Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!rg20+
From: rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: How to debate the creationists.
Message-ID: <4Xc8r-y00WB9M2zcVv@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 88 02:36:58 GMT
References: <4806@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 26
In-Reply-To: <4806@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>

> Contemporary research into
>the structure of DNA, however, has shown that it has high information
>content, and the only evidence at present is that it takes
>intelligence to produce this kind of order.

Nope, sorry, I know of some evidence to the contrary: 'Evolution'
programs.  These are programs that simulate an environment using
simple rules, and have 'organisms' which are controled by a code,
which allows for mutations during replication.  Well to make a long
story short after running for a sufficuent time, these codes evolved
(purly by chance with no intelligence other then the physical laws
set down in the program) and seemed to exhibit "intelligent" behavior
(ie moving toward food, moving away from poison etc.).  Also there
was another program, on the Mac, I believe, that simulated the
rusults of 'crossing' two 'genetic patterns' of things that controlled how a
'bug' looked.  After some time they got some pretty interesting patters
(I believe one was a chalice or something that looked NOTHING like the orignal
parents...)  In any case, there's a very good reason that DNA has the
kind of order it does, and that is because organisms need it to
exist, so if you have organisms you must have that order.  However
there is alaways a probability that random events (ie chemical
reactions that occur spontaneously) can create order (of course it
takes a lot of TIME ie Billions of years, but the universe has time
to spare...).

 -Rick Golembiewski  rg20+@Andrew.cmu.edu
  "Biology, the liveliest of sciences..."