He begins with wondering why more biologists are atheists than other disciplines when there is what seems to be so much design in life etc and comes up with the answer that it is evolution which gives a rationale for all this design for atheists. He even shows a couple of atheists who agree with him about the idea that things look designed.
True. He cites Dawkins in particular, but fails to acknowledge how the
appearance of design can be naturally generated, as most biologists contend. He dismisses the idea out-of-hand. It's clear he began his explanation with a presupposition of intentional design.
He gives a few possibilites for how things came to be as they are and makes a point about purposelessness in direction of the naturalist answer, because that is what he wanted to make a point of in this talk, in this apologist teaching lecture.
He does go on to try to say that purpose in biology would be a good thing and that purpose is shown to exist in nature,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but saying that the whole thing is circular because he states his beliefs at the start is ridiculous.
Yes, but the three "possibilities" are bogus, and his circularity is contrived; derived from his presumption of intentional design.
He goes on to say that evolution is just a biological theory and has nothing to do with the existence of God or the origin of life and that this is not a radical idea. He also says that Darwin admitted that and that he had no idea of the origin of life and that we also do not know.
He says there are stories about consciousness, creativity, love etc human traits which evolution does not explain,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and he should know that.
Everyone concedes that the mechanics of abiogenesis is, as yet, unknown. It doesn't follow that it's not natural, or that consciousness, love and other celebrated human traits can not be products of natural selection, just like our bipedalism.
He says accurate self replication is important for evolution and that only living things do it. He states his incredulity of this high level of self replication having just happened. He states that accurate self replication is required for evolution, so evolution cannot be required to produce self replication.
Evolution depends on descent
with modification., in other words,
"pretty good" replication. Completely accurate replication would produce no variation.
iow how did the accurate self replication evolve if it is needed for evolution. (and it is not just in the replication that evolution can happen, so how does accurate self replication,,,,,,,, as we have now,,,,,,, stop evolution, as you claim. Has evolution stopped because of accurate self replication? What is this circular reasoning fallacy you suggest is happening?
There is
not completely accurate replication, plus there are other mutagenic and epigenetic forces at work. True, the accuracy of such an extensive genomic duplication is astonishing, but nature has been working on this for almost four billion years, making hundreds of copies per liter of microbe filled water per minute of very simple genomes -- all over the planet. Trillions must have proved too flawed to survive and were eliminated from the gene pool, but the trillions that went on to reproduce possessed, if only by chance, very accurate copying mechanics. Natural selection works on multiple levels.
The circularity results from his beginning with a premise he's already concluded. His conclusion is
in the premise.
He is the Professor and so I presume he knows what he is talking about here.
He may be good at explaining the chemistry of DNA replication or Vagal feedback loops, but his logic in concluding "Goddidit" is flawed. Your argument from authority extends only to his area of competence.
He uses the same language that other biologists use when it comes to the Genetic coding and other biologists do say "interprets" "translated", "symbols", "language" etc
Yes, they do, but they're speaking informally, not crafting a formal argument where concise definitions are needed.
Look at the process yourself. Nothing is "decided" or "interpreted" in any conscious sense. DNA polymerase simply adds the complimentary nucleobase to the daughter strand as it moves along the forks of the original DNA molecule. Easy-peasy.
(This was the simplest video I found illustrating the process).
So he wonders where the idea that the genetic code is not a code came from.
From a strict definition of "code" vs pattern, template, or something; he's citing a semantic peccadillo.
If anyone wants to go to this section of the video to explain more about what he means, it is from about 19 minutes to 22 minutes.
But he, as a professor, is pretty certain that there is interpretation involved and reading the code.
I'm sure he understands the DNA 'code' and replication process perfectly. It's his personal incredulity at the complexity of the process that leads to his need to include the hand of God (magic) into the process -- as if that explained or clarified anything. That's where the unwarranted presumption lies.
sygarte.com
www.premierchristianity.com
