[ferfumarma]

> Still far, far too complex to occur "randomly," which is fascinating

Why spend time making this point? Nobody believes that this occurred randomly: it occurred via evolution.

The mutations are a random part of evolution, but the process overall is not random at all - no more so than your immune system (which randomly generates antibodies, then selects against those that target innate epitopes), or stable diffusion (which starts with random noise, then marches up a gradient toward a known target).

It is the selection step that makes similar processes non-random, because a random selection step would just be noise.

[threethirtytwo]

This is technically random. The entire creationist argument is that complexity cannot come from randomness but evolution is the method in which it does.

Evolution is just a sort of way for low entropy structures to form from randomness. It’s still random all the way down.

The man is just trying to reconcile a belief in god with the scientific reality. He needs to bend the evidence to fit his identity he cannot bend his identity to fit the evidence because that could break his identity. The fact he commented here on this topic is sort of unhinged. It seems like the article presented evidence that is strikingly against his world view and he needed to justify something in order to prevent his identity from rearranging itself according to external reality.

[hellofriend_]

Look, the leap from “a human in a lab coat mixed some chemicals and got something that grows and divides” to “therefore no God (or no transcendent intelligence) is necessary for life to exist”

is not a valid inference. It is a category error dressed up as science.

Demonstrating that intelligence can produce life (or a lifelike system) is the opposite of demonstrating that intelligence is not required. It is literally evidence in favor of the design hypothesis, not against it. The only thing it would rule out is a very narrow version of young-earth creationism that says “God would never let any natural process produce life under any circumstance”.

Also, scaling from “possible on a planet” to “therefore no intelligence was required anywhere in the process” is still the same non sequitur, moving the (apparent) design from the origin of the first cell to the origin of the cosmic initial conditions and laws that permit planetary abiogenesis.

This equation of “intelligent design = creationism = Adam and Eve” is a cultural artifact of the American culture wars, not a reflection of logic or the global scientific community.

[akomtu]

"It's all random all the way down" is just another religious belief. Besides, has anyone estimated the probability of creating organisms so complex using this random evolution scheme? Another problem is why would randomly-evolved organisms be so geometrically symmetric? I'd expect a random process to create an unholy blob of matter.

[api]

People misread my comment as creationism.

The point I was making was that the complexity curve has to meet the floor at some point, and thinking about how this happens and what that looks like is interesting.

I was familiar with RNA world but wasn't aware of how much progress had been made.

[andrewflnr]

Unfortunately your comment is mostly indistinguishable from the kind of "just asking questions" thing actual creationists occasionally post. And you did draw in at least one actual creationist in your replies. Sorry dude. :D Anyway, as a couple of us mentioned, be sure to check out Nick Lane's theories.