Arguments against Design (General)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, July 30, 2009, 20:18 (5407 days ago) @ dhw

I wrote: "I don't see why any special "mechanism" is necessary. Variation will occur quite naturally, sometimes it will be reproducible sometimes not." - dhw responded: "Imagine trying to devise such a mechanism yourself from scratch." - But I've just pointed out that there is no such "mechanism" as you imagine. It's just a molecule or system of molecules living in a sea of molecules. - dhw continues: "A self-replicating machine would be difficult enough to design (we still can't do it), but how would you set about ensuring that changes to the mechanism did not automatically make it break down?" - You are obsessed with this "machine" image. - dhw: "And yet the replicas of this self-made machine ..." - As I keep saying, but you don't pay attention, things do not make themselves, they are not "made" by any deliberative process, they occur, appear, happen (can anyone think of better words?) when the circumstances are favourable, like a chemical reaction happens when the right ingredients come together at the right temperature, pressure, concentrations, etc. - dhw: "... not only survive changes, they actually in some cases benefit from them and also reproduce them." - If they change then they are not the same, so they don't survive, they evolve. - dhw: "If you were designing the mechanism, you would soon find out that replication will not "naturally" allow for variation. You would have to build that in as an additional function." - That may be so in the case of your hypothetical "machine", but in the case of molecules variation is inevitable, due to mistakes in copying, outside interference, e.g. from ultraviolet light or other radiation, energy input from heat jostling, etc, etc.

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GPJ