Re: CONTRARY EVIDENCE (WASRe: Evide)nce!

Mark Isaak wrote:

On 3/17/24 4:25 PM, Ron Dean wrote:

 > [...]
The most vexing problem I have with evolution is the dogma of a blind, random, unguided process.

 Perhaps you will feel better, then, knowing that every evolutionist also has a vexing problem with evolution as a dogma of a blind, random, unguided process.  (In their case, the vexation typically comes from knowing that other people mistake evolution for that.)
 

I'm an engineer. In engineering we never see this, there no chance that a complex program can undergo random changes without dire consequence. There might possibly be on rare occasion where an unguided change might have no effect. Engineering starts out with an objective or goal,  so must evolution. If there's no goal, then what distinguishes a beneficial mutation from a bad mutation. Survival one might say? But no! offspring with bad mutations can do frequently survive, protected by the mother. And they can have offspring; only the worst die out.

 Your "I'm an engineer" comment sounds like an ecologist specializing in whale migrations glancing at a paper on fern genetics and commenting, "I'm a biologist. In biology we never see this."
 Take a few years to study evolution algorithms.  There is an entire field of engineering dedicated to the study and utilization of what you say does not exist.
 

The members that usually survival depends largely upon luck, surviving to adulthood without being eaten by other beast while at rest or asleep at night and living long enough to reproduce is real. The fittest is in reality survival of the luckiest. In other cases massive numbers of eggs are laid. Sea turtles for example, lay eggs by thousands and they hatch and rush forwards into the sea, except for the large numbers that become food for birds and other animals. Another consideration is the fact that each cell has it's own DNA proofreading and repair systems, a defective cell can repair itself or it is destroyed.
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Another vexing issue for me is the will to survive. In the case of the turtles, it's as if they _know_ they are in danger, and seek the protection of the sea. How do the know. Instinct where did instinct come from. Going back the first living cell. What was the impetuous of dead inorganic chemicals to created a living cell. Did the first living cell have the will to survive? Where did this will come from?

 Have you thought of publishing your doubts in a scientific venue? Probably not, maybe because if you have an ounce of sense you would realize that your points have been raised and satisfactorily answered long ago, probably within a couple months of when _Origins_ was published.  But more likely because your unshakeable conviction that everyone who disagrees with you is a dogmatist makes you think it doesn't matter to you what the scientists say in any case.
 

You just pass over everything without any explanation. You cannot fault the implied message, so what do you do: you shoot the messenger. Which is about the only thing I ever get from you!