Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA25615 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 22 Aug 2001 06:54:35 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 00:58:40 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Design Message-ID: <3B8303C0.18476.8F6E45@localhost> In-reply-to: <003f01c12a6e$77a425e0$eb25f4d8@teddace> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 21 Aug 2001, at 11:23, Dace wrote:
> > > 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.
>
Of course it does; the very word 'design' entails a designer, which
does not exist. And the gene is not set apart from the structure it
encodes, because part of what it encodes is genetic structure.
>
> 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 moment you insist upon a design at all, you begin to skip
down that primrose path.
>
> 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 same designer fallacy that leads
> > gullible people to suppose that there must be deities doing these
> > things.
>
The point is that the structures are not bulit according to a design,
fir that requires a designer; instead, a complex process that owes
its character to SDIC (sensitive dependence upon initial conditions)
is initiated with the fertilization of an egg, and the initial condition
that the process is sensitively dependent upon is precisely the
configuration of the DNA contained in the nucleolus.
>
> Ted
>
>
> ===============================================================
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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
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