The evidence for design and a designer - AS OF 10/27, SUMMARY MESSAGES ONLY

Hi WK, I believe you are confusing two separate concepts here. It is true that trees are the offspring of the original created forests, and there are features that creationists would point to within their phenotypes that suggest a designer. However I think since we see trees only doing what there genetic DNA tells them to do, we would have a difficult time using them as evidence for design. What Dennis seems to be saying is that an object like an arrow is particularized for a specific purpose. Where trees on the other hand just appear to randomly grow where ever the ground and light is best.We have never seen anything like an arrow form from natural unguided processes. I tried to explain this over in another thread. When an observer recognizes information performing either a particularized function or communication from a previously completely independent source, he can be sure he is detecting design. The trees growth and behavior are all based on genetic programming and environment. However at a micro-level, the DNA molecules themselves display a very abstruse particularized communication code (apc code). The more particularized something is the more we can be sure we are detecting design.Look at it this way. If I threw a big bag full of pocket calculators out on the floor, you would not say that the pile itself appeared to be designed. But you could sat that the objects that make up the pile are very much designed. That is because we (the observers) could look closely at all the parts and make up of each calculator and see that they perform particularized functions. Particularization that we have only ever observed coming from an intelligent source. We would recognize each of those functions from previously independent experiences. Likewise with a tree. The "pile" itself may not necessarily display any particularization that we could recognize, but the make up of the microscopic components are a different story.Therefore the parts of the tree are fulfilling highly particularized functions for the life and growth of the tree. But the tree itself may not necessarily display any obvious design features.

I think Dennis was on the right track but he just stopped a little short of the train station. It is true that order is very important in recognizing design, but order by itself is not enough. Otherwise we could say that snowflakes are all intelligently designed. No, order coupled with specificity, or as I like to say (particularization) is a dead ringer for design. Perhaps given enough time monkeys could produce a Shakespearean play, which would be both ordered and particularized, but lets look at exactly what you seem to be suggesting here.The question really is, "At what point are we safe to actually call something impossible?" When we call something impossible, we normal mean that the chances of that "something" happening are so small that they are very improbable. I do admit that just what constitutes impossible depends on who is doing the judging. If someone won the state lottery two weeks straight in a row (a chance of one in a hundred trillion) the judges would think that that was pretty impossible and they wouldn’t pay on the second win. They would probably investigate the first one with a fine tooth comb also.My favorite example of pointing to the impossible is to toss 150 coins in the air. A person can mathematically expect that only once in 10 to the 45th tosses, the coins would all come up heads (that's a ten with 45 zeros behind it). But since flipping coins, counting all the heads, and then picking them all back up, can be very slow and time consuming, lets imagine we employed 1,000 super fast people to all help us toss coins. If each person could do the entire process once per second, and we allowed them to do this for one hundred years they still could only flip the coins about three trillion times, which is a long way away from 10 to the 45th.Okay so lets try to do it really fast and use only a programmed computer to simulate the tossing of 150 coins, which could do it in under a "trillionth" of a second, and then say we enlisted a billion of these simulators and all together we call them one coin toss "pod." But we don't stop there, we proceeded to use ten billion of these pods and let them all run at that speed for 3000 years. Even in all of that time you would still only have flipped the coins 10 to the 42nd times. Still very short of the goal. No sane person would ever expect to get all 150 coins to land on heads. I believe anyone in there right mind would consider doing so to be basically impossible. Therefore, I think that we would both safely agree that the odds of 10 to the 45th to one are impossible.Lets for now completely ignore the impossible odds of life forming from non-life, forgoing the concept where a single cell must develop all at once and fully capable of reproducing. Lets for now just look at the possibility for the development of information to take place in the already existing DNA of a genome. What are those odds?I'm glad you compared it to the writing of a Shakespearean play. Lets stick with that example. Only we will pretend we already have the play, and all we want to see is an improvement take place. Keeping with the NeoDarwinian theory, our writer could randomly change a few letters and then reprint his book at least twice, once with the changes and once with the original. He would then check to see if he liked the changes and throw it away if he didn’t. He could not just keep the changes he liked; he would have to keep the entire text with all the random changes or throw it all away and stay with the original. It would be all or nothing. The random changes in the letters of the book corrisponds with the random mutations said to occur in the DNA message of an organism, and the reprinting of the two copies corrisponds with organisms ability to reproduce.This would dictate that he keep his changes to a bare minimum. Any random changes much more than one letter would have a much higher chance of rendering a negative change which would require destroying it and restarting. But then, even with the improvements there would be likely a problem that would cause him to reject it anyway. For example randomly changing a letter in one word might actually change that word into a new and improved word but perhaps now that word doesn’t make sense in the sentence or in the paragraph. Or it may not make sense in the reading of the book. If the book was about three mice, and the first letter of mice was changed to d to make dice, most of the other sentences with the word mice would need changing. And even if you could somehow change all the mice words to dice, you still would probably render the entire book to be unintelligible.To get an improvement you have to have several correlated changes all take place at the same time and in just the right places. In other words you have to have much more than 150 coins all land on their heads at once in each and every step of the process of evolution. We can see that the odds of these correlated changes occurring all at once far surpasses our impossible number of 10 to the 45th.

I think I explained it quite "coherently" there. I can not help it if their willful blindness clouded their cognition. As for my intrusion, it's my understanding that these threads are open to all. How are my interjections then at all an intrusion? No but it sure helps when you are communicating with folks who are hard of hearing. Let me see if I am understanding what you really are asking me here. You seem to be asking me to prove that the arrangements of nucleotides in a DNA molecule are complex, and also to prove that they are arranged in a specific pattern (like language) to perform a particular function. Is this really what you are asking me to prove? While I am at it would you like me to prove that water is wet and fire hot? As for why I believe it originated from an independent intelligent source, well that is because in all of human observation, there has never been anything reported to have been observed forming with this amount of apc, through natural unguided processes. In fact there are no reports of even low grade apc forming by natural processes. (This could be easily falsified if anyone could produce even one example to the contrary.) The concept I am applying to detecting intelligence in the design of a DNA molecule, is the exact same concept that the SETI scientists apply to searching for extra terrestrial intelligence.No one seems to have a problem with the concept if its ramifications only imply some ET out there. But if it implies an infinitely superior being to which we are culpable... well then... "Katie bar the door... and hold the hell on their buddy... cuz now you are talking nonsense." I find this kind of unreasonable bias astonishingly illogical. Don't mistake my comments on the apc of a DNA molecule, as a "retreat." Much to the contrary I am willing to step it up to even the cosmic level if you like. APC can be observed in our own solar systems makeup. But personally I think we have a full plate just sticking with molecular biology.

I wouldn't even begin to guess. But since we are putting things in perspective, consider the fact that most common estimates of the total number of atoms available in the entire universe are around 10⁸⁰, while most common estimates of the odds of generating one protein by unguided forces is one in 10¹³⁰.I don't know if you ever caught the movie "Dumb and Dumber," but there was a scene where Lloyd (played by Jim Carey) asks Mary Swanson (played by Lauren Holly), "What are the odds of you and me getting together?" Her reply was, "About one in a million." And then he replies with a grin, "So you're saying we do have a chance?"Unfortunately it seems that many people likewise see the odds of one in a 10¹³⁰ chance for life to form by unguided forces and they instantly respond with a grin, "Oh, so you did say there was a chance."

But you aren't following the logic of what you are suggesting. One simple change of a letter in the play-write of Shakespeare would not possibly improve the play. It would take several simultaneous changes in key places to have any real effect. "Nature" could not possibly hold on to one change and wait until it received all the others, because now you are implying that "nature" has the wherewithal to know what to hold onto and what not to hold onto. And this is only sneaking intelligence into evolution through the back door. According to the NeoDarwinian theory, when a random mutation occurs that improves the organisms ability to survive in an environment, then "natural selection" does its thing and selects that new mutated organism (all of him). But no such selection occurs if it has no "positive" effect.

Hi Dennis, love the way you think. I just wanted to point out what one of our opponents will eventually do if they haven't already. That being that snowflakes are very complex, so are other crystals. Likewise certain patterns formed by weather in the soil of the arctic regions can appear very complex. Yet no one would attribute these complex structures to an intelligent designer. They can be explained through natural processes at work. What sets "designed" complexity apart from these kinds of structures, is purpose or (specificity). Specificity is detected when the observer sees a pattern and it triggers a recognition from a completely independent experience. For example when you see the following line:(alidyupoaijgflaeijrllzkxclaijtlakjfdpkuahflakmjnjfpiajdgkajiofija)It can be said to be very complex. Each "place" in the line holds a total possible of 26 different letters that could appear there. And there are 65 different places in the line. It can be said that since this is one out of many different possibilities that could have appeared there, this line is very unique. However, to us the observers, it is simply unintelligible gibberish. Merely random key strokes on the key board. However if in the line you saw these letters:(exceptamanbebornagainhecannotseethekingdomofgodforthatwhichisborn)Now they trigger a recognition response from an independent experience, and the letters perform a specific function. Each line carries the same amount of complex information, but only the latter one carries specific information. When we see a tree branch we see an object that was formed by natural unguided processes (perhaps complex) but not specific. However when we see an arrow, it triggers our recognition from a previous experience and we call the arrow "specific."When detecting design, three things are required. First an observer. Second a transmitter. And third a receiver. The observer can also be the transmitter or the receiver, but those three things are required to be present for detection to occur. Suppose you have a key, and a lock. The teeth on the key are cut in the exact size and location to unlock or lock the lock. When the key transmits its information and that information is received by the lock to perform a specific function, and the observer recognizes the key is independent of the lock, then he knows that design is being detected.Likewise when we observe the DNA molecule, we see the nucleotides are arranged in specific patterns to form specific types of cell structures. They are not just arranged in complex information as in our first line, but in complex specified information as in our second line. And that is when we can safely say we are detecting design in the DNA of an organism.

Because I have never seen any evidence that it has. To me, the very notion of "Out from the pool of goo, came me and you," is the real fairy tail here. To the contrary, the evidence points much more clearly to an intelligent source being the cause of all life.

You know...I hear this all the time from people in these debates. So you tell me......just exactly why was Miller shooting electrical arcs through his special sauce anyway?

Your preaching to the choir here Dennis. But I think you are confusing two distinctly separate issues, and that was all I was trying to point out. You are confusing functionality with order. There is no doubt that a crystal has a lot of order. But you are correct in that they have zero function (specificity). And that is exactly what I was saying. You have to be wise as a serpent and yet harmless as a dove around these wolves. They will trip you up on your own innocent confusion of the terms.

Because we don't observe random mutations producing organisms with a better overall ability to survive. What we do observe is natural selection choosing pre-existing alleles within the populations to insure the survival of the population. With of course the exception of a very few examples within our very unique bacteria friends.But we never see novel new functions mutating in any multi-celled organisms. As Dennis pointed out already, we only observe harmful mutations occurring. Unless you want to count cycle cell anemia like some try to do, claiming it protects people in malaria infested areas helping them survive. But that's a clear case of curing the disease while killing the patient. That would be like claiming dwarfs are better suited to survive a sword fight because their normal sized opponents would swing way to high to strike them. Two of the most prominent men in the history of SETI, Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, were convinced that they would be detecting alien intelligence if they were to pick up a radio wave emitting a simple string of prime numbers. This involves the concept of detecting something specific standing out from all of the random but complex radio waves being transmitted from outer space. That was all I was referring to. Again, far from being "rubbish" the concepts are identical. But it is hilarious that somehow when the same concept gets applied to DNA, suddenly it is "NOT THE SAME."

There ya go...He was trying to recreate the conditions believed to exist in the "primordial soup" just like I said. "Out of the pool of goo came me and you." But if you don't care for that cliche I am willing to tone it down to "molecules to man." Either way still sounds like a fairy tail.

Because bacteria are so small, making migration not very practical, bacteria have a definite biological need to rapidly adapt to ever changing environments and food sources. The most prominent way that they appear to have been designed to do this, is through plasmid mutations. This is highly significant when you realize that plasmids are mostly only found in bacteria and hardly no other organisms.And no, I don't at all deny that some bacteria have had beneficial mutations take place within the chromosomal DNA. But I think the exact mechanism is controversial because some results suggest a directed mutation specifically enabling adaptation to the environment. A conclusion which is drawn in part by the fact that the mutation rate occurred at a much higher rate than random mutations could produce.And even though most of these chromosomal mutations involves certain environmental conditions that make these mutations phenotypically beneficial, they frequently eliminate or reduce pre-existing cellular systems and functions. Therefore they require the prior existence of the targeted cellular systems, rather than providing a genetic mechanism that accounts for the origin of biological systems or functions.

Why do you try to test us? You already told us that it did.

That would be added information in the DNA of an organism that previously did not exist, which changed its phenotype and gave it the ability to cope better in an environment than its parent population. Not barrowed, duplicated, cyclically lost, gained or replaced genes. It needs to be a beneficial mutation that demonstrates how the DNA strand could have formed to begin with. Well gee... if a single string of prime numbers equals evidence of "intelligence," then what does a DNA strand that contains enough particularized information to fill literally thousands of books the size of encyclopedias equal?

If the total number of atoms available in the entire universe are around 10⁸⁰, while most common estimates of the odds of generating one protein by unguided forces is one in 10¹³⁰, that means there are not enough atoms existing in all of the universe let alone on earth to generate one protein by chance. That's the real point here!Then if protein based life did accidentally organized on earth in the first two billion years, that means that nature would have to have been testing out 10¹¹⁴ new amino acid combinations every second. There is just not enough matter or enough time to get that lucky.No matter how you look at it, design is the only logical conclusion.