The Problem with Christians

[AJW333]

You hold advanced degrees in genetics then?  I mean, since you seem pretty confident you have the expertise to examine and evaluate the complexities of DNA, that is.

All I can suggest is to look at the basic probabilities of what you are believing. 100,000 proteins in the body, 450 AAs in each one, with a 1:10^500 chance that each protein has its AAs in the correct order.

The chances of there being a creator of all this complexity? Better than 50:50 I would say.

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I don't know if you saw my wristwatch analogy ...

An inanimate wristwatch has nothing in common with living DNA.  Wrong ballpark, false analogy, does not work!

But aren't you someone who believes that in the beginning, all life came from inanimate objects?

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So...define your designer.

The God spoken of in the Bible. If I asked you to define yourself, what would you say?

[Expired]

No we just don't believe in your bullshit god.

[IATIA]

An inanimate wristwatch has nothing in common with living DNA.  Wrong ballpark, false analogy, does not work!

But aren't you someone who believes that in the beginning, all life came from inanimate objects?

Chemical reactions are animate.

[Esquilax]

From the first article;

"The argument first assumes that a watch is different from nature, which is uncomplicated and random."

 Nature cannot be simply defined as uncomplicated and random since it has both elements of randomness, eg a rock strewn desert, and elements of complexity eg plants, animals etc.

That said, complexity is not a hallmark of design, nor is it antithetical to unguided processes. You keep suggesting that complexity is evidence of design, but I want you to consider the way technology advances in human culture. Take the computer, for instance: in the beginning, they filled whole rooms. In terms of moving parts and the effort it would take to build them, they were intensely complex, but the entire history of computer development has been one long move away from that. Despite being more designed than ever before, computers became smaller, simpler, easier to produce with less parts, with simplicity of function being the watchword when it comes to design and interface. They went from room-filling technological monstrosities that required specialized knowledge and tools just to operate, to something you can hold in the palm of your hand, turn on with a single button, and operate with your finger. Outwardly, in terms of mechanics and parts, and inwardly, in terms of software and control options, computers are getting simpler, not more complex, and this is a trend that can be applied to every piece of technology that people regularly work with: everything about the history of design that you've been exposed to indicates that greater design is accompanied by greater simplicity, greater ease of use, and greater unification and connectivity between devices.

... So, why the watchmaker argument? Your entire relationship with demonstrable design suggests that complexity does not correlate with design, and yet in this one specific case, to get to your desired conclusion, you flip the script on every technological revolution that has ever happened for no reason at all. Why is that?

I know that you hate it when I claim that the DNA (according to evolution) is the product of random mutations, but isn't that what Prof Dawkins is saying here;

"Natural selection, the blind unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."

"Blind," does not equal random. While there isn't a pre-planned and guided foresight to evolution, there is an inherent filter built into the fabric of natural selection, which is that those organisms that survive it will be the ones with features that enabled them to do so. Those organisms without the ability to survive the environment they find themselves in... don't survive it.

By analogy, consider a computer program that spits out numbers. That's all it does, is display numbers, but those numbers cannot be even numbers, ever. Would you assert, then, that this computer program works by completely random chance where absolutely anything can happen?

No, of course not. You know, just based on what I've already told you, that the program won't produce a letter, nor will it produce an even number. While there's a randomized element, that element is bounded by restraints, just as natural selection is bounded by the fact that only those organisms it produces that won't die outright will survive. It's not anything more than a definitional part of what the system is- in the same way that you'll never get a married bachelor- but it does limit the output in such a way that the "wacky, totally random evolushuns!" strawman that creationists like to use doesn't apply.

[Esquilax]

Entropy. A wristwatch represents a huge reversal of randomness and disorder. Just to make the stainless steel casing requires a huge amount of directed energy. To assemble all of the parts requires ordered, sequential and intelligent construction.

Entropy applies to closed systems, which the earth is not. The earth receives energy from outside on a literally constant basis. In terms of the universe, we can't even tell if it is a closed system, but on the off chance that it is, there's nothing within the description of entropy that disallows the possibility of small- which is what stuff happening on a single planet would be, on the scale of a universal closed system- increases in order within a net increase of disorder... and bear in mind that we're talking about molecular disorder anyway, which isn't altered just by pushing together certain collections of molecules so that they do stuff on a macro-level while remaining the same on a molecular one.

And would you even consider life to be a decrease in disorder anyway, considering what life tends to do? Are you seriously suggesting that life is more orderly than a lifeless rock floating in space?

So basically, you recognize design because you misunderstand how entropy works. Great.

[IATIA]

The God spoken of in the Bible. If I asked you to define yourself, what would you say?

A maniacal, war-mongering tyrant.

[Esquilax]

All I can suggest is to look at the basic probabilities of what you are believing. 100,000 proteins in the body, 450 AAs in each one, with a 1:10^500 chance that each protein has its AAs in the correct order.

Sigh. 100,00 proteins in a current human body, which we already know is not how we developed under evolution, and is also the result of the natural selection filter so that outright failures do not appear. How many times am I going to have to say this?

The chances of there being a creator of all this complexity? Better than 50:50 I would say.

And how did you derive those odds? Wouldn't that require the positive evidence for your god that you've consistently failed to produce thus far?

[LadyForCamus]

So...define your designer.

The God spoken of in the Bible.

::face palm:: And...there it is. I'm out.

[pocaracas]

@AJ, it seems you are very proud of your probability figures...

I'm sure you've taken into account the fact that those features don't just pop into existence in one go, right?
The eye... luckily, there are many living beings with light sensitive apparatuses.
Some are simple light sensitive cells on the outer covering of the animal letting it know if it's in the light or shade... that provides some survival advantage - better stay in the dark, for less chance of being eaten by something else. But, in a time when no more complex eye existed, that would not be the main concern. It would be availability of resources for breeding - perhaps light would bring with it warmer conditions that could provide for better nutrition.

Bending this area of light receptive cells would allow some directionality of the perceived light, leading to better positioning for nutrient gain.

Do not forget that life was underwater... but these features would come up for shallow water.

Further bending would lead to a cup shaped area of the skin, providing even better directionality.

More bending and you end up with a pinhole lens. Pinhole lenses are great, as they focus stuff... They focus images equally, regardless of the distance. They're great. If you suffer from mild shortsightedness you can get pinhole perforated "glasses" and you'll be able to see sharp-ish images. Pinhole is good, but could be better. With the pinhole lens, the eye can now see its environment... the brain must have evolved to accommodate the ever increasing information that's coming in.

More bending leads to no light.... so that wouldn't work
But a small layer of transparent cells would work... and protect the light sensitive cells from external attacks.... which would be a plus...

As it becomes protected, directionality becomes ever more important, muscles around the cup help direct it.

More skin helps in further protecting, and you get stuff like eye-lids.
etc
etc
etc


You could have calculated your odds, by providing the probability of each step...

[robvalue]

All this time and effort would be more profitably spent in actually studying these subjects properly, rather than presuming to have profound rebuttals to them while demonstrating you don't understand what you're rebutting.