(July 29, 2015 at 5:54 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:(July 29, 2015 at 5:37 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: Arguing from authority is always thrown back at the theist, but then an atheist does the same. What is your point? I can cite others that hold an opposing view. Even the atheist poster boy Richard Dawkins referring to DNA as algorithm, code and instructions:
It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. ... [spreading] DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. … It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs.
— Richard DawkinsThe Blind Watchmaker (1986), 111.
That's not an argument from authority fallacy! WOW!
An argument from authority is when the 'authority' quoted is not an authority of the subject under discussion. For example: “Well, Isaac Newton believed in Alchemy, do you think you know more than Isaac Newton?”. The fallacy is that, just because Newton was an expert in math and physics, does not make him an expert in alchemy.
Since the authority I quoted is an actual biologist, and a true authority on the subject, it is not a fallacy.
The seeds from the tree are not communicating anything. Codes communicate meaning. DNA causes chemical reactions. End of story.
Um you completely misunderstand an argument from authority
We are not made happy by what we acquire but by what we appreciate.
