Complexity and evolution of the cell

[SteveF]

Steve, you agree there is balance, despite chaos, doesn’t this demonstrate design?

JR, I've been saying that the entire time, yet you fail to see what I’m saying, so why continue? I’m content to let you misunderstand me. I may not be communicating it very well so why go around in circles? Also, I’m far from the only source of information. If there is anything to what I’m saying and you’re open to it, and God wants to communicate it to you with a vessel that is clearer to you than me, I’m sure He’ll find a way. Hence, the reason I’m content.

[jriccitelli]

I'm not sure why you keep giving examples that illustrates there is a designer. Nobody disagrees with this. We are only considering how the design came about. Unless you're assuming an atheist may be reading this. (Stevef pg.4)

You wrote ‘We are only considering how the design came about”. That’s 'all' I’m considering also- the 'how' did it come about.
Darwinists believe there is design, but that there is no 'designer' just chance.
Theistics imply that there is a designer, but that He allows 'chance' to take over at times.
Your posts seemed to imply that you agree with the latter, I was pointing out the problems with both.
I am no longer sure where ‘you’ stand, but nonetheless my arguments against both remain the same.

Design only comes about ‘one’ way, by design. Design is not chance, there are only two possibilities.

[jonperry]

Design only comes about ‘one’ way, by design. Design is not chance, there are only two possibilities.

There are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who put everything into just two groups, and those who don't.

[jriccitelli]

Jon, I picked up on this view of yours in your other post, and meant to ask you then: what ‘other’ possible alternative is there

Things either have design or they do not (I presume you think the original design of ‘something’ in biological forms was by chance (DNA or ?) and then natural selection (survival of the fittest) and adaptation took over, is that where your going or what?).

(Also, complex and reproducing life forms are a long long way from repeating polymer chains, after all continuing to do the same thing all day only gets one thing done, if that’s were you are going )

And as I have said; The entropy is killing me
(Meaning flat tires, broken pipes, loose wires, short circuits, leaky roofs, spilled milk, stupid politics...)

[jonperry]

Once a self replicating system is in place (as long as it does not replicate perfectly each time) random variation and (non-random) natural selection take hold to go about designing systems which are better and better at surviving within their environments.

Variation and selection play against each other to produce a form of design but not in the traditional sense which you seem to be using where you have an outside thinker coming up with new ideas and executing them.

Interestingly, variation and selection can be simulated in a computer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida

[jriccitelli]

Variation and selection play against each other to produce a form of design

I will grant you 'variation' can happen, but to what degree? Miniscule if the form is expected to survive, and fatal if anything greater happens. You know changes in life form design are mutations and predominantly fatal. Selection, most likely a mutation is not going to survive or be reproduced.
And Jon what about entropy? It is a scientific fact we all experience everyday!
Things go from good to worse in a blink of an eye, bad to good takes 'alot' of effort (that's why we call it work).

People tend to look at this after the fact, they look at life forms that have been created to survive and assume things survive because some survive.
It seems most people do not have the perspective from a designer or engineer, because people have a tendency to become ‘quickly’ acclimated to technological advances. For instance TV, computers, cars and appliances, most young people are ‘astonished’ to think there was actually a time without them. It seems hard to imagine why someone didn’t come up with all these inventions earlier, but designs don’t just happen 'because you need them'. It took thousands of years before someone came up with the wheel, the chain, the pulley, the pump, and then to put them all together took hundreds of years even with intelligent people ‘trying’ to improve them for centuries. Most people watch TV and work on a computer with ‘no’ idea or interest in how complex they are, and most people don’t give any more thought than this to the complexity of their body yet the body is infinitely more complex than a TV or computer. Even 'code' is a form of highly advanced society and mind, code is language, something some people groups didn't develop until recently and few wrote or understood, yet biology was writing and reading code before man thought of it!

Biological forms contain millions of fantastic inventions and processes that man is only now being able to conceive and produce; i.e. pumps, valves, electric controls, contained heating and cooling systems, sonar, TV, telescopes, cameras, video recorders, liquid sealant, liquid purification and filtering, etc, etc, etc. yet biological forms have had these systems forever! These things don’t happen very easily as man with high intelligence is just now been able to recently produce and invent, yet animal life has had these things all along, why did it take intelligence so long to figure these things out while you are supposing they just happen when given a ‘chance’ to happen.

It seems that if people were born with CD players, MP3 jacks and telephones in their body’s and a flashlight on their head no one would argue they had design but they just evolved there.

[jriccitelli]

All the 'references and documentation' you really need Jon is at your own fingertips. Just look at your arm and fingers, they were only a millimeter long at one point, and then later on we were all less than 2 feet tall. What if your blood vessels and muscles were still two feet tall and your bones were five foot eleven

The biological form is not ‘just’ a design, as in a product, but it is also ‘the producer’ of the product. What is just as fantastic as the design itself is a design that builds itself. How do you make a plan that builds its own workers, gets them to work and has them all work on the plan at the right time, at the right pace and in the right order? How do you write a code that takes into consideration 'time' and all the other processes that go along with growth and and energy production, and write the plan to produce based on what will be at certain intervals, yet at present don't even exist yet

These commands are put into the DNA code somehow, and followed precisely (yet also allow for planned variance in some species to add variety, yet to plan!)
Stop and think how the animals grow, the bone grows at the same speed as the veins and nerves and muscles and skin etc. if one didn’t grow fast enough it would tear and pull, and if too fast it would bunch up or bend, yet everything grows, widens and develops together as if there is a very intelligent and informed supervisor or engineer involved giving directions, that the work gets done and in order according to plan is not something you see in normal construction and production environments – even though we are using all the intelligence we can – to do so, yet the animals and lifeforms themselves have no idea what they are doing?

[jriccitelli]

Once a self-replicating system is in place (as long as it does not replicate perfectly each time) random variation and (non-random) natural selection take hold to go about designing systems which are better and better at surviving within their environments (Jon)

That is not true, a person shopping for the best item on a shelf is not designing anything (even if the item they purchase is a xerox machine or a cookie cutter). The improvements do not ‘happen’ often, fast enough, or at all, in order to continue to overcome entropy and the obvious tendency for things to get worse and die off before good design can produce something without any intellectual input (this is proven on store shelves across the country). There are a million different species and each of them would of have had to each have a quadzillion design improvements* in the positive direction, all the while entropy is millions of times more likely to happen and destroy all the previous progressive improvements (*without even counting each and every cell placed one on top of another in the correct direction and proper place, as in a tube, to continue each item such as a single blood capillary that does not leak and goes to and from the proper location).

I pointed out a few other things to which atheists (and nontheists) completely miss (above), yet those who actually construct things are well acquainted with – intent, purpose, design, and entropy:

These things don’t happen very easily as man with high intelligence is just now been able to recently produce and invent, yet animal life has had these things all along, why did it take intelligence so long to figure these things out while you are supposing they just happen when given a ‘chance’ to happen (Me)

[TheEditor]

Interesting discussion. It got me to thinking about this in relation to what are considered miracles in Scripture. Many dismiss the relatively few miracles that are recorded in the Bible. They reject these miracles simply because they are not common to our modern experience, they are beyond our power to perform, and they exceed human comprehension. However, those who ridicule the miracles of the Bible, will at the same time readily accept parallel common occurrences today that are beyond our comprehension and our power, yet are no less “miraculous” despite their commonness. We see today the exercise of life principle, but can neither understand it fully nor produce it. The reproduction of living organisms (both animal and vegetable) is a common thing, yet it exceeds our limited intelligence and is beyond our power to duplicate from scratch. Arguably, its everyday ordinary occurrence leads people to not see reproduction as “miraculous.

Regards, Brenden.

[steve7150]

Interestingly, variation and selection can be simulated in a computer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida

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jonperry








Did someone design the software?