A fertilized egg is one cell. Science has come a long way in analyzing what
that cell contains, but we don't have much understanding of how the bits of
matter in that single cell turn into a complex organism. We know that bits of
DNA produce proteins, but we don't really understand how those proteins
arrange themselves into the complex patterns of a living organism. The
information, or design, of the adult organism is contained within that single
cell. The same design is presumably not contained in the cell without the
fertilization, and different fertilizations produce different designs. I
suppose materialists don't regard this process as "supernatural" because it
happens consistently enough that they have become accustomed to it. This
ability of a single cell to turn into a complex organism is a quality not
possessed by rocks, and if Chris wants to call it plain old "dumb stuff",
that does seem to be stretching the definition of "dumb".
If a cell can contain the design for the entire future of the organism, I
see no reason why it couldn't contain the design for the future evolution of
the organism. There would be plenty of room for the designs of evolution to
be contained in DNA we have labeled "junk". A design is no less of a design
because it is specified by DNA. I wonder why materialists feel compelled
to think up a materialist explanation, such as Darwinism (chance variation
and natural selection), to explain evolution. They accept the maturation of
individual organisms as the result of individual designs - without any
materialist explanation?
Most people acknowledge the obvious existence of free will, spontaneity,
intelligence, creativity, consciousness and mind, and there is evidence they
can occasionally effect living matter. But these forces are trickier for
materialists. Since there is nothing consistent about them, I suppose
materialists fear some people might attribute some aspect of them to God.
Maybe this is the reason that materialists feel compelled to argue that free
will, spontaneity, creativity, intelligence and mind don't exist.
Materialists also seem inclined to argue that anything not mechanistically
consistent would be supernatural. Or dismiss it as "mumbo jumbo".
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 19 2000 - 12:20:31 EDT