| Author | Message | ||
     Sifo |
So I’ve just finished reading a book called Signature in the Cell by Steven C. Meyer and found it quite interesting. He has a website for the book... http://www.signatureinthecell.com/ No doubt most folks have heard of Intelligent Design and have an idea of what that term means. I know I’ve heard it discussed mostly by its detractors who seem to claim that it’s nothing but religion disguised as science. This is of course how they’ve kept it out of public schools. Unfortunately this is a dishonest misrepresentation of ID theory. I’ve never been clear where science and religion can’t coexist together. So anyway when I heard about this book it sparked my curiosity and I picked up a copy. Turns out it was a very good read that set some facts straight that just didn’t seem to fit things I’ve heard in the past. So, it’s a long read. 500+ pages of pretty heavy reading and almost 90 pages of references to other sources. In a nutshell ID theory is based on the idea that the origin of life in the universe required a designer to make it happen. What ID doesn’t try to answer is who the designer is. That omission makes it no less science than Newton describing the law of gravity without being able to account for the exact mechanism that makes it work. It actually has more pages devoted discussing other competing theories than discussing ID itself. This is necessary to cover the subject because the author argues, quite well BTW, that ID is the theory that is the best fit for the known facts. To do so you need to examine other competing theories and examine what they can explain and what they fail to explain. One of the points that I found interesting was examining the theory of chance bringing about the start of life. He goes through the basic assumptions he used to do the mathematical proof to approximate the odds of just randomly assembling a single simple protein that is necessary for life. He makes some very generous assumptions in favor of that theory and still come up with odds that are worse than marking a single atom somewhere on the earth and then by random chance being able to select that same atom by random chance in a single try. That is some pretty staggering odds in my book. Mind you that’s just to assemble a single protein, not gather all the resources necessary including actually assembling the DNA code all of which is necessary to create life. Anyway I found it interesting. I’m happy to discuss the book or the theory if anyone has the interest. I really don’t have any intention of remaking every last point that is made in the book though. If you want to tear it apart in that sort of detail, read the book. I would recommend it to anyone who has interest in expanding their horizons in this area anyway. Comments or questions? | ||
| Hughlysses |
Very cool- I'd like to check that one out. ~20 years ago another engineer I worked with mentioned that one of his professors had pointed out how the spontaneous evolution of life (and by extension, unguided evolution) would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. One simplified version of the Second Law is "things tend to run downhill". Life clearly violates this principal. And the Second Law isn't just some theory, it's a clearly provable fundamental fact of physics in this universe. I'd be interested to see if the book touches on this. | ||
| Sifo |
I don't remember if that was mentioned or not. It covers some laws of data quite a bit describing how much meaningful data can be expected to be randomly generated. It really is amazing how much information is stored in DNA. What's interesting is that the ID theory goes back quite a ways prior to our knowledge of DNA, yet it predicts much of what we have learned about DNA. Meanwhile much of what is predicted about DNA from chance theories is being dis-proven with recent knowledge. One great example of this is that there are large amounts of DNA that were believed to not have function. This would be expected from chance theory because there would be a lot of "junk" random data mixed in. A designer would never purposely add junk information into a design. Recent years have had science finding that all this junk information has purpose that was never previously realized. It is possible that the Second law may have been covered though. It took me a while to read in small chunks of available time and my memory isn't quite photographic if you know what I mean. | ||
| Panhead_dan |
I don't know if this was covered in your book but the theory of evolution does not work either. For a species to evolve, new DNA must be added. A deformity, for example adds no new DNA. Species did not evolve. Evidence lies in the fossil remains that do not follow a path. Rather, new species were created. It's hard for us to understand and accept because of all the incorrect information they rammed down our throats in school. | ||
| Sifo |
The book really doesn't cover evolution. Evolution and Darwin are mentioned numerous times, but it's made clear that evolution CAN'T happen until you have gotten to where you have life. ID is a theory of how we got to that point only. Very interesting point about evolution not being able to add DNA. I never really thought about that. I wonder how this is addressed by various theorists. | ||
| Eboos |
"I don't know if this was covered in your book but the theory of evolution does not work either. For a species to evolve, new DNA must be added. A deformity, for example adds no new DNA. Species did not evolve. Evidence lies in the fossil remains that do not follow a path. Rather, new species were created." Then how do you explain the domestication of animals? The different breeds of dogs, for example are the result of breeding to amplify certain characteristics; the result is whatever type of dog with whatever type of behavior that you were looking for. Now imagine this same type of thing occuring over hundreds of thousands of years. We can manipulate dogs to get the type of dog that we want, but over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, we as people changed ourselves through each of us selecting the characteristics in our mates. Pretty much the same is true for all other animals. | ||
| Sifo |
Then how do you explain the domestication of animals? The different breeds of dogs, for example... You aren't adding any DNA when you do that though. There are slight differences in the information contained, but the total amount of DNA remains the same. It's just at a specific position you will have different information making the differences you see. | ||
| Hootowl |
All that diversity in dogs is already in their genome. | ||
| Blake |
The crutch of evolutionists, millions of years. Lame. I've seen the statistical analysis for the accidental formation of DNA. That inconvenient truth has yet to be addressed by credible science. The lame evolutionist rebuttal is that science marches on, we don't need to fall back on magic as an explanation. How is an act of creation magic? I never got that. Seems much more like magic to imagine that life and the universe itself came to be out of pure chance. | ||
| Blake |
Eboos, None of that comprises a change from one to another species. All your examples are limited to a continual same size and structure of DNA. No new/additional DNA chains are added. | ||
| Slaughter |
Intelligent design? BUNK! How do you explain Rebecca Black's popularity?? | ||
| Panhead_dan |
I've always liked the analogy that if you put all the parts for a clock in a sealed box and subjected it to any stimulus- including billions of years, primordial ooze, radiation- whatever, you will never open that box and find a functional clock. Ever. | ||
| Kyrocket |
"How do you explain Rebecca Black's popularity??" Just the opposite; de-evolution. | ||
| Sifo |
How do you explain Rebecca Black's popularity?? I think that's an example of a mutation. | ||
| Sifo |
I always liked the analogy of expecting a tornado to go through a junk yard and leave behind a fully assembled 747. As we learn more and get more and more into the details of DNA it becomes even more apparent. | ||
| Racerx |
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| Eboos |
"None of that comprises a change from one to another species." So a wolf and a dog are the same species? | ||
| Buellkowski |
... the spontaneous evolution of life (and by extension, unguided evolution) would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Does the reaction below violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics?  Life is activation energy. | ||
| 86129squids |
"Are We Not Men?" | ||
| Ourdee |
PanheadDan, A better example than the clock would be to put a bicycle together then put it in a box. Subject it to a billion billion years. Open the box and pull out a working motorcycle. It will not happen. Read "Darwin's Black Box a study in molecular biology" by Behe. I'm busy now reading "Walden" by Thoreau. | ||
| Hootowl |
Eboos, your post does not mention wolves, only dogs. Domestication did not change the DNA of the dog. All dogs have the same DNA (they're all the same species). | ||
| Blake |
>>> So a wolf and a dog are the same species? Yes they are, canus lupus. | ||
| Blake |
Kowski, The point was not with respect to birth and death of life, the point was concerning the trend to more advanced, more orderly life. That is what violates the 2nd law. Got a diagram for that? | ||
| Eboos |
"Yes they are, canus lupus." My bad, I guess the failure to change the latin name completely disproves my statement. | ||
| Billp |
Seems to me that ID is just the same old religion thing in a different form. Most of the articles I read about the topic seem to avoid the god issue but if you read between the lines the topic is totally about god. But since the official ID thing does not specifically mention god then couldn't it have been done by an alien race ? That would be totally sweet because the muslims could use it as an excuse for interplanetary jihad. | ||
| Buellkowski |
"More advanced, orderly life," as Blake puts it, is simply a characteristic of the activation energy in graph I posted. 1. A rock sitting on the ground weathers into dust over millenia. 2. The same rock sitting on an asteroid disintegrates into dust when the asteroid impacts a planet. Neither event violates the Second Law. The reactants and products are the same. Why attach "designer" significance to either event? | ||
| Sifo |
Seems to me that ID is just the same old religion thing in a different form. Most of the articles I read about the topic seem to avoid the god issue but if you read between the lines the topic is totally about god. But since the official ID thing does not specifically mention god then couldn't it have been done by an alien race ? That would be totally sweet because the muslims could use it as an excuse for interplanetary jihad. Most of what I read about ID had it pretty tightly connected with "proving God" too. Of course everything I had read about ID up to this point came through the filter of journalism. This book was written by a scientist who doesn't try to put that in there, as is the correct way to state the theory. To put it another way, is the point of any theory about the origin of life to prove/disprove the existence of God? The answer is of course not. That would be a theory about the existence of God not the origin of life. Of course the ID theory does leave you with the question of who/what created the design, but that is still a separate question. The irony is that those who refute ID simply because it "proves" God, are not doing science, but refusing to look at scientific evidence based upon a theological belief. Who is the real flat-earther in this case? In your scenario about the alien race, you still have the question of where did life originate, unless said alien race was either not a physical life form or from another universe. | ||
| Sifo |
1. A rock sitting on the ground weathers into dust over millenia. 2. The same rock sitting on an asteroid disintegrates into dust when the asteroid impacts a planet. Neither event violates the Second Law. The reactants and products are the same. Why attach "designer" significance to either event? Not sure at all where you are trying to go with this. Did anyone try to claim any design in what you brought up?  | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
A clock or a bicycle is not a living thing. Evolution is mutation that happens to be favorable to a species to which it occurs. Religion and science can coexist. For example, the Catholic Church accepts evolution, but believes in a prime mover, God, who set the wheels in motion. Freewill and all that. | ||
| Ikeman |
Sifo - If you haven't read it you may also be interested in The Language of God by Francis Collins who was the head of the Human Genome project. |
