Genome complexity: handling replication (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 12:56 (2656 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID'S comment: Here we see a giant molecule, an enzyme, following information/instructions to accurately divide DNA so two new cells ca form. Knowledge of the amazing complexity grows. Not by chance. Had to be part of the initial cells. Had to be a mechanism present in the first existing cells or life could not continue by cell division, as it did with the earliest bacteria. In other words life appeared with a mechanism to continue from the beginning.

dhw: Absolutely. A mechanism for replication had to be there from the start, and I would argue that in addition to its ability to divide itself accurately, the same mechanism must also have had the ability to produce variations. Without that ability, there could have been no evolution. For you, every variation had to be preprogrammed in this mechanism or personally manipulated by your God. I am suggesting (theistic version) that perhaps your God created the mechanism in such a way that it could provide its own variations.

DAVID: If you accept the complexity of original life, that I've presented, and if you deny chance production of life, you have nothing left but a denial that a planning mind must exist to create life. Your 'theistic version' accepts that premise. Why not accept it fully?

As I have explained many times before, not being able to believe in something is not the same as disbelieving it. I do not believe in chance, and I do not believe in a nebulous, all-powerful, universe-embracing, sourceless intelligence. I accept that one or other of these incredible hypotheses must be nearer the truth than the other, but that does not enable me to choose between them.