How to make an embryo (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 04, 2011, 09:32 (4900 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We still don't know, but this review on an ID website gives a reliable and fascinating insight as to how complicated it is. The discussion proposes that DNA does not carry all the instructions and describes some of the other known mechanisms, which so far are just a few.-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/beyond_the_genome_a_non-reduct047021.html-The conclusion of this article is so strikingly relevant to the discussion I've been having with Matt on the importance of the chance v. design argument that I'm reproducing it in full here:-We are only beginning to mount the foothills with regards to our understanding of the mechanics of embryo development and the various processes which undergird it. There is still much that is not well understood about development and a wealth of information which still needs to be learned. But I think it is becoming increasingly clear that DNA cannot contain both the necessary and sufficient information for the morphogenesis of organismal form. One is naturally led to wonder how such a sophisticated system controlling embryological development could have arisen by virtue of a Darwinian step-wise process which, it must be borne in mind, traditionally involves changes to the DNA sequence. And we have seen the impotence of the neo-Darwinian synthesis at the DNA level, quite apart from the layers of extra information-rich complexity which presides over life's show. Alas, to many modern Darwinists, any attempt at critique of such scenarios amounts to a "god-of-the-gaps" argument and violates the cherished principle of methodological naturalism. Even though the odds look vanishingly slim, we are told, and even though we cannot at present conceive of a feasible Darwinian-type scenario which could have produced such a system, there nonetheless must be one. Some evolutionary biologists own up to this and confess that they are compelled to embrace Darwinism not principally for scientific reasons, but for methodological ones (e.g. Lewontin, 1997). While such a position might be quite comfortable for some (they don't ever have to risk their conceptual edifice being proven false), I simply do not have enough faith to take that position.-As a non-scientist I'm in no position to comment on the scientific arguments, and I would very much welcome an atheist response. But I really cannot see how such arguments can be ignored by those who are dispassionately seeking to assess the likelihood of chance origins.