Genome complexity: how enzyme changes RNA to DNA (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 02, 2020, 12:33 (1696 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] fine-tuned control of a dangerous radical (electron on the loose but really not). Not by chance from hunt and peck. There must be a designer. If Darwin had known these facts, his book would not be written in the same way. Darwinism must be preserved to support atheism.

dhw: Of course his book would have been different, but I wish you wouldn’t lump all his ideas together, as if they are all invalid. Darwin’s theory deals with Chapter Two of life, not with the origin – and that means not with the origin of the mechanisms that enable life, reproduction and evolution. I suspect that being an agnostic, he would have acknowledged all your arguments for design. None of them contradict the theory of common descent or of natural selection as the process that determines which organs and organisms survive. Darwinism does not support atheism. It is neutral. Not even the theory of random mutations and gradualism, which you and I both reject, supports atheism! That was the astonishing discovery I made when I was a schoolboy, and it still astonishes me that so many highly educated people think of it as atheistic.

DAVID: I'll accept common descent, but natural selection is a tautology that is not proven within itself nor as a possible cause of speciation.

Of course natural selection is not a possible cause of speciation. It simply means that nature selects from EXISTING organs and organisms those that will survive. I agree that it’s a kind of tautology, but it’s a neat term to cover various aspects of evolution. However, that was not my point, which is that Darwin’s various theories, right or wrong, are not atheistic.