Confronting Friends and Family

[Kirbmarc]

I'm simply stating that evolution is MORE involved - has MORE driving forces than something that is only driven by DNA mutations and splicing.

I'm sure that you know that evolution also requires natural selection.

Just because we share a universal system doesn't mean we're defined by it. DNA can't do anything in its own interests apart from the greater interests of the creature it's a part of.

DNA doesn't have "interests". And evolution isn't guided by "interests", it's guided by survival and reproduction.

Thus the view of the "selfish gene" (Dawkins) is necessarily wrong.

The theory known as "selfish gene" is simply the assertion that a seemingly altruistic behavior is actually motivated by natural selection.

Individuals who care for their next of kin have more offrisprings who grow old enough to reproduce and pass their genes to the next generation.

The "selfish gene" theory explains that parental instinct exists simply because it allows more of your children to survive, reproduce and pass on (part of) your genes.

There's no doesn't need to talk about "interests" at the level of genes.

Scientists marvel at the way in which it is replicated. But it isn't self-replicating; its simply a coded index that requires copying take place using a 3rd-party mechanism. The cycle is inherently co-dependant, you can't expect DNA to do anything at all on its own, and you can't expect proteins to do their functions without it.

This is why the first "organisms" were probably based on the replication of RNA, not DNA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis

Look how similar we are as a species to each other with such diverse DNA, for instance.

Insects and birds also have similar structures in their wings. It's called "convergent evolution" and it's simply the result of adapting to similar ecological niches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

No scientist in the world can tell you exactly what point chemistry ends and biology/life begins.

This is probably because there is no such point. Would you call a virus alive? "Life" is a vague, ill-definied concept, so it's not surprising that the line between chemistry and biology is blurred.

Science is about theory, not fact. Evolution is a theory, it's a good theory, but an incomplete one and I've pointed out some of the present problems in it.

No, I'm sorry, but you haven't. You have pointed out a few aspects of abiogenesis that need to be understood better, but you haven't reported anything problematic about the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Even though scientists are loathe to admit it, you can't create something as complicated as a heart through random chance mutations in DNA code alone (let alone more complicated structures still). There has to be another driving force.

Yes, there is. It's called natural selection. A complex structure, such as a heart, didn't magically pop up from nowhere. It derives from less complex structures, which derive from even less complex structures, and so on.

To whom it may interest: A very crude and simple introduction to the study of the evolution of the human heart

I'm just saying that whatever it is it isn't random chance genetic mutations.

It is random chance genetic mutations that are progressively selected through natural selection.