory on earth, but a reasonable mechanism by which such a phenomenon might even occur has never been proposed - outside of intelligent design that is.

 

So what if the chance is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 if I have 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 attempts all happening at the same time - the result I need is bound to come up just based on raw probability alone. Let the chance argument go - it's invalid, and it fails to account for all the variables.

 

why should there be all these attempts at all ?

 

 

 

Second, no living mind was responsible for the blueprint for water.

 

how do you KNOW ?

 

http://www.icr.org/presence-of-God/

 

 

Just mix hydrogen and oxygen properly and bam, water!

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere

Edited August 2, 2012 by Elshamah

[mooeypoo]

how do you KNOW ?

 

http://www.icr.org/presence-of-God/

There's no proof for this, and as lovely as the ICR ""research"" (notice the double-double quotation marks) tries to twist things, they are doing it while twisting the known facts, burying known evidence, and ignoring known explanations.

 

You know, you should really go over this site: http://talkorigins.org/

 

It might help going over what "the other side" actually says in response to the claims made by the ICR. If the icr is right, you have nothing to lose.

Actually, for the sake of learning you have nothing to lose even if you end up disagreeing with the entire scientific community.

 

But do go over some of the claims there, they answer the vast majority of the claims made, and they do it a lot better than what any one of us would be able to do on a short time in a discussion forum. Look for the relevant claims, see the answers.

 

A useful place to start is here, about abiogenesis and the possible origin of life: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

 

 

 

 

~mooey

[iNow]

abiogenesis is not possible because DNA contains complex, specified, codified information. And that can come only from a mind.

That does not follow. It is non-sequitur. It also opens the new question of where did that mind come from?

 

In the same way as chance cannot create Shakespeares Hamlet, it cannot create the instruction script for life.

It's not chance, though. Each successive generation builds upon the successes of the previous one. Even when you get the level of chemistry, new molecular groupings build on what came before them. Also, your hamlet argument is kind of funny. Another like it is that a wind storm cannot create a 747 out of junk in a junkyard. That one came from Fred Hoyle, and is yet another fallacy, but exactly of the same type as your (what you certainly meant to say) argument that a thousand monkeys banging on a typewriter couldn't reproduce Hamlet. It shows just how completely you need to better educate yourself on this topic before you continue making any further declarations.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle's_fallacy

[Elshamah]

By this 'statistics' alone, we should be aware that non intelligent blueprints are more available than ones that 'thinking minds' created.

 

In that case you should be surely able to present just ONE example of codified, complex, specified information like DNA that has empirically proven a natural , aka non intelligent origin ?

 

 

Also, if an intelligent designer did the blueprints for our bodies, then the intelligent designer is a really bad engineer. The blueprints suck, quite honestly, with vestigial organs and a combined plumbing, I wouldn't pay a dime to this designer if he offered to design anything for me.

Even if there was a designer, he (or she) seems either incompetent, or with a really bad sense of humor.

 

That said, you AGAIN misrepresent the theory. No one says life arose by chance. We can't argue a nonexisting argument.

 

http://www.answersin...estigial-organs

 

 

Now that's ironic, coming from you who claims an intelligent force created the universe. How could *you* possibly know?

 

i don't argue to have absolute proofs. But the evidence points clearly to a intelligent designer.

 

 

As stated multiple times before, we actually have a pretty good idea how things started out.

 

oh really ? please explain then how homochirality came to be, the information stored in dna , and how to overcome the oxygen problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That does not follow. It is non-sequitur. It also opens the new question of where did that mind come from?

 

 

It's not chance, though. Each successive generation builds upon the successes of the previous one. Even when you get the level of chemistry, new molecular groupings build on what came before them. Also, your hamlet argument is kind of funny. Another like it is that a wind storm cannot create a 747 out of junk in a junkyard. That one came from Fred Hoyle, and is yet another fallacy, but exactly of the same type as your (what you certainly meant to say) argument that a thousand monkeys banging on a typewriter couldn't reproduce Hamlet. It shows just how completely you need to better educate yourself on this topic before you continue making any further declarations.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle's_fallacy

 

the cell is irreducibly complex.

 

 

http://www.epm.org/r...es-not-exist-w/

To sum up the evolutionary dilemma: Even if the physical impossibility of forming and gathering the necessary physical building blocks of a cell were overcome, it would still require information. And it would still require a 'language." And it would need to immediately form a copying mechanism. Looking at it from a different angle, you need a cell to create a DNA molecule. But you need DNA to create a cell. What is required to create DNA and cells is information arising from intelligence. Which brings us back to the Biblical model.

 

 

There's no proof for this, and as lovely as the ICR ""research"" (notice the double-double quotation marks) tries to twist things, they are doing it while twisting the known facts, burying known evidence, and ignoring known explanations.

 

You know, you should really go over this site: http://talkorigins.org/

 

It might help going over what "the other side" actually says in response to the claims made by the ICR. If the icr is right, you have nothing to lose.

Actually, for the sake of learning you have nothing to lose even if you end up disagreeing with the entire scientific community.

 

But do go over some of the claims there, they answer the vast majority of the claims made, and they do it a lot better than what any one of us would be able to do on a short time in a discussion forum. Look for the relevant claims, see the answers.

 

A useful place to start is here, about abiogenesis and the possible origin of life: http://www.talkorigi.../faqs/abioprob/

 

 

 

 

~mooey

 

i know the talkorigins arguments. please present the arguments, which convince you, life arose by natural means.

 

 

 

 

Doesn't it make sense that a much less sophisticated nucleic acid existed before DNA? Early life didn't need sequences with so much structural purpose. Life started simple and evolved to current complexities over billions of years, we have observed the evidence of this.

 

what evidence is that ?

 

Since you capitalized KNOW, you should learn something else about science. It's not about KNOWING or PROOF, it's about the explanation that's best supported by reliable evidence. Again, you really should learn more about the things you ridicule with such fervor.

 

Its not me making absolute statements. Its obvious, if you make them, i will defy you to present the empirical proofs which do entitle you to talk like you know something with absolute certainty. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to say, i believe so and so, because it seems the evidence points to this direction, and x seems to be the best explanation to support y.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2012 by Elshamah

[iNow]

the cell is irreducibly complex.

No, it's not. The cell, too, is made of component parts. The modern day cell in all its glory and with all its cool machinery didn't just shit itself into existence one day.

 

 

 

[mooeypoo]

i know the talkorigins arguments. please present the arguments, which convince you, life arose by natural means.

From your own claims it doesnt sound like you do.

 

I'm sorry, but you seem to expect us to write down years and years of evolutionary biology research and knowledge in a forum post, just to convince you. That's not the way things work. Everything you claimed so far was either unsubstantiated or plain demonstrably wrong -- the data is available, and the answers -- THE DIRECT answers to the points you made specifically -- are addressed in those links.

 

You came to us, Elshamah, and we are a science forum. YOU are the one making a claim about intelligent design, and you are the one in need of proving it -- not the other way around.

 

If you don't have the time or patience to go read and learn about the theory you insist on fightiing against, I suggest you fight against it elsewhere. No one will take you seriously if you insist on us teaching you hundreds of years and thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence piece by piece in a forum thread.

 

C'mon now.

 

It's annoying not because we don't have the answers, but because the answers were answered SO MANY TIMES in the past that they're readily available -- and were posted for you multiple times. You seem to be acting as if "if it's not posted *here* it doesn't exist" and that's loads frustrating. It's also not going to result in a proper discussion.

 

It's all there, and the answers are direct and plain to read. Don't be intellectually dishonest; read it properly -- if you have questions about specific aspects of the theory, we are here to help. We're not going to do the work for you or pretend the theory is unsound just because you don't like it. Also, ICR are (to say the least) not using any form of the scientific method or anything resembling a proper research method. I would be careful quoting their work as any form of evidence.

 

 

~mooey

 

 

 

what evidence is that ?

That is CLEAR evidence you haven't read the link I posted within talkorigins. That page explains the evidence that exist and whtever's missing.

 

We'd love to discuss things, Elshamah, but seriously, you need to cooperate.

 

~mooey

 

 

[Moontanman]

In that case you should be surely able to present just ONE example of codified, complex, specified information like DNA that has empirically proven a natural , aka non intelligent origin ?

 

All of it, your question is nonsensical, DNA only represents information because we label it as such, in fact it is not information in of it's self any more than the polyester molecule is information...

 

 

 

 

http://www.answersin...estigial-organs

 

This is so totally dishonest It's difficult to even understand what they are saying.

 

 

 

 

i don't argue to have absolute proofs. But the evidence points clearly to a intelligent designer.

 

No it does not, in fact all the evidence very clearly points to natural selection.

 

 

oh really ? please explain then how homochirality came to be, the information stored in dna , and how to overcome the oxygen problem.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html#homochirality

 

The so called information stored in DNA is a strawman, it's only information because we call it information to make it easy to work with, in fact it is no more information that any other large molecules...

 

We know there was no oxygen at the time of abiogenesis due to the minerals that formed at that time. only minerals that can form in the absence of oxygen formed then and free oxygen is a biological product, oxygen is too reactive to persist for significant periods of time with out a constant source, biology would be that source...

 

 

the cell is irreducibly complex.

 

http://www.epm.org/r...es-not-exist-w/

To sum up the evolutionary dilemma: Even if the physical impossibility of forming and gathering the necessary physical building blocks of a cell were overcome, it would still require information. And it would still require a 'language." And it would need to immediately form a copying mechanism. Looking at it from a different angle, you need a cell to create a DNA molecule. But you need DNA to create a cell. What is required to create DNA and cells is information arising from intelligence. Which brings us back to the Biblical model.

 

Another strawman, the first "cells" did not and could not have been as complex as modern cells are and complexity came about slowly overtime. The idea that a modern cell had to form spontaneously is simply not an issue... There are other ways for the first life to pass down information that does not require DNA. This stuff is easily available if you look some place beside creationist sites.

 

 

 

 

i know the talkorigins arguments. please present the arguments, which convince you, life arose by natural means.

 

Talk origins is full of this information, take the time to read it...

 

 

 

 

 

what evidence is that ?

 

Read this page if you are able to read something that isn't creationist horse feathers, they actually give you links so you can check the information they give you. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html#intro

 

Its not me making absolute statements. Its obvious, if you make them, i will defy you to present the empirical proofs which do entitle you to talk like you know something with absolute certainty. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to say, i believe so and so, because it seems the evidence points to this direction, and x seems to be the best explanation to support y.

 

God did it is not an absolute statement with no factual support? pot... kettle... black?

 

I defy you to show empirical truth of a designer, all you have is baseless assertions and misinformation presented by creationists who only deny science and provide no evidence of their own...

[Phi for All]

http://www.answersin...estigial-organs

 

[snip]

 

i know the talkorigins arguments. please present the arguments, which convince you, life arose by natural means.

This tells me all I need to know about your arguments. If you truly "know the talkorigins arguments" and think ANYTHING from AnwersInGenesis is more plausible, there is nothing I could say that you wouldn't dismiss with the kind of intellectual dishonesty and rigor-free reasoning used at the AIG site. Imo, there is no other place on the web where so many people who haven't bothered to understand science regularly ridicule it.

[Elshamah]

All of it, your question is nonsensical, DNA only represents information because we label it as such, in fact it is not information in of it's self any more than the polyester molecule is information...

 

i am always very amused when reading such kind of answers.

 

 

Richard Dawkins at his book The Blind Watchmaker:

"Every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2012 by Elshamah

[CharonY]

You missed his point. DNA alone does not have information. Only in conjunction with an elaborate transcription (and translation) system does it do anything. Actually pretty much the same as a hard disk without a head. It has been suggested that proto-life started with simple molecules with catalytic abilities (such as peptides and certain RNAs). Their information was then eventually transferred into a more stable molecule (DNA). I.e. the development is quite likely a bottom-up approach vs. a well designed top-down one.

[Moontanman]

DNA is not information....

 

 

[Elshamah]

DNA is not information....

 

 

Oh sure. BS.

 

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/838/

 

 

Life (at least today through the molecule DNA) contains huge amounts of information. As previously noted, the Darwinian mechanism requires replication, or reproduction. Prior to the origin of replication, life could only rely upon the basic laws of chemistry. But how could the basic laws of chemistry and physics create the information present in life? The origin of this information that is key to understanding the origin of life. As B. O. Küppers wrote, "the problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information."⁵⁰ Yet, there are no known chemical laws that determine the order of the nucleotide bases in DNA (or any other self-replicating molecule). Küppers notes, "the properties of nucleic acids indicate that all the combinatorially possible nucleotide patterns are, from a chemical point of view, equivalent."⁴⁸ Hubert Yockey writes that the sequence of the DNA is not affected by any physical or chemical law:Informational macromolecules can code genetic messages and therefore can carry information because the sequence of bases or residues is affected very little, if at all, by [self-organizing] physico-chemical factors.⁴⁹The first self-replicating molecule is not said to be DNA. But it is said to have been similar to DNA in that it carried the information needed for life. If there are no known chemical or physical laws which can create this complex and specified information needed for a self-replicating molecule, then this stage of the origin of life faces severe hurdles.

 

 

 

[mooeypoo]

Oh sure. BS.

 

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/838/

 

Can you quote a peer-reviewed publication, seeing as others here (and talkorigin too) use those to define some minimum of properly done science?

 

We can all dismiss claims with "BS" and post random stuff. We're a science forum, though. We have a minimum set of requirements -- based on the scientific method -- for evidence that support claims.

 

~mooey

[Elshamah]

Can you quote a peer-reviewed publication, seeing as others here (and talkorigin too) use those to define some minimum of properly done science?

 

We can all dismiss claims with "BS" and post random stuff. We're a science forum, though. We have a minimum set of requirements -- based on the scientific method -- for evidence that support claims.

 

~mooey

 

Is it not enough that i quote secular scientists, that are specialists in their field ? What i have quoted, is common knowledge. With a little research, you will find that find out.

 

 

 

[iNow]

The reason you are being told that your argument is bunk is because you are conflating two different meanings of the term "information," and relying on a bait and switch smoke and mirrors type fallacy to try making your point. It'd be like if I were talking to you about a measurement in feet and you give me a hard time for not representing the bone structure of our toes. It's powerfully stupid.

 

Information is just a term we humans apply to help us better understand certain things, and DNA really is not information in the way you are asserting, nor is it a book containing information in the way your argument requires. It is a molecular structure that is subject to the laws of chemistry... a structure that determines its function in living organisms. DNA does not store "information." It stores biochemical potential, and is not equivalent to words in a book that aren't subject to biochemical processes, that don't reproduce, and that don't do all manner of things that we see biological entities doing. You know... exactly as Moontanman's video shared... You know... the one you called BS.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

Elshamah,

You don't get to cherry pick what you respond to. People have offered you rebuttals and links, which you have ignored in favor what is really little more than preaching. It stops now.

On a related note, I don't really know what this thread is doing here and so I'm moving it to speculations.

[Elshamah]

!

Moderator Note

Elshamah,

 

You don't get to cherry pick what you respond to. People have offered you rebuttals and links, which you have ignored in favor what is really little more than preaching. It stops now.

 

On a related note, I don't really know what this thread is doing here and so I'm moving it to speculations.

 

I have no obligation to respond to all posters.

 

 

Please point out what i have posted that is close to preaching.

 

thanks.

 

 

 

 

Information is just a term we humans apply to help us better understand certain things, and DNA really is not information in the way you are asserting, nor is it a book containing information in the way your argument requires.

 

DNA contains LITERALLY a code, by all means.

 

 

 

http://www.cosmicfin...eists/dna-code/Information theory terms and ideas applied to DNA are not metaphorical, but in fact quite literal in every way. In other words, the information theory argument for design is not based on analogy at all. It is direct application of mathematics to DNA, which by definition is a code.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project (that mapped the human DNA structure) said that one can "think of DNA as an instructional script, a software program, sitting in the nucleus of the cell."

 

 

 

DNA does not store "information."

 

kkkk....

 

Do you really know what you are talking about ??

 

Francis Crick would strongly disagree with you.......

 

http://nobelprize.or...e-code/how.html

Every living organism contains within itself the information it needs to build a new organism. This information, you could think of it as a blueprint of life, is stored in the organism's genome. When an organism needs to use the data stored in the genome, e.g. to build components of a new cell, a copy of the required DNA part is made. ">The alphabet in the RNA molecule contains 4 letters, i.e. A, U, C, G as previously mentioned. To construct a word in the RNA language, three of these letters are grouped together. This three-letter word are often referred to as a triplet or a codon. An example of such a codon is ACG. The letters don't have to be of different kinds, so UUU is also a valid codon. These codons are placed after each other in the RNA molecule, to construct a message, a RNA sequence. This message will later be read by the protein producing machinery in the body.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2012 by Elshamah

[iNow]

So, you will just choose to ignore the rest of my post that pre-empted your reply and already answered the questions you posed, is that correct?

 

If I understand your argument correctly, you're basically saying that DNA is just information, that future generations have more information than previous ones, ergo evolution is shown to be wrong due to entropy. Is that roughly correct?

[mooeypoo]

Is it not enough that i quote secular scientists, that are specialists in their field ? What i have quoted, is common knowledge. With a little research, you will find that find out.

I don't care if the scientists are secular or religious. I want papers that are peer reviewed.

 

I also don't care for what is "common knowledge". Common knowledge is inferior to actual scientific evidence.

 

You're in a science forum, Elshamah. You can't possibly be surprised we require science-grade evidence.

 

~mooey

 

I have no obligation to respond to all posters.

 

 

Please point out what i have posted that is close to preaching.

 

thanks.

You have an obligation to follow our rules, as you have agreed to them when you registered to the forum.

 

Our rules and etiquette clearly states you must supply proper evidence, and answer counter claims. We don't expect you to answer every tiny tiny claim you may have missed, but at this point, you are dismissing claims we are making and insisting on posting non-scientific answers as replies.

 

That's not quite acceptable here. Feel free to go over the rules you agreed to when you joined, and remember you are the one who came to us, not the other way around. You chose to debate under our rules, the rules of scientific argumentation, and you need to follow this concept.

 

~mooey