Genome complexity: Smallest gene count for life (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, March 26, 2016, 12:29 (3164 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: From this ID website: - http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2016/03/mycoplasma-mycoides-just-destroyed.html - David's comment: The above quote assumes looking from bottom up and searching for just the right combination of genome bases to make the organism when starting from scratch. What top down does is point out how difficult it is to find any way to imagine a bottom up natural beginning to life, yet we live. A good reason to look at a supernatural source. - You will not, I hope, be surprised to hear that I agree. The complexity of the cell is such that belief in chance requires just as massive a leap of faith as belief in an unknown, single, eternally conscious, sourceless mind that can create both a universe and a cell.
However, I really have no sympathy with the following argument put forward by the ID website: - QUOTE: “Now, this latest research has upped the ante. It is just getting worse. A minimal organism consisting of 473 genes is many orders of magnitude beyond evolution's capabilities. Simply put, the science contradicts the theory. What the science is telling us is that evolution is impossible, by any reasonable definition of that term.” - Evolution is not a theory of the origin of life, but of how different species developed out of the original forms. There is absolutely no reason why theists should not believe that their God created those original cells - and indeed millions of theists do believe just that. The complexity of the cell is an argument against abiogenesis but not against evolution and not for creationism. This sort of distortion is what gets ID a bad name.