Do you believe in God?

[Frogberto]

Originally Posted by RStar

Not necessarily. Take DNA for instance. There is so much information in it in just the right order, that having it form by accident has been compared to an explosion at a printers accidentally creating a dictionary.

I'll take DNA as a great example, and you're creatively assembling two old arguments from creationists that have long ago been explained, but I'm happy to explain away once again. (Note that I fear hijacking this thread, so I'm also happy to discuss this in a separate thread if you prefer).

The very act of reproduction adds information mathematically without the need for a higher intelligence. You just mentioned the letters "DNA", without specifying which type of DNA you mean, but RNA also contains information, as do lower phenotypes such as linked protein chains. The fact that the "information" in all higher lifeforms is linked, i.e., humans share 99% of the DNA in chimpanzees, is proof of evolution, not intelligent design or a creator. And science has showed through observation that levels of information in a genome can increase by natural selection. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of

* increased genetic variety in a population;
* increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
* novel genetic material; and
* novel genetically-regulated abilities

Your "having it form by accident is compared to an explosion at a printers accidentally creating a dictionary" is Hoyle's "tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747" argument. Although this claim is irrelevant to the theory of evolution itself, since evolution does not occur via assembly from individual parts, but rather via selective gradual modifications to existing structures, order can and does result from such evolutionary processes.

However, it's irresponsible for me not to point out that the general principle behind your example is wrong. Order arises spontaneously from disorder all the time. Order arises spontaneously all the time in nature - in rocks or crystals, in clouds, in boiling water, in ocean waves, etc. Something as complicated as people would not arise spontaneously from raw chemicals, but there is no reason to believe that something as simple as a self-replicating molecule could not form thus. From there, evolution can, and does, produce more and more complexity.

Originally Posted by RStar

The more I learn about the human body, the more I realize there is a creator.

Does that include, also, bad design, the millions of innocent deaths of babies and children from childhood diseases, the fact that humans have a tailbone, and an appendix, whales have leg and foot bones, the fact that our eyes are designed backwards, and the fact that standing on two legs gives humans backaches? You have to learn about both the bad and the good in the design of the human body before you make a decision, no?

Originally Posted by RStar

The creation of the universe will never be explained because we cannot prove it. Which is why we cling to beliefs, including the Big Bang.

I think that you're confused as to the scientific definition of "theory", but we can certainly prove the creation of the universe - in fact, that is one of the areas of science where proof is overwhelming, and contrary to your statement, the big bang is supported by a great deal of evidence:

* Einstein's general theory of relativity implies that the universe cannot be static; it must be either expanding or contracting.

* The more distant a galaxy is, the faster it is receding from us (the Hubble law). This indicates that the universe is expanding. An expanding universe implies that the universe was small and compact in the distant past.

* The big bang model predicts that cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation should appear in all directions, with a blackbody spectrum and temperature about 3 degrees K. We observe an exact blackbody spectrum with a temperature of 2.73 degrees K.

* The CMB is even to about one part in 100,000. There should be a slight unevenness to account for the uneven distribution of matter in the universe today. Such unevenness is observed, and at a predicted amount.

* The big bang predicts the observed abundances of primordial hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium. No other models have been able to do so.

* The big bang predicts that the universe changes through time. Because the speed of light is finite, looking at large distances allows us to look into the past. We see, among other changes, that quasars were more common and stars were bluer when the universe was younger.

Note that most of these points are not simply observations that fit with the theory; the big bang theory predicted them.

Originally Posted by RStar

To my knowledge they have not yet found a "one mutation away from a chicken" dino, but I read today that they believe there are something like 70% of dinosaur species yet to be discovered. Very interesting, but do you know why the chicken crossed the road?

If you go far enough back, you'll find that all modern birds evolved from dinosaurs of a certain lineage. To be more specific than "dinosaurs", since that term encompasses such a large number of species, chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there could have only been non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first.

And to answer your other question, the chicken crossed the road either to see a man lay bricks, or to see Gregory Peck. The data is still inconclusive.

[RStar]

Originally Posted by Frogberto

Does that include, also, bad design, the millions of innocent deaths of babies and children from childhood diseases, the fact that humans have a tailbone, and an appendix, whales have leg and foot bones, the fact that our eyes are designed backwards, and the fact that standing on two legs gives humans backaches? You have to learn about both the bad and the good in the design of the human body before you make a decision, no?

Well, as for the disease, the Christian will argue it's the effect of sin on the human race.

As for everything else, I'm not inteligent or schooled enough to argue them. As you pointed out I mixed up two different pieces of information I had heard a long time ago.

You bring up some fasinating points (and perhaps this thread is getting a bit diverted from what the OR meant), but would you consider crystal formation a natural order in the same magnitude as a cell dividing after replicating it's information in the DNA and RNA? I'm not sure what it intails since the crystal is not living, and I didn't study the science of minerals.

Also, in the theory of evolution, the first building blocks of life were said to begain instantaniously from a puddle of ooze. I belive this was the first amino acids. Amino acids form to create protien, and are organic and therefore are the begining of organic life on Earth. Life then created the need to replicate so the information was needed to be passed down and DNA and RNA was born. How did this come to be on it's own? And in an invironment that some scientists say would be too harsh to allow it. And why can't we reproduce it? And why can we put all the ingredients together forming a perfect seed, that will never grow?

[Frogberto]

Originally Posted by RStar

Well, as for the disease, the Christian will argue it's the effect of sin on the human race.

As for everything else, I'm not inteligent or schooled enough to argue them. As you pointed out I mixed up two different pieces of information I had heard a long time ago.

But if we want to consider the evidence for special design, we should also consider the evidence against special design, especially given our penchant for fooling ourselves. Historically, supernatural design has been attributed to lots of things that we now know form naturally, such as lightning, rainbows, and seasons.

You would expect a designer to create the most efficient machine, to use your term, and yet, looking all arond us, life shows many examples of different forms with the same function (e.g., different structures making up the wings of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls; different organs for making webs in spiders, caterpillars, and web spinners; and at least eleven different types of insect ears), the same basic form with different functions (e.g., the same pattern of bones in a human hand, whale flipper, dog paw, and bat wing) and some structures and even entire organisms without apparent function (e.g., some vestigial organs, creatures living isolated in inaccessible caves and deep underground), that actually argue against design, but are explicable by evolution.

Life is wasteful, and much death occurs throughout the natural world, including in humans. Overall, most organisms do not reproduce, and most fertilized zygotes die before growing much. A designed process would be expected to minimize this waste, and "sin" doesn't explain the death of innocents, like animals or the unborn, or destruction in nature outside of life, like supernovae and black holes.

And that's just it -- Life is nasty -- you don't explain why there is so much chaos in the universe versus order, why there is so much darkness instead of light, why there is so much coldness instead of warmth, and why so much "bad stuff", like the above, in design. We have to consider the bad design with the good design, and the inefficient with the efficient, if you want to conclude a designer.

Originally Posted by RStar

You bring up some fasinating points (and perhaps this thread is getting a bit diverted from what the OR meant), but would you consider crystal formation a natural order in the same magnitude as a cell dividing after replicating it's information in the DNA and RNA? I'm not sure what it intails since the crystal is not living, and I didn't study the science of minerals.

Crystals grow, break off, and continue to grow the same substance as the former origin point in a new place. That's "replication". The "same magnitude"? I'm not even sure what that means -- is a bigger crystal of a larger magnitude than a smaller one? But I'll say no, it's different.

Originally Posted by RStar

Also, in the theory of evolution, the first building blocks of life were said to begain instantaniously from a puddle of ooze. I belive this was the first amino acids. Amino acids form to create protien, and are organic and therefore are the begining of organic life on Earth. Life then created the need to replicate so the information was needed to be passed down and DNA and RNA was born. How did this come to be on it's own? And in an invironment that some scientists say would be too harsh to allow it. And why can't we reproduce it? And why can we put all the ingredients together forming a perfect seed, that will never grow?

Seeds? Huh? I see you have a misconception about evolution -- it has nothing to do with the first molecules or building blocks of life, or the first self replicating cells. Natural selection has to do with what happens afterwards. For creationists, or intelligent design, or evolutionists, that's a given --- everyone agrees that there once was no life, and now there is life, on the planet. Natural selection has to do with how, mathematically, genes are shuffled by reproduction, and how, mathematically, more survivors are left from more complex results.

But, to veer off evolution for a second, and speak about abiogenesis, I personally feel, as most in science do now, that the "puddle of ooze" theory you mention, which was popular in the 1950s, is almost certainly not entirely correct. One of the best theories, which has been around for over 30 years, and uses crystals, such as quartz, which were around in abundance in the early years of Earth's formation, and, as I mentioned above, because crystals form, grow, break off, and the new portion also grows, they, like life, "replicate". Complex molecules on a crystal substance could then "replicate" without even having to "do anything", or having developed the means to replicate genetically yet.

But there are other theories as well:

* Panspermia, which says life came from someplace other than earth. The findings of life in meteorites from Mars, for example, might explain how life got to Earth, but admittedly, this theory, however, does not answer how the first life arose.
* Proteinoid microspheres: This theory gives a plausible account of how some replicating structures, which might well be called alive, could have arisen. Its main difficulty is explaining how modern cells arose from the microspheres.
* Clay crystals: This says that the first replicators were crystals in clay. Though they do not have a metabolism or respond to the environment, these crystals carry information and reproduce. This is similar to the preferred theory I outlined above.
* Emerging hypercycles: This proposes a gradual origin of the first life, roughly in the following stages: (1) a primordial soup of simple organic compounds. This seems to be almost inevitable; (2) nucleoproteins, somewhat like modern tRNA or peptide nucleic acid, and semicatalytic; (3) hypercycles, or pockets of primitive biochemical pathways that include some approximate self-replication; (4) cellular hypercycles, in which more complex hypercycles are enclosed in a primitive membrane; (5) first simple cell. Complexity theory suggests that the self-organization is not improbable. This view of abiogenesis is the current front-runner, only because there's been so much research done in this area, which I'll get to below.

* The iron-sulfur world: It has been found that all the steps for the conversion of carbon monoxide into peptides can occur at high temperature and pressure, catalyzed by iron and nickel sulfides. Such conditions exist around submarine hydrothermal vents. Iron sulfide precipitates could have served as precursors of cell walls as well as catalysts. A peptide cycle, from peptides to amino acids and back, is a prerequisite to metabolism, and such a cycle could have arisen in the iron-sulfur world.
* Polymerization on sheltered organophilic surfaces: The first self-replicating molecules may have formed within tiny indentations of silica-rich surfaces so that the surrounding rock was its first cell wall.

Because silicon and crystals were common in the early Earth, and because a chemical reaction occurs at the high temperatures in the ocean vents that "bonds" complex molecules to those substances, my bet is that this theory will become the front runner. Scientists believe that they have already seen life spontaneously originate from molecules in the ocean at ocean vents, but because we haven't even been visiting for 10 years, the replication part of the scientific method will have to wait a little longer.

Regarding the "ooze" theory (your words), the reason that's been favored is that most of those steps can be easily replicated, except for the part of the recipe that says "wait one billion years." Because over 75% of those steps can be proven, that goes further towards proving abiogenesis occurred than just saying "don't look any further - God did it!"

Amino acids, which you mentioned, and other complex molecules form everywhere, even in space.

The steps required are gradual origins through the following stages:

(1) a primordial collection of simple organic compounds and water. This seems to be almost inevitable, and is easily reproduced in the laboratory;

(2) nucleoproteins, somewhat like peptide nucleic acid;

(3) hypercycles, or pockets of primitive biochemical pathways that include some approximate self-replication;

(4) cellular hypercycles, in which more complex hypercycles are enclosed in a primitive membrane, or are protected by rocks or water; and

(5) first simple cell.

Both chaos theory and complexity theory suggests that the self-organization is not improbable, and most research studies done favor this theory (no matter that it's not my personal favorite, the evidence seems to point this direction).

Note that almost all cells around today are the product of billions of years of evolution, except simpler life forms, like viruses, that use RNA. But the earliest self-replicator was likely very much simpler than anything alive today; just looking at simpler life forms shows that self-replicating molecules need not be all that complex, and protein-building systems can also be very, very, simple, and are replicable in the lab.

Again, saying "well I don't know, so therefore God did it", is not a good argument.