Daniel Smith
Posts: 970
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Nov. 25 2008,17:38) | | Quote (Daniel Smith @ Nov. 25 2008,18:40) | Your argument, if applied to any known designs, would look incredibly silly.
Does it not follow from the organization of a car, that it was designed? Does it not follow from the organization of Stonehenge (which is far less organized than a watch) that it too was designed? Do we need to know the exact mechanisms used to build a car to know it was not the result of natural forces? Do we need to know the exact mechanisms used to build Stonehenge to know that it was not the result of natural forces? |
No, Daniel, it is you who appears to be increasingly silly.
All of these are analogies to human designs. Obviously, as RB has told you repeatedly, we know how to detect those designs because we have great familiarity with the designers. And we do need mechanisms to make those assessments! The stones at Stonehenge have marks on them that indicate human effort. Cars have signs of human action as well, including factory and patent information.
Where are the unmistakeable signs of your designer?
Short answer - you have no clue. |
In all your bluster, in all of Bill's musings, and in all of Wesley's pontificating, there is one thing you're all forgetting: Only a designer can organize complex materials for specific function. Forces of nature don't do this. Analogies between biological systems and human designs work - not because we know a lot about human designers - but because both are examples of the organization of complex materials for specific function. Your whole line of reasoning is a massive strawman.
So, with that said, the unmistakable signs of "my designer" are these: Like human designs, the products of my designer are organized for specific and complex function - but with a twist. You see, not only are the products of my designer organized far beyond the known capabilities of natural forces, they are also organized far beyond the capabilities of known intelligent designers. No natural forces, no human engineers, no chemists, no physicists, no known force or entity - intelligent or otherwise - and no combination of any of the above, possess the capabilities to produce what my designer has produced. The designs produced by my designer require a level of knowledge and expertise we cannot fathom.
So, my designer is an unknown entity who possesses knowledge and capabilities far beyond human understanding. Let's just call him "God" shall we?
So, does life contain the "chisel marks" of God?
Well, let's look at a "simple" enzyme. This enzyme captures a complex molecule (called the 'substrate'). It wraps itself around it - bringing its active regions into close proximity to precise atoms on the substrate. It then proceeds to alter the chemical composition of the substrate, while simultaneously altering its own chemical composition. Through several specific chemical reactions, which take place in sequence, the substrate is changed. It is then released, having been altered into a useful molecule (called the 'product'), with a byproduct of H2O (also useful). Meanwhile the enzyme has managed - during this biochemical alteration process - to revert its own chemical composition back to its original makeup. This allows the process to repeat again and again. All of this take place hundreds of thousands of times faster than if the same chemical reactions were to take place on their own.
No one has any serious explanation for how this enzyme happened to come into being. Even if someone were to come up with a plausible explanation they'd still have the rest of the system to account for. You see, this particular enzyme is synthesized in the pancreas. So any plausible explanation would not only have to account for the enzyme, it would also have to account for the pancreas. But which came first - the pancreas or the enzyme? It's quite possibly an endless chicken and egg scenario.
This is just one example of the handiwork of God. Not only is this enzyme's engineering beyond the capabilities of nature, it is engineered beyond the capabilities of men as well. Yet this is one of the simplest and most basic fundamentals of life. When we look beyond the enzyme and begin to look at the systems in place for its synthesis, for its regulation, for its placement within the overall biochemical pathway, and etc., not to mention all the other major and minor systems working in unison and in tandem within this organism, and also considering all the other organisms there are (and have been) out there, it quickly becomes evident that this is just one of trillions of examples that could be cited. The problems inherent in finding a natural explanation for this enzyme and its place within the biological framework of life are soon so insurmountable as to exclude their even being considered. We begin to rapidly run into the limits of human knowledge as well.
Imagining the process that must have been involved in the design of a living organism is far beyond human comprehension.
So yes, life does contain the "chisel marks" of God.
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"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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