Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA24392 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 21 Aug 2001 19:25:48 +0100 Message-ID: <003f01c12a6e$77a425e0$eb25f4d8@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <3B8073E4.12915.A22CA2@localhost> Subject: Re: Design Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 11:23:56 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> >
> > > > > Elegant explanations are not always
> > > > > correct; otherwise we would embrace the elegant yet Occam-
> > > > > violating explanation of a Master Designer intentionally
> > > > > sticking those clumsy thumbs on pandas.
> > > >
> > > > To reject the Blind Designer is not necessarily to accept the
> > > > Master Designer. I reject all concepts of an independent design,
> > > > whether theological or chromosomal.
> > > >
> > > Chromosomes are not independent of the life forms in which they are
> > > found, but part of them, and found in every cell of every existent
> > > plant and animal.
> >
> > If they contain a design of the body, then there's a separation
> > between the design and its execution. This anthropormphizes life, as
> > if it works the same way human technicians operate.
> >
> I see you did not take my advice to read Von Neumann's work on
> self-reproducing automata, or you would not make such a bogus
> claim. Part of the execution of the design found in the templates of
> every cell is to create design templates in the cells that are
> created; there is no sepatation of the dance of cell creation into
> some anthropomorphized dancer; such a cartesian actor is not
> required, as the blind chemical exigencies patterned in the
> template are quite simply unconsciously followed in cell creation,
> from messenger rna to amino acids to proteins all the way up the
> germ line.
That the design comes about blindly and unconsciously through mutation and
natural selection doesn't make it any less of a design. That it's
incorporated into our cells doesn't change the fact that it's set apart from
the structures it encodes.
As long as we assert the existence of a blind design, there will be people
who assert the existence of an intelligent design. In other words, if the
discussion is limited to design-type options, then the school of
"intelligent design" will always draw the less informed. This guarantees
that the neo-Darwinists will have an uneducated opposition they can hurl
their invective at. Then, when a genuine alternative comes along, they can
just lump that in with the creationists. This is the machinary by which the
neo-Darwinian meme is replicated.
The following exchange illustrates my point.
> > Designs are
> > abstractions of the structures built according to them. Abstractions
> > are a function of human consciousness. They don't belong in our
> > cells.
> >
> We abstract patterns and impose them on the world, and say that
> there must have been another patterner, since we can see pattern
> there. It's not true; it's the sams designer fallacy that leads gullible
> people to suppose that there must be deities diong these things.
Ted
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 19:30:18 BST