philadiddle said:
Beastt said:
The complexity of life is no more a fingerprint of God that the complexity of the traces on the motherboard in your computer. Complexity does not equal God.
think really hard about what u just said. you equated the complexity of life to traces on a motherboard, which is something complex. a motherboard implies intelligent design.
Does it? People who wish to suggest that complexity implies intelligent design seem to overlook natural examples of incredible complexity which arise from nothing more than two or more natural forces interacting on another force or on matter. Have you ever looked at layers of sediment along the bank of a river or after a period of flooding? If you cut down through the layers and observe the patterns they're incredibly complex. How long might it take a human, working 16-hours each day, to sort out the various particles and arrange them neatly by size and weight? If we look really closely, we even find patterns of light and dark sediments, forming striations through the base pattern. Yet all of this complexity results from nothing more than two forces interacting on the sediments. Those forces are gravity, which applies a stronger force to the particles of the sediments than to the water around them, and the viscosity of the water which slows the rate of decent. The result of these two forces, both acting upon the sediment at the same time, is the complex and intricate patterns we find. Is gravity sentient? Is it intelligent? What about viscosity, is viscosity intelligent?
Look at the complex patterns of cracked mud after the waters evaporate and the ground begins to dry. It forms a very complex mosaic of polygon shapes, usually with relatively straight sides, and fairly uniform size. Is this intelligent design, or is it simply the result of the stresses placed upon the mud as it dries and shrinks, against the natural cohesion of the mud? If one picks a leaf from a tree and examines the tiny veins and the patterns formed between the network of veins, it's hard not to notice how similar the pattern is to that formed by the cracking of mud as it dries. Certainly the leaf forms these patterns based on different forces, but the pattern is remarkably similar and in no way, attributable to intelligence.
philadiddle said:
complexity does not 100% conclude God, but it sure gives a pretty big hint. this is why christianity is called "Faith"
Different Christians seem to give different definitions for the word, "faith". But the one which seems to leave the fewest holes and fit the majority of examples when the word is used is; belief independent of evidence.
The whole complexity issue seems to arise from a general lack of understanding of natural forces and their interaction upon matter. Hopefully, I managed to illustrate this with my sediment and mud examples. Many others can be offered but perhaps the most convincing is that which appears to mimick natural structures existing within living matter. For the example I have in mind, it is first important to recognize that math is man's attempt at describing and then predicting observations in nature. This may sound overly simplistic at first, but please bear with me. If one were to sit under a fruit tree and observe that two pieces of fruit have fallen to the ground, then observe two more pieces of fruit, falling from the tree, it would be possible to observe that the two pieces of fruit on the ground originally, combined with the two other pieces which fell, would total four pieces of fruit. This is a natural condition which is consistent and repeatable. Were one to be fascinated by this and continue to observe, they would note that two pieces of fallen fruit, combined with an additional two pieces, will always yield four pieces. Upon noting this natural constant, one could attempt to describe this phenomenon with the representative symbol for two, "2" and the representative symbol for "4". Thusly a formula can be developed, ("2 + 2 = 4"), which attempts to describe the observed constant. This is what math attempts to do. It is a man-made tool, designed to mimick that which is observed in nature.
I apologize for the long-winded nature of that simplistic concept but it's necessary to understand that before moving to the next step where the math becomes somewhat more complex. But the point is; no matter how complex the math becomes, it is modeled after what is observed in nature in an attempt to describe natural constants and even to predict the outcome of natural events.
If we utilize sine and cosine and balance them against one another across an even progression of an incremented number, we can describe a circle, which again is a model of a shape observed in nature. By taking these two descriptions of nature, (sine and cosine), and pitting them against one another in a recursive, repeating loop, something rather interesting begins to happen. Of course this can be set up in an infinite number of ways, but here is the result of one particular arrangement.
Does this perhaps look like a magnified pollen grain? Perhaps some might see a seed pod. It really doesn't matter what one imagines when looking at the image; the point is that it does seem to mimick something akin to living forms we've all seen and it appears to be quite complex. But the complexity is really an illusion. It's a very simple concept and produced through a set of very simple rules, something like the rules which result in complex patterns of sediments. The two rules in this instance are those borrowed from the naturally occurring shapes in nature -- sine and cosine. These two trigonometric functions can be seen as applied forces, resulting, if applied equally, in the same shape which results from a two dimentional representation of a plastic mass, spun to create centrifugal force, which attempts to counter gravitational force. The balance of the two forces creates a sphere, which when reduced to two dimensions, becomes a circle. The circle is the balance of the opposing forces, sine and cosine.
The steps necessary to create the above pattern from the simple model forces can be supplied if you still have doubts.
philadiddle said:
yes, but a cell can only come from a preexisting cell. that was in my science textbook in school, and is a scientific fact. where did the first cell come from? to assume a law of nature was broken for it to come into existence isn't logical, to assume something outside of nature created it is very logical.
Firstly, when speaking of true science, there are no facts. There are only those things which are supported by the available evidence and not refuted by any credible available evidence. As new evidence emerges, science must be ready to alter views and conclusions to suit.
Work is being done to show that cells do not need to arise from other, pre-existing cells. The mistaken idea that cells must first exist before other cells can exist comes from the misconception that the cells we see today are the simplest form of a cell. In reality, what our bodies are made up of and what we see in bacteria today are actually examples of highly complex cells with a great number of components and systems which are unnecessary for a cell to function.
A functional cell need be nothing more than a region of material which offers a boundary from the material by which it is surrounded, containing a nucleotide chain within its mass. Such structures have been created or, more accurately, been allowed to spontaneously form in the laboratory under conditions specifically chosen to mimick those which may occur naturally. The body of these structures is formed from droplets of fatty acids referred to as "vesicles". It was found that when in the presence of nucleotides, (which also exist naturally), and a special soil known as "montmorillonite clay", the clay acts as a catalyst to draw the nucleotide material into the vessicle where it reacts chemically by bonding into a chain resembling a subset of TNA. TNA is similar to, but less complex than RNA and RNA is a molecule similar to, but less complex than DNA. RNA and DNA both have the ability to replicate. The idea is that a process of evolution may occur at this molecular level, raising the TNA to a complexity of a simple, replicating RNA.
The director of this research, Jack Szostak, is the first to point out that these structures do not yet qualify as living. However, by interacting with naturally porous materials and outside forces, such as currents in a liquid medium, they can replicate. They also exhibit the ability to steal nucleotide materials from each other in an action which fully qualifies as true Darwinian competition. This may well turn out to be the initial observations of abiogenesis in action.
I appreciate your patience in wading through these rather lengthy and dry explanations but I believe they are instrumental in demonstrating that apparent complexity is a completely natural phenomenon, not requiring the action of any supernatural forces.
