Intelligent Design & Universal Genome

Are products of human design comparable to living things? Some questions the universal genome hypothesis has to predict before claiming equivalence with the natural selection theory.

How to recognize Intelligent Design? When I find a watch on the beach, I know that this was intelligently designed (ID):

1. All ID objects on earth (including texts and art) are either industrial or hand-made
   
2. In either case the identity of the designer, the place and date of fabrication are either registered or can be approximately deduced.
   
3. The same is true for the purpose of the design and the exact function of the object, at least when the object is intact.
   
4. ID objects are not necessarily complex (e.g.,a sand castle on the beach, a bull design in the walls of a cave, the text on the back of an old postcard or a straight cut on a tree trunk)
   
5. Complex ID objects are intolerant to variation in part size, shape and proportions.
   
6. If you take any part apart from an ID object, the object ceases to function properly.
   
7. ID objects are sensitive to oxidation/reduction but insensitive to other relatively inert chemical substances (antibiotics, poisons, toxins mineral elements)
   
8. Animal predators are indifferent to ID objects unless these are made of edible materials.
   
9. Most ID objects are stand-alone and do not require other objects in order to function unless they form part of greater ID system like a cash machine.
   
10. Groups of ID objects do not acquire additional properties.
    
11. ID objects cannot find primary resources alone and cannot grow independently from their designer.
    
12. ID objects, like watches, houses, gardens, texts, are made of simpler pre-existing building parts (primary materials) that are beyond the designer’s control (even music requires pre-existing materials and their sonic properties).
    
13. All ID objects can be copied to perfection
    
14. All ID objects are incontestably and exclusively attributed to humans authors
    
15. All ID objects are dead: do not actively change in time (apart from oxidation and natural erosion)
    
16. No ID object is capable of self-reproduction
    
17. No ID object has ever (seriously) been attributed to God.

When I find a stone on the beach, I may recognize intelligent design:

18. From its shape (curved rather than random)
    
19. From its chemical composition (concrete rater than bauxite)
    
20. From its position in relation to other stones and/or objects in the neighborhood (forming a perfect square room of a ruined house)

Generally, a stone is considered to be not ID if

21. It has a random shape not recognizable by the layman
    
22. It has a recognizable, natural occurring mineral composition - particularly when this is common in the area.

And yet:

23. The shape of a stone is the additive result of precise yet non-described natural forces (volcano, earthquake, friction, water, wind etc…)
    
24. The composition of a stone reflects its exact geological history
    
25. The crystallography of a stone reveals magnificent underlying structures and laws.
    
26. Naturally occurring stones would have been made by God (if He existed) for a very noble purpose.
    
27. A stone is a fractal in the sense that it is similar to the rock where it broke away from; also, if it brakes naturally, its parts are similar but not identical to each other and to the original rock (watches, and the vast majority of ID objects, are not fractals because the structural and functional properties of their parts are not the same with those of the original objects).
    
28. Although most stones we find on the beach do not change in ecological time (except by oxidation and erosion), rocks and crystals do so by ‘random’, though perfectly deterministic ways: earth movements, chemical reactions and mineral rearrangements (e.g., a stalactite); the water, another simple non-ID object, changes form and properties all the time.

When I find a plant on the beach I know that this is not a product of Intelligent Design because it has none of the properties of ID objects:

29. It is neither industrial nor hand made.
    
30. The identity of the designer, the place and the date of fabrication are neither registered nor can they be approximately deduced.
    
31. Neither the purpose of the design nor the exact (inner and outer) function of the plant is known or deducible.
    
32. The simplest plant is immeasurably more complex than any ID object ever recorded.
    
33. Even plants belonging to the same species, despite their immense complexity, have parts of variable size, shape and proportions.
    
34. If I cut parts of a plant apart, the plant continues being a plant, and, sometimes the removed parts also.
    
35. Plants are resistant to oxidation/reduction but sensitive to other relatively inert chemical substances (antibiotics, hormones, poisons, toxins, mineral elements and gases).
    
36. Plants are eaten by animals and microorganisms.
    
37. Plants are parts, and interact with other members, of a population, of a ecological community and of an ecosystem.
    
38. Groups of plants acquire additional properties to form a functional system with yet higher order of complexity than that of individual members.
    
39. Plants find their primary resources alone and grow.
    
40. No plant can be copied to perfection.
    
41. No de novo plant has ever been attributed to a human designer.
    
42. All plants are living objects (until they die): they do actively change during their lifetime.
    
43. All plants are capable of self-reproduction.
    
44. All plants have always, seriously and by a vast majority, been attributed to God.

Instead, a plant shares many of the properties of a non-ID stone:

45. Only few knowledgeable people may recognize some common plant species from morphology or other properties, most laymen will not.
    
46. However, plant can generally be recognized as such because of its common, naturally occurring composition.
    
47. The shape of the plant is the additive result of precise, yet non-described, natural forces; basically genetic and environmental.
    
48. The composition of the plant reflects its exact natural history
    
49. The microscopy and molecular biology of the plant reveal magnificent underlying structures and laws.
    
50. Plants, like stones, are not usually considered as masterpieces of ID – like humans are - and yet they may well have been made by God (if He existed) and for a noble purpose.
    
51. Plants are fractals in the sense that they form structural and functional parts of the population, the species and the higher level taxa to which they belong and also, when they proliferate, their progeny is similar but not identical to each other and to the parent(s).
    
52. Remember, neither a watch nor any other ID object is fractal because the structural and functional properties of their parts are not similar to those of the original object.
    
53. Plants do, invariably, change in both physiological and ecological time, in a perfectly deterministic, well described and predictable way.

Conclusion We have to choose between the following two mutually exclusive propositions

1. Only products of human intelligence can be said to be ID. Other objects are not ID and therefore can be due to chance.
   
2. Everything on earth is ID whatever the level of complexity of the object may be. ‘Everything’ includes sub-atomic particles, atoms and molecules, physical and chemical constants as well as mathematical laws such as functions, probabilities, randomness and chance. Therefore chance is an integral part of an ‘intelligent design’ of life. Evolution may well be driven by random mutation and natural selection and still be consistent with the existence of a designer for those who need one.

Fractals

1. The complexity of so called ID objects is fixed by design and is unconditional. A watch is a watch all year round.
   
2. In contrast, fractals are created by very simple mathematical rule (iterative functions) and develop increasing complexity depending on the number of iterations and on the initial conditions (chance). The water will take the form of a snow-flake crystal, that of a liquid drop or a river or it will become a steam cloud at different temperatures and pressures. Within only a few years of computing, there are already impressive fractal models of various forms of abiotic as well as of living matter. Within some hundreds of years of computing we can expect to explain mathematically and with great accuracy many of the forms and functions of living or non-living things.

Some questions about the intelligently designed Universal Genome hypothesis

1. Is the UG a theoretical genome or did actually existed at some time?
   
2. How does the theory of the UG explain that:

• The most ancient organisms in the fossil record were simpler than the most recent ones?
  
• The first man was less ‘intelligent’ than we are? or are we not?
  
• The adaptive radiations?
  
• The stases?
  
• The increasing diversity in geological time?

3. What would be the purpose (the final cause) of a degenerating evolution? To make man?
   
4. Would natural selection still operate to salvage some of the complexity?
   
5. If yes, would it work upon genetic diversity?
   
6. If yes, would the ‘salvation’ of man be Darwinian?
   
7. Is the UG hypothesis consistent with mainstream Christian belief and writings (the bible)?
   
8. Could the ecclesiastical institutions (e.g. the Pope) consider it to be heretical?
   
9. Has the UG and its ID framework anything to do with the politics for the re-introduction of the biblical creation hypothesis next to the Darwinian evolution in the American schoolbooks?
   
10. It sounds to me as a quite straightforward explanation that antelopes (and other animals) developed speed for the purpose of escaping from lions, tigers and other such predators. Slower antelopes just got eaten in early evolution. It also sounds straightforward that the faster lions and other such predators had more to eat and survive while their slower brothers starved to death because their prey escaped too often.
    
11. According to the degenerating UG hypothesis and the homo-centric cosmotheory how would the speed of antelopes and lions would have served man?
    
12. I have difficulty in understanding that antelopes become slower because of entropy in evolutionary time and they just have to pray for some divine-natural selection to keep them running to salvation.
    
13. How the superior speed of jungle animals, the superior vision of cats, the superior olfactory capabilities of dogs, the ultrasound organs of the bats or the extraordinary colors and properties of tropical and deep-Atlantic fish would develop by entropic degeneration of the complex (human-like) UG
    
14. Did humans ever run like antelopes before their relevant genes degenerated?
    
15. And what the relevance of such properties of exotic, or deep-Atlantic, animals or plants would be for the one (or few) million early humans living in the middle east?
    
16. Was there a super-genome that coded for beings with dog smell, tiger speed, bat radars, parrot colors, monkey equilibrium and human brain? When and where did that exist?
    
17. If the human genome degenerates towards ultimate death, then why the so small and simple bacterial or viral genomes have not yet disappeared?
    
18. What would be the pragmatic value of such theory: what should we do to be salvaged from degeneration? Should we pray?
    
19. If we do need to pray, why not pray to the god each of us believes in and let science find out how the creation really came about and how it works?
    
20. The intelligent design hypothesis postulates that complex functions and organs cannot derive from simpler ones. Isn’t this what we observe in every developing embryo?
    
21. Very few genes have become so essential that knocking them out produces lethal effects. It would seem that the mammal, like every other genome, is less complex than a watch after all.
    
22. Many genes are essential for embryonic development and then they are permanently shut down. Couldn’t those be considered as a scaffold for building the complex adult functions from simpler, less functional structures? Couldn’t we imagine that such was the way that complexity was built up in evolution?
    
23. A watch with a broken needle is useless. A man without eyes, though less ‘fit’, is still viable and functional. A complex eye would not seem as indispensible as a simple needle is.
    
24. Science first asks what, then how, then why, then who; the IDUG hypothesis, first asks who (the most difficult question) without having idea of what he has created, how it works and why he made the way it is.
    
25. «une seule lettre de l'alphabet est spécifiée sans être complexe. Une longue phrase faite de lettres aléatoires est complexe sans être spécifiée. Un sonnet de Shakespeare est à la fois complexe et spécifié.» If Shakespeare actually wrote the sonnet himself, he most probably went through many drafts, changing and rearranging the words several times. Moreover, the words that S used, probably originated from more ancient languages and had been worked out in old English through linguistic evolution, changing orthography and sonority several times, without S even being aware of that fact. The concepts behind the words had similar origins and evolution. Of course, the sonnet might have been dictated to S in its final form by god. But if God was intelligent (with the human sense of the term) then himself would go though many drafts in order to design the sonnet as every intelligent designer does. And, who knows, Nature, the only undeniable superhuman force we can actually observe and interrogate, may itself be intelligent enough to design complex genomes through more or less acceptable drafts.
    
26. There are various Christian-like types of creationist groups that want us to consider their arguments and believes seriously but they are not in agreement among them. More over there are many other religions each of which has its own views and arguments about creation. Which creation theories should we take seriously? I would, personally, prefer mine
    
27. The Archbishop Ussher calculated that the world was created the 23 octobre 4004 BC. at 9pm
    
28. Do I have to believe this? If the bible is symbolic and subject to interpretation, then, what interpretation should I believe? Mine? On what evidence? Maybe the scientific evidence available now?
    
29. Then, what is left to believe from the religious books?
    
30. If I cannot believe the ancient ecclesiastical scriptures that everybody did so thus far, why should believe any similar myth-like fiction told by any new preacher?