DNA animation

[Rick C]

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 3:47:05 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it *certainly* can't
be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would contain so much information
it would collapse into a black hole! To assume that such a "god" exists,
contradicts the laws of physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

If someone posted a rational explanation, people would not be adverse to discuss it. But it does need to be rational and at least have some aspect of science behind it.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 20:48:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/19 18:28, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Tim Williams wrote:
"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:dfa3d2c1-ef88-43c5-abac-c583a2e83bcf@googlegroups.com...

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

There are math analyses of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

So what? Three billion base pairs is already quite a few zeros.


There's only one force in the universe powerful enough to construct
something that complex: evolution. One must either believe that, or
believe that there is something impossibly wrong with all known laws
of physics*.
(*And I don't just mean the stuff we don't know at the bottom, or the
subtle details between things we do. I mean the things that are
settled and proven.)

I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.

Yup, and they certainly can't get the "its
turtles all the way down" joke concept.

You assume that the only thing that could design our form of life is
our form of life. Maybe it's not all turtles.

Certainly current theories of evolution assume that simpler forms
preceded complex forms.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Rick C]

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 4:21:25 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Certainly current theories of evolution assume that simpler forms
preceded complex forms.

Why is it with John you always have to wait for the other shoe to drop?

--

Rick C.

-+- Get a 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Clive Arthur]

On 08/05/2019 15:11, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 01:04:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

Hardly. There's a lot of room at the bottom. A phrase still as true today
as it was half a century ago!

What's insane is people still think this stuff was created in the snap of
some magic finger.

Tim

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random. There
are math analysies of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

There are lots of places in the universe with no DNA, it's possible
there are no others. The folks who don't exist in these other places
aren't discussing it. You got lucky.


Cheers
--
Clive

 

[George Herold]

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 4:11:15 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 15:55:18 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people
say complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them
that a designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it
*certainly* can't be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would
contain so much information it would collapse into a black hole! To
assume that such a "god" exists, contradicts the laws of
physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

Well I didn't intend to insult you, and it isn't apparent that you are a
creationist. I interpreted the original post as amazement rather than
skepticism.

I'm not a bit religious and I don't know exactly what your definition
of "creationist" is.


But what explanations are there that don't involve randomness and
selection?



Design by some creature that evolved in a different way, something
that had a more reasonable incremental path to complex structure.

Panspermia of DNA-based life, which merely suggests that the solution
to the DNA mystery happened far away, billions of years ago, in a very
different environment. A gas giant planet or something.

Quantum mechanical, essentially quantum computing, mechanisms that are
more efficient at evolution than cosmic rays whacking base pairs.

If you believe in evolution (which most people actually don't) you
might consider that evolution evolves better mechanisms to speed
evolution.
Yeah, it's called sex! great invention. :^)

It's almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation here.
(unless it's about electronics or instrument design for which we have a
lot of wisdom)

I was reading this during lunch... science losing it's way.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/

George H.

You might imagine more, if you let yourself.



"Water is necessary for life" is more emotional dogma.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 15:55:18 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people
say complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them
that a designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it
*certainly* can't be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would
contain so much information it would collapse into a black hole! To
assume that such a "god" exists, contradicts the laws of
physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

Well I didn't intend to insult you, and it isn't apparent that you are a
creationist. I interpreted the original post as amazement rather than
skepticism.

I'm not a bit religious and I don't know exactly what your definition
of "creationist" is.

But what explanations are there that don't involve randomness and
selection?

Design by some creature that evolved in a different way, something
that had a more reasonable incremental path to complex structure.

Panspermia of DNA-based life, which merely suggests that the solution
to the DNA mystery happened far away, billions of years ago, in a very
different environment. A gas giant planet or something.

Quantum mechanical, essentially quantum computing, mechanisms that are
more efficient at evolution than cosmic rays whacking base pairs.

If you believe in evolution (which most people actually don't) you
might consider that evolution evolves better mechanisms to speed
evolution.


You might imagine more, if you let yourself.



"Water is necessary for life" is more emotional dogma.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
<tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it *certainly* can't
be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would contain so much information
it would collapse into a black hole! To assume that such a "god" exists,
contradicts the laws of physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 18:24, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Tom Gardner wrote:
On 08/05/19 15:31, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 12:11:14 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 01:04:50 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

Hardly. There's a lot of room at the bottom. A phrase still as
true today as it was half a century ago!

What's insane is people still think this stuff was created in the
snap of some magic finger.

Tim

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

Plus give us humans clearly "suboptimal" designs when
there are better designs available, e.g. the "wiring"
between our retina and our brains.

You mean because the visual cortex is in the back? Nerves from the
retina pass through the brain horizontally and muscle control goes
vertically. The signals meet at lots of points that probably make
hand-eye coordination possible. How else could we react to movement
before cognizing it?

No, I don't mean that.

See the picture and captions at the top right of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye

There are lots of other flaws though. I'm told that a fish's heart is
between its brain and throat, so the nerves to the throat pass by the
heart, and that they also pass by our hearts and a giraffe's heart
before going back up to the throat. Plenty of flaws are more obvious
like the backbone having the same design in bipeds and quadropeds, and
the giraffe having the same number of vertebra.

Yup.

"ID" can't possibly mean intelligent design; incompetent design
would be more appropriate (if equally inaccurate).

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 11:39:45 -0700 (PDT), R Collins
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 2:03:24 PM UTC-4, Tim Williams wrote:
"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it *certainly* can't
be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would contain so much information
it would collapse into a black hole! To assume that such a "god" exists,
contradicts the laws of physics-as-we-know-them.

"… Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please, please let us be?"

-- Randy Newman

You exist: too late.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 18:28, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Tim Williams wrote:
"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:dfa3d2c1-ef88-43c5-abac-c583a2e83bcf@googlegroups.com...

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

There are math analyses of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

So what? Three billion base pairs is already quite a few zeros.


There's only one force in the universe powerful enough to construct
something that complex: evolution. One must either believe that, or
believe that there is something impossibly wrong with all known laws
of physics*.
(*And I don't just mean the stuff we don't know at the bottom, or the
subtle details between things we do. I mean the things that are
settled and proven.)

I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.

Yup, and they certainly can't get the "its
turtles all the way down" joke concept.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:45:29 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2019 09:44:21 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<k9m4de93eokbg9gh91ekedg0vsu06kg34q@4ax.com&gt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg

This is insane. This is impossible.

Yes, but that is how it works. It took some billions of years for
all that organized complexity to evolve, one trick at a time.

But it couldn't evolve one bit at a time. If it doesn't all work, none
of it works. And it builds every bit of itself.

It builds us too, but that's a detail.

Most of our DNA is said to be garbage that does nothing. Whether that
is true or not, it makes sense that random changes would replicate
whether they are good or neutral. As long as they are not fatal.

"Junk DNA" was dogma for decades. A lot of the stuff between the
obvious genes turns out to have functions.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 20:34, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:28:23 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

Tim Williams wrote:
"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:dfa3d2c1-ef88-43c5-abac-c583a2e83bcf@googlegroups.com...

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

There are math analyses of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

So what? Three billion base pairs is already quite a few zeros.


There's only one force in the universe powerful enough to construct
something that complex: evolution. One must either believe that, or
believe that there is something impossibly wrong with all known laws
of physics*.
(*And I don't just mean the stuff we don't know at the bottom, or the
subtle details between things we do. I mean the things that are
settled and proven.)

I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.



I'm astounded that, facing a process of immense complexity, how many
people insist that they have a simple explanation, and mock all other
possibilities.

When you have a simple explanation that is sufficient,
then non-explanations should be mocked.

Go read "The Blind Watchmaker", slowly, with a few glasses
of your favourite tipple and no internet to distract you.
Wonderful prose, superb explanations.

I will, of course, be fascinated to hear whatever evidence
can be found to indicate how DNA first came to exist. After
that, all is trivial and guaranteed.


> Emotion and prejudice always deflect the progress of science.

Yup, e.g. creationism.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 20:47, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 11:39:45 -0700 (PDT), R Collins
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 2:03:24 PM UTC-4, Tim Williams wrote:
"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it *certainly* can't
be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would contain so much information
it would collapse into a black hole! To assume that such a "god" exists,
contradicts the laws of physics-as-we-know-them.

"… Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please, please let us be?"

-- Randy Newman

You exist: too late.

Thereby disproving the existence of god

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 20:46, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it *certainly* can't
be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would contain so much information
it would collapse into a black hole! To assume that such a "god" exists,
contradicts the laws of physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

Publish a convincing case; you'll win a Nobel Prize.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people
say complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them
that a designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it
*certainly* can't be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would
contain so much information it would collapse into a black hole! To
assume that such a "god" exists, contradicts the laws of
physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

Well I didn't intend to insult you, and it isn't apparent that you are a
creationist. I interpreted the original post as amazement rather than
skepticism.

But what explanations are there that don't involve randomness and
selection?

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

John Larkin wrote:

"Junk DNA" was dogma for decades. A lot of the stuff between the
obvious genes turns out to have functions.

It sounds like hypothesis rather than dogma, but it seems clear that if
there is junk it would replicate.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 18:44, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 17:46:12 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/19 15:14, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2019 09:44:21 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 8, 2019, John Larkin wrote
(in article<k9m4de93eokbg9gh91ekedg0vsu06kg34q@4ax.com&gt:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpHaxzroYxg

This is insane. This is impossible.

Yes, but that is how it works. It took some billions of years for all that
organized complexity to evolve, one trick at a time.

But it couldn't evolve one bit at a time. If it doesn't all work, none
of it works. And it builds every bit of itself.

Nonsense. An example...

My very primitive third eye[1] is very useful; it has
saved me from injury many times.

Bury that in a depression and it would have a sense of
direction, and be as effective as the "extra" primitive
eyes in pit vipers.

[1] just above my upper lip

Certainly macro things like organs can evolve [2] but that's not the
issue. The big question is how the incredibly complex DNA mechanisms
could have evolved form inorganics, and how DNA got programmed to
manufacture, for example, DNA.

How DNA came into existence is indeed a big
unanswered question.

But DNA didn't "get programmed".

a lot of work has been done lately on horizontal evolution, gene
swapping between organisms. That makes the neo-Darwinian concept of
mutation and selection somewhat less absurd.

It doesn't make it less absurd; it is merely another mechanism.

Mutation and selection isn't neo-Darwinian. It is Darwinian.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 21:21, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 20:48:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/19 18:28, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Tim Williams wrote:
"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:dfa3d2c1-ef88-43c5-abac-c583a2e83bcf@googlegroups.com...

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

There are math analyses of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

So what? Three billion base pairs is already quite a few zeros.


There's only one force in the universe powerful enough to construct
something that complex: evolution. One must either believe that, or
believe that there is something impossibly wrong with all known laws
of physics*.
(*And I don't just mean the stuff we don't know at the bottom, or the
subtle details between things we do. I mean the things that are
settled and proven.)

I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.

Yup, and they certainly can't get the "its
turtles all the way down" joke concept.

You assume that the only thing that could design our form of life is
our form of life. Maybe it's not all turtles.

No, I don't.

But when I was 7yo I worked out that "doubting" Thomas
was right to insist on feeling the stigmata before
believing Christ had risen from the dead.

So, yes, I demand evidence rather than unsupported fantasies.

Certainly current theories of evolution assume that simpler forms
preceded complex forms.

On average, yes. But it is far from monotonic and evolution
neither predicts nor requires monotonic progression from
simplicity to complexity.

There have been many more complex forms that have died out
when more simple (whatever that means) lifeforms have
continued.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 21:17, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 20:52:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 08/05/19 20:34, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:28:23 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

Tim Williams wrote:
"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message
news:dfa3d2c1-ef88-43c5-abac-c583a2e83bcf@googlegroups.com...

It's even crazier that some people think it happened at random.

Nothing crazy about it. That's what random variation plus selection
can manage.

The crazies are the intelligent design fans, who think that an
intelligent designer would have gone to all that trouble then not
put in any error detection and correction coding.

There are math analyses of that, and they involve a lot of zeroes.

So what? Three billion base pairs is already quite a few zeros.


There's only one force in the universe powerful enough to construct
something that complex: evolution. One must either believe that, or
believe that there is something impossibly wrong with all known laws
of physics*.
(*And I don't just mean the stuff we don't know at the bottom, or the
subtle details between things we do. I mean the things that are
settled and proven.)

I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people say
complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them that a
designer must also be complex.



I'm astounded that, facing a process of immense complexity, how many
people insist that they have a simple explanation, and mock all other
possibilities.

When you have a simple explanation that is sufficient,
then non-explanations should be mocked.

But there's lots of quantitative reasons to think it's not sufficient.
No feasible, even if improbable, explanation should be mocked when
there is no demonstrably correct explanation.

Go read "The Blind Watchmaker", then come back.

Most of the scientific establishment mocked Pasteur, Watson and Crick,
Townes, Einstein.

Ah. The "Einstein was mocked and turned out to be
great" so "I am mocked and therefore I am great"
belief of the snowflakes that were never criticised
as kids.

I expect more from you than that!

Go read "The Blind Watchmaker", slowly, with a few glasses
of your favourite tipple and no internet to distract you.
Wonderful prose, superb explanations.

I will, of course, be fascinated to hear whatever evidence
can be found to indicate how DNA first came to exist. After
that, all is trivial and guaranteed.


Emotion and prejudice always deflect the progress of science.

Yup, e.g. creationism.

People are literally afraid of considering any ideas that they think
might somehow encourage creationists. That's lame.

Nope.

They are afraid of being associated with wingnut
creationists that don't (can't? won't?) understand
scientific methods, usually for dogmatic reasons.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 08/05/19 21:10, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2019 15:55:18 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 8 May 2019 13:03:36 -0500, "Tim Williams"
tiwill@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

"Tom Del Rosso" <fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote in
message news:qav3jo$v1g$1@dont-email.me...
I'm always incredulous at the lack of thinking ability when people
say complexity requires a designer, but it doesn't occur to them
that a designer must also be complex.


Indeed, and not just complex, but _more_ complex.

And what if -- it's designers all the way down? Well, it
*certainly* can't be that. Any sufficiently advanced being would
contain so much information it would collapse into a black hole! To
assume that such a "god" exists, contradicts the laws of
physics-as-we-know-them.

Tim

There are lots of reasonable paths to building our biology other than
random mutation and selection, but too many people refuse to even
think about them, but prefer to use their limited imaginations to
manufacture insults.

Well I didn't intend to insult you, and it isn't apparent that you are a
creationist. I interpreted the original post as amazement rather than
skepticism.

I'm not a bit religious and I don't know exactly what your definition
of "creationist" is.


But what explanations are there that don't involve randomness and
selection?



Design by some creature that evolved in a different way, something
that had a more reasonable incremental path to complex structure.

OK; that's the imagination part done.

Now continue to the next steps.

Imagination alone is easy and boring. After adding the next
steps and it can become very interesting.

Panspermia of DNA-based life, which merely suggests that the solution
to the DNA mystery happened far away, billions of years ago, in a very
different environment. A gas giant planet or something.

OK. Now we need some evidence.

Quantum mechanical, essentially quantum computing, mechanisms that are
more efficient at evolution than cosmic rays whacking base pairs.

Magic. That's not OK

If you believe in evolution (which most people actually don't) you
might consider that evolution evolves better mechanisms to speed
evolution.

Ah, a variant of the "might is right" contention.

Highly unimpressive.


> You might imagine more, if you let yourself.

I imagine many things. So what? That's the easy bit.


> "Water is necessary for life" is more emotional dogma.

Indeed, and we should receptive to alternatives /iff/
they are found.