The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 2)

J C wrote: »

... here is a thought-provoking video to help bring the thread back onto topic.

Ah! I see where you guys are going wrong.

There are a few things. First, you are going about this backward. Think of a 'drum'. Any kind of drum at all. A snare drum, let's say.

Now let us ask, 'Which came first - the drum or drum design?'

The very first percussion instruments were undesigned rocks and pieces of wood - would you recognise such objects as instruments by design?

Of course you wouldn't, it's just rocks and wood but the first percussion instruments were in fact the result entirely of chance. Modern drums are not here by chance but the first ones were.

So that's the first thing you should ask - Which came first, 'hunger' or 'the digestive system'? After all, the story of life is simply the biography of hunger, isn't it?

And in the context of the earliest life, hunger can be thought of much more simply as an imbalance of forces.

The next thing you should look at is how you and your ilk use numbers to try and discredit science.

Basically the ID position is this: Either God did it or one-hundred and fifty twenty-sided dice were rolled 10 to the power of 164 times and because atheists see no evidence in support of the God hypothesis, evolutionists must support the dice hypothesis. A or B.

The thing is, numbers like 10 to the 164 don't come up in real science. In fact, the only time they come up is when IDists are talking to children or the feeble of mind and they do so in order to persuade them away from science. Shame on you.

It is easy to understand why you would do that though. Despite the fact that no credible scientist claims to have proof of the origin of life they are all aware that in almost all areas of science, God is not necessary for an explanation of the observed behaviour of the universe. If it can be shown that life can occur without intelligent design, then that's it for you guys - no more being invited to schools to lie to kids, no more seminars where the feeble-minded can be robbed - Intelligent Designism will be dead.

If you guys really want to play with numbers, you should disect the numbers that proper scientists actually use.

And the last thing, and this is to do with your video, you make a mistake when you view protein as information because of how it is arranged in DNA.

You see, DNA isn't like a computer program at all, the bases are not equivalent to four-state bits that convey instructions to some kind of CPU.

Part of the reason that you make this mistake is because you are considering human DNA. If you looked at simpler DNA, the truth might be more obvious - it's not about data or information storage, it's a process of origami.

Now you should be able to see. DNA simply tells cells how to unfold.

DNA doesn't contain information about eye-colour, it contains a dessicated microscopic model which acts like a template or scaffold that guides the cellular activity in the region of the eye.

And it is there by chance. Like the drum, the earliest 'eye' was nothing more that a chance molecular structure that was light-sensitive appeared in some early organism and benefited it. It persisted, produced more offspring who persisted and some of the suffered mutations that either improved or impaired....

... millions of years...

Worms.

DNA is about molecular folds not a program to build an organism.

J C wrote: »

He is an eminent scientist working at the cutting edge of ID research.

Two oxymorons in one sentence - impressive. :rolleyes: