Evolution is most likely a part of intelligent design

First, let me stipulate that DNA is not a blueprint, but more like a kind of recipe. A blueprint implies an exact description of what something is going to look like. You can't make a blueprint for a house that's been demolished by a hurricane, for the obvious reason that it's impossible to predict the exact damage a hurricane will do. But you can build a house in Florida, according to specifications that do not take hurricanes into account. That's what might be called "a recipe for disaster".But actually, I want to talk about those "instructions" you mentioned. Please consider the following.When a glass falls to the floor, it breaks. That's what anybody would expect to happen, isn't it? It just happens. Nobody in his right mind would suppose that somewhere in the glass, when it's still in one piece, there are instructions that specify what happens to the glass when it falls to the ground. That's a ridiculous idea, and I think you'd have a hard time trying to find anybody who would disagree. (Come to think of it though, when you're from America, I guess anything is possible...)Well, just as no instructions are needed for a glass to break when it falls to the floor, no instructions are needed for imperfect replicators to evolve into something more complex under selective pressure. If there are imperfect replicators, and they replicate imperfectly in an environment where there is selective pressure, then logic dictates that these imperfect replicators evolve. It's what must happen in these circumstances. And since the products of evolution become themselves part of the increasingly complex system that exerts the selective pressure - in a kind of feedback loop - it is also inevitable that simple things evolve in the direction of increasing complexity. Given imperfect replication under selective pressure (also known as mutation and natural selection), evolution, and with it, increasing complexity, are the inevitable consequences.They are just as inevitable as the fact that a glass with no support in a gravitional field with a concrete floor underneath is going to break. And this inherent inevitability obviates the need for built-in instructions.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

But that's not what I said. We may indeed not understand (yet) how replication starts, but once it does ("if there are imperfect replicators"), if it is imperfect (which is the case with the replication of DNA), and if there is selective pressure (which is the case in an environment of limited resources), then the only possible future for these replicators is one of evolution. Logic does indeed dictate that. It seems as though you are saying that replicators gradually became survivors, that they evolved into survivors. But that's an incoherent notion. In order for that to happen, they already have to be survivors. You cannot evolve into a survivor: if you evolve, you are a survivor. That's because chemical reactions per se are not enough. You need replication. And even that is not enough, you need your replication to be imperfect, or differential. And then you need selection. It's quite a shopping list, but once you've got all that, evolution is guaranteed to happen. No, we're not. You are confusing your own ignorance with what science does or does not know. We know that in organic chemistry there are molecules capable of being copied. We know that this copying process is not always perfect. We know that resources in the environment are limited. We know that some copies are better at acquiring those resources than others. All of these circumstances coming together inexorably lead to a process of evolution, there is no way around it. We know that these circumstances pertain in organic chemistry, therefore we know "why" - I'd rather say "how" - this resulted in evolution.What we don't know (yet) is how this process bootstrapped itself from a world without replication, although Richard Dawkins describes a plausible scenario involving clay, in "The Blind Watchmaker". Yes, everything interacts with its environment, but not everything replicates, let alone imperfectly. Selective pressure alone is not enough. (Remember the shopping list?) So, not everything around us evolves, only those things that replicate imperfectly. It seems you do not know what the word 'obviate' means. Let me rephrase: the inherent inevitability I spoke of means that there is no need for instructions.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

You misunderstood the point of my breaking glass; it has nothing to do with replicators. It was an example of something that doesn't need instructions for it to happen. It was a reaction to something Kent75 wrote: In a certain sense, DNA can be said to contain "instructions", but they are not instructions that tell an organism how to evolve, let alone how to evolve in a specified direction. The only way in which DNA contains instructions is in the specification^* it gives for the arrangement of amino acids in proteins.My point with the breaking glass was that the logical consequence of having a glass in free fall above a hard surface is that it inevitably breaks. In the same way, the logical consequence of having imperfect replicators under selective pressure is that these replicators inevitably evolve. You are making a crucial mistake here, which is the unwarranted inclusion of the word 'designed' in your assertion. Without it, you have a point. But by insisting that the mechanism must be designed, you invalidate your reasoning. No, I didn't say that. As you can see in what I wrote above, I have no qualms with the concept of "instructions" in DNA. What I said was that DNA is not like a blueprint. That's because a blueprint is an exact description of what something is going to look like when it's finished. DNA isn't like that. It merely specifies what amino acid goes where in a protein. There's nothing in DNA about hair colour, physiognomy or whatever other heritable characteristic you care to think of. Likewise, there's nothing in a cake recipe that tells you how crispy the crust is going to be, or how mellow the filling. It just specifies what goes into it, in which quantities, and how long to bake it. That's why I said DNA is more like a recipe than like a blueprint. Where in the recipe for cookies is the crispiness specified? Or the nice brown colour? Those characteristics arise out of the process of making cookies, but they are not specified.In a cell, when a ribosome reads an RNA molecule, it appends amino acid after amino acid to a growing chain of them, in a linear fashion. But due to the physico-chemical characteristics of the various amino acids and their interactions, the chain folds in a particular way. There is no instruction anywhere in the DNA that corresponds to the way the protein folds. It just happens that way. It results in a protein with a very specific form that gives it very specific function. But all of that just happens because the physics and the chemistry happen to work that way. As I've just explained, and as you'll find out if you learn about protein synthesis, that's just not true. In evolutionary theory, only mutations are random. Natural selection is far from random, as has been explained a countless number of times already. Please, in the interest of the discussion, familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the theory of evolution. If you do, you will realize that randomness isn't by far the whole story. ^* I think a disclaimer, although slightly off-topic, would be justified here, because I realise I'm in grave danger of being misunderstood once again, for allowing instructions in DNA, and speaking of "specifications". This could very easily be misconstrued as admitting the existence of an "instructor" and a "specifier", in the form of some kind of intelligent being. I most emphatically deny admitting that. I think the mindless process of evolution can give rise to instructions, specifications and design, without the need whatsoever for a guiding intelligence.Edited by Parasomnium, : spelling

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.