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To: bobbdobbs
Snowflakes do not cause the philosophical problem that you allege for me. Because I know what the difference is between a snowflake and an "irreducibly complex organism". Neither is there any information contained within snowflakes. It is not the information within a snowflake that diffracts a light beam into a rainbow (it is its physical geometric lattice that does that in conjunction to the physical characteristics of light). Neither is there information within the lightbeam that is extracted via diffraction grating. However, a lightbeam can be modulated to carry information, that can be discerned through the use of a diffraction grating. Nevertheless, evolution is indeed just that: a philosophy and not fact however disguised it may be as science in the guise of theory. Evolution is a philosophy whereby naturalistic means for the origin of species is assumed to be true, as opposed to supernatural means of creation by that of a deity. Evolution attempts to clothe itself in the guise of science, when in fact it is founded entirely upon history. The two are mutually exclusive. History is not science. While facts can be logically determined from historical sources, such facts can not be scientifically proven. You can not scientifically prove to me that you got up yesterday. The only way that you can scientifically prove that is through observation and expirimentation, and that can't be done.

On the other hand, creationism has no qualms with physical laws, or the natural order of things that science concerns itself with (through observation, establishment of models to predict, and construction of experiments to assess how accurate the predictions are). Creaionism concedes that these things indeed are. BUT IT DOES insist that the origin of these things are of a theistic (or supernatural) origin. The two are mutually exclusive, although both are philophies and essentially based on faith, science itself is not (and can not be based on faith as principles derived by science must be known).

The ability of a living organism to grow, react and reproduce is not dependent upon the properties of the molecules involved. A living cell is a co-ordinated set of non-living molecules. The life in a cell is derived from its organization. What is life? It is the quality of something with a metabolism, growth, responds to stimulation and reproduces. According to these definitions fire is not alive, and neither are crystals. The kind of organization that is found in life is neither found in snowflakes nor pebbles in a creek bed. The organization found in snowflakes is purely mechanistic. In spontaneous systems such as snowflakes, the properties of the whole are completely derived from the components. Created systems in contrast have properties imposed from the outside that confer new properties on the parts, properties that the parts of the system do not and can not develop on their own. A snowflake is an excellent example of time, chance and natural process that produce a system whose internal order is internally determined.

A snowflake's shape reflects the internal order of the water molecules. Water molecules in the solid state, such as in ice and snow, form weak bonds (called hydrogen bonds) with one another. These ordered arrangements result in the symmetrical, hexagonal shape of the snowflake. During crystallization, the water molecules align themselves to maximize attractive forces and minimize repulsive forces. Consequently, water molecules arrange themselves in predetermined spaces and in a specific arrangement. Water molecules simply arrange themselves to fit the spaces and maintain symmetry.

No two snowflakes are exactly identical, down to the precise number of water molecules, spin of electrons, isotope abundance of hydrogen and oxygen, etc. On the other hand, it is possible for two snowflakes to look exactly alike and any given snowflake probably has had a good match at some point in history. Since so many factors affect the structure of a snowflake and since a snowflake's structure is constantly changing in response to environmental conditions, it is improbable that anyone would ever see two identical snowflakes in all of time anywhere.

219 posted on 05/07/2005 12:23:39 AM PDT by raygun
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To: raygun

The idea that DNA contains information, while seductive and perhaps satisfying to some, is fundamentally a lie.

There is no more information in DNA than there is in a snowflake.

If there is information in DNA, then that "information" ought to be just as useful, or perhaps I should say utilitarian, if carried by some other medium, just like "War and Peace" is "war and Peace" whether printed on paper or stored on a CD ROM. But, it is demonstably false that the amino acid sequences of DNA have any utility expressed in any other form.


226 posted on 05/07/2005 3:35:10 AM PDT by John Valentine
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