The Atheist's Riddle...

Here is a video by Biologist Richard Dawkins, wherein he explains the difference between things that are designed and things that only seem to have been designed (6 parts - watch them all):



You 'intelligent design' people should watch this video before posting anymore nonsense about DNA being an intelligently designed code. Just because something looks - to you - as if it must have been designed, does NOT mean that it was.

Here is another video by Dawkins where he explains how natural selection and time alone are sufficient to account for the diversity of life and life processes we see on Earth (8 parts - watch them all):



Those of you who don't understand evolution and other aspects of basic biology would do well to watch this before lecturing the rest of us on how life just 'looks' too complex to have evolved.

The BS being posted by creationists in this thread has been debunked to death by scientists. The fact that you continue to repeat the same arguments over and over, despite the fact that they've been utterly trashed by the scientific community, proves to me that you guys know that you don't have an intellectual leg to stand on. You guys are just sad.

Evolution without an Intelligent designer (aka: Darwinism) has been debunked to death by Creationist Scientists.

There are no "Creationist Scientists". That term is an oxymoron.

Penny, your series of nonsequitors proves nothing except your difficulty with logic.

FIXT

Sure there are you poor blind person.

Many are notorious, including the man who was the director of the Human Genome project.

Read up and educate yourself on those who are far more intelligent than yourself.





"By Dr. Francis Collins
Special to CNN


Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."


ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book.

As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan."


[link to www.cnn.com]

I have seen that before and - no - Collins is not doing science with creationism. He certainly has god beliefs, and may well espouse a creationist view similar to that which many of you hold, but that does not mean he is using those beliefs to do actual science. Creationism is a dogmatic, theological point of view and is NOT science. It is not based upon evidence or experimentation, it is not subject to peer review, it is not falsifiable, etc. In short, creationism isn't science and cannot be such without redefining what science is. When I say that there are no "Creationist Scientists" I mean that there are no scientists who are using creationism as part of a scientific framework with which to explain and understand the world. This is true by definition because, as I explained, creationism can't be science. "Creationist Science" is a contradiction in terms and thus, "Creationist Scientists" is an oxymoron. The explanation I just gave wouldn't even have been necessary if so many of you creationists weren't completely scientifically illiterate.

Dr. Collins is a Christian and a scientist.
He also knows that evolution happens.

Take an example from someone who is obviously far more learned than you.

It is only the biblical literalists who claim that the bible should be used as a science textbook.

They are a typically American fringe, not taken seriously by the world at large.

As usually shoddy research by the creationist 'scientists'.

That's cute. The fact that you're completely wrong probably doesn't matter to you at all. Science supports evolution. The scientific community supports evolution. The evidence supports evolution. Nothing supports creationism except nutty creationists.

The issue of this and other evolution threads argument isn't whether adaptation/evolution took place...


the issue is whether or not an Intelligent Designer was involved in the complex bio and ecosystem.


What Christians easily have debunked is the limited thought process that all those evolutionary processes took place by mere happenstance.


Nature is too well designed on a myriad of levels, to come away with the conclusion that it was all an accidental coincidence.


Only a mental midget would believe so.

Your post is utter bullshit. See the video by Dawkins that I posted above for a complete refutation of your childish thinking.

gowiththatkthanks

Chichen and the egg, hen and rooster came first. Without the hen and rooster the egg would just be used to eat. Life
first had to be.

aliens

The answer to your question: aliens

Atheists riddle? They aren't called atheists or pagans anymore.

They are called, scienctologist now...

Damn! U R t3h c00l!!!!

It's easy.

Do you know the mathematical theory of chaos? the DNA helix is one of the shapes that can come out of a chaotic sequence.

The truth is that the universe is such a vast chemical lab, running for so many years, that eventually all possible combinations of chemical elements will take place. Some of them will create life.

your "god" also included in that DNA all of the instructions for every disease that affects us. Yes even the birth defects that babies are born with..My question to you is where is the compassion of your god?

[link to www.divinecosmos.com]

One unit has the 'potential' for consciousness and intelligence, only. It is only by the mechanism of multiplication of these units, that consciousness and intelligence emerges much later in the evolution of Universe.

This truth inverts the Christers stupid concept of a All-knowing Creator. This basic Creator isn't even conscious. All the best consciousness is created at the end, not at the beginning.

You have problems with reading comprehension I see. Please, I'm agreeing with you. Its an evolved code.

You know, the first time I read your comment I thought it was an attempt by an Intelligent Design proponent to be ironic. Looking at it a second time it occurs to me that I was seeing an IDer where none existed. Sorry about that. I've been fighting with these idiots too much lately.

Check out a nice, reasoned criticism of Collins' book, at:

[link to www.skeptic.com]

He fumbles a _lot_ in explaining God: It's "preaching to the choir."
In that, and elsewhere -- I've noticed that scientific reasoning/proofs go out the window when he addresses religion. He turns to circular arguments, faith-based vagaries, and quotes from early-20th-cent. novelists/amateur Christian theologians G.K. Chesterton (author of the "Father Brown" detective books) and C.S. Lewis ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe") ... both of whom also wrote religious texts.
FYI, Lewis's writings allegedly converted Collins. And Lewis is best known for his simplistic "proof" that Jesus was the Son of God: To Lewis, the alternative was that Jesus was insane -- which he didn't seem to be. Hence (said Lewis), Jesus must be God.
Only Christians accept that "proof" ... and they don't notice that it dishonestly ignores other possibilities -- i.e., that Jesus was sincerely mistaken, was misquoted, or never made these claims at all.
Moral: Not all explanations are valid (just as not all reasons are excuses).

If Collins has had an emotionally-based personal religious experience - fine. But that doesn't "prove" God's existence; even Collins has problems explaining himself.
He could just as easily have decided that there were several gods plus 153 sub-deities. Or that the universe-we-know is actually "God's" roundfile: That it was acccidentally spun by a deity who isn't aware of it; that it, we, and any "codes" have no godly purpose; that we're just adaptive, meandering, self-important dust-bunnies; and that the countless DNA errors, inefficiencies, and periodic grand-scale species wipeouts are evidence of God's uncaring, impersonality, and-or total obliviousness.
It would be just as (un)provable as his trad-monotheistic-Christian take on things. But he'd find believers, because faith isn't based on proof.

Haven't read the whole thread, but here's another thought --

"all codes are created by a conscious mind".

False premise. Who says no codes but those intelligently designed? A pattern can emerge and even be predictable w/out an intelligent designer, is a code any different. Just because what we traditionally think of as a code, designed by man, decoded by man is man made DOES NOT mean that one could come together randomly in a codified form, yes AT RANDOM, NOT MADE BY AN INTELLIGENCE...and thereafter decoded (or not) by man.

Your desire for a God is betrayed by placing this false premise in your riddle. And your claim that "no atheist can solve it" is a gambit to make atheists look stupid, presumably because you are not one. But did you think us so stupid we wouldn't find the flaws in your logic? Earlier in the thread, I see DNA as a code being challenged, but even if we grant that it is...WHO SAID IF IT IS A CODE IT HAD TO BE MADE BY AN INTELLIGENT CODEMAKER? You did, but I don't accept the premise...and therefore consider any conclusion drawn on its basis also unfounded.

We accept the simplest of hypotheses when in doubt I guess. You have no empirical evidence either supporting that DNA was designed by a mind, but only an interpretation which ends up as a much more complicated hypotheses, it seems.

and the ramifications of your hypotheses are just too much for normal science

and natural selection could perhaps have created such codes? for example, beginning with a mere '0' and a '1', lots of combinations can be done, some happening randomly, like through mutations, and through time those with the greatest adaptive value just happen to spread and best survive through time

DNA is NOT a symbolic abstraction. It is more like an instruction set.

A symbolic abstraction would be like a conversation with a contractor; "Please install four new cupboards in my kitchen."

But then, computer codes are not abstractions, either. Most high-level languages contain a symbolic layer separating the language the user interacts with from the instruction sets executed by the hardware. But code is not in itself symbolic or abstracted.

To characterize DNA as a "code" is not to create the need for a designer; it is to create the need for intelligent interpretation. To look at nature as reading an abstracted request and executing it with intelligence and creativity. It is spreading God everywhere, into every cell of every living thing.

Which is absurd. What happens on a molecular level is as inevitable as a boulder rolling down a hill. Basic forces act in predictable ways, and fall statistically into predictable results.



Information is "created" every time a baby is born. The actual DNA molecules, the genes that went into that fertilized egg, do not describe a human being. They fall far short of telling you even such basics as how tall she will be -- and indescribably short of telling you if she knows the date of signature of the Magna Carta.

DNA provides a rough skeleton, and molecular processes operate statistically within that framework. If all goes right, things sort themselves out into something quite similar to the humans who donated that DNA. But it is only statistically determinate. No part of DNA says "Put a molar here."

DNA is a pattern we are the ones that translated that pattern into code so it would be easier to study.