dmz:
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No it's not an "exploration killer" and it never has been. That's a boogie man, especially in the light the research is conducted with Dawkins' "apparent" design in mind.
It's an exploration killer in two senses: (1) when religious people literally stop people from asking questions, which has undeniable historical precedent and (2) when belief in a god satisfies a person's curiosity.
Dawkins is only remarkable as a thinker
because he is unsatisfied with god as an answer. Religious people will even acknowledge the value of uncertainty.
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Citing RNA is interesting, but that will probably just move the goalposts, and make thing an order of magnitude more complex than they are now.
What is "interesting" about it. You haven't shown a shred of actual knowledge on this issue, much less the ability to dismiss a theory as merely "interesting".
And how would the gradual move from simple compounds to DNA being fleshed out by sound theories make things
more complicated? There is an obvious link between RNA and DNA today. This isn't something we have to twist around, it's something that's in front of our eyes and inside of our bodies right now.
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What man-made languages have to do with this is to analogically model what is happening with the genome. You have two things to contend with: the information, and the mechanics of preserving and transferring, and maintaining that information.
And we can contend with that. There are myriad theories regarding precellular life. RNA world theory is just one of them. RNA can act as a gene
and as an enzyme. Process, transmission, and storage are all done within RNA. RNA is self-replication, so through mutation and recombination they evolve. Amino acids bind with the RNA and this creates proteins, and from then on it's a cakewalk.
The issue here is that you don't actually know what you're talking about. Making me look like an expert is quite a feat, but you handle it with aplomb.
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Unless the Essence of the mechanics is the Information, then you have two different entities to model/contend with. You have to model protein bindings in the context of not breaking the genome chemically, and you have to model the information gain in an orderly fashion -- where additions don't disrupt whatever syntactical structure exists.
Why can't we disrupt the structure? That's what evolution is, that's the entire point of natural selection. You're building some thoroughly asinine "irreducible complexity" argument that assumes a beginning point, an end point, and a linear progression between. If mutation and recombination are unsuccessful 1 trillion times it doesn't matter so long as the mutation and/or recombination improves survivability/reproduction a single time. Success is allowed to be rare.
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You can't conflate the two, the code and the mechanics -- and that is being done out of convenience.
What is the difference? The code is physical. Do you think nucleic acids are immaterial? Do you not think they have a physical structure that interacts with other physical structures? Just because something is microscopic does not mean it lacks mass.
Even digital code inside a computer is a matter of physical/chemical/electrical reality.
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But in any case "natural selection" comes well after the fact of both these things, the chemical additions, and the information gain. What needs to happen is for evolutionists to put their money where their mouths are, and start to develop models to show if this is possible, or at least countenance that fact that they have uncovered something which is beyond what Darwinism is able to address.
To know that Darwinism is unable to address something you have to understand Darwinism
and that which is being addressed. You understand neither. It's like me saying a rocket can't hit a target if I know nothing about the rocket and nothing about the target.
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We should be able to see something by now -- the numbers that viruses and bacteria reproduce at should have been able to show information gain, not reshuffling information. If we can model a nuclear detonation, we should be able to brute force a solution to the path that the information gain took, if not the path that the mechanics followed.
We see evolution happen all the time. Every year we scramble to deal with the evolving influenza virus.
This "information gain" crap is hilarious, as if the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to evolution. Let me give you a picture hint as to why we don't have to rely on simple recombination of existing structures.
If you would like for me to explain this I would be happy to.
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You need a perfect genome to maintain in the first place.
What the fuck is a "perfect genome"?
