I wrote:
>> Let me pose you a challenge. A thought experiment. You are the designer.
>> You are to design life for survival, and to look like the product of one
>> designer. Here comes the hard part:
>> Can you design the system to resist all naturalistic (or
>> evolutionary) explanations? What would that system be
>> like? Can you describe it? Can evolutionists design a
>> system of life they could not explain away?
Loren responds:
>This is intriguing. Let me suggest one. (You've probably already thought
>of it, but I'm curious to hear your response.)
>
>Why not include a "signature"?
>
>For example, if I were a skilled molecular biologist and a criminal, I
>might engineer two dozen deadly organisms and include a "signature" in
>each one. (E.g. a sequence of 1000 "non-coding" base pairs which match a
>binary sequence in the first 100,000 digits of "pi".)
>
>If similar highly conserved, non-coding "signature" sequences were
>included in all modern species, it would (it seems to me) suggest a single
>designer and resist all naturalistic explanations.
Loren suggests sending a coded message. I responded to this issue with
Terry Gray when he, too, posed it many, many months ago. (I'm pretty sure
that was before Loren came on the reflector.) It's all probably still in
the archives, and it's in my book. So this will not be an exhaustive
response here. (And by the way my time here is drying up again, I'll be on
my way again before long.)
Traditionally evolutionists used the "argument from imperfection".
Evolutionists from Darwin, to Ghiselin, to Gould, all pointed to "imperfect"
designs (such as the orchid's reproductive structures) and said, 'No capable
designer would do that! It must be evolution!' (Note: They used a
two-model approach, where evidence against a designer was taken as evidence
"for" evolution.) They pointed to "imperfect" designs that were actually
quite functional, and served a useful purpose, and saw these as evidence
AGAINST a designer.
Now we have a turn-around. Loren suggests the designer SHOULD have used
really awful, terrible, worthless, non-functional design! It's a total
switch from what evolutionists claimed before. And it shows the remarkable
flexibility of anti-creationist thinking.
Okay, perhaps Loren was just taking a friendly poke at my theory. But he
wasn't the first evolutionist, and won't be the last to use that same
argument.
There are many reasons why a biotic message sender would not use a coded
message of the type Loren suggested. Here are some of them:
1) What language would be used? Spanish? English? Hierglyphics? (I say the
designer chose a universal language, whose basic units are biological
patterns of similarities and differences. The 'universal' genetic code, for
example, does a marvelous job of uniting life as coming from one source.
And evolution does NOT predict it.)
2) A coded message would deteriorate due to mutations, and might then look
like a non-message, or the work of multiple separate designers.
3) Loren forgot about survival. Life was designed for survival AND
SIMULTANEOUSLY to convey the biotic message. His coded message fails that
design goal. (Note: The "imperfect" designs pointed to by evolutionists
are useful for survival, often highly so. While they are unexpected from an
ordinary designer, they are expected from a biotic message sender. The
biotic message overturns the evolutionists argument from imperfection. But
that is a topic for another day.)
4) If the coded message were superficial, such as a brand, a tattoo, (or a
non-functional code in the DNA), then the observer would have no way of
knowing that it was from ONE designer. The observer could easily interpret
it as the result of one designer/creator of life, followed by some cosmic
prankster/graffitti artist/message sender with a can of genetically active
spray paint, so to speak. There would be no way to know that the creator of
life and the message sender are one and the same being.
That problem was solved in life by making the 'message' inseparable from the
'survival' of each organism, and deeply permeating the message into each
organism so as to make it resistent to mutation noise, and resistant to
mis-interpretation. The same features that convey the message are essential
for survival. The message is written into the paws, the hands, the
feathers, the fur, into the backbones, and into the very being of the
organism. No time could have passed between the creation of life and the
imprinting of the biotic message. The creator, and the message sender, are
one. This is indelible, and it is by design. Loren's idea fails to
accomplish that.
Walter ReMine
P.O. Box 28006
Saint Paul, MN 55128