Need a hand debating this Christian's DNA theory...

I am in debate with a Christian who's biggest claim of evidence for creation is that DNA is a coded language that requires an intelligent designer.

He mentioned a book by Anthony Flew called "There is a God"....and this is where he got this theory. I'm googling my ass off to study this so I can see if it's true or false. I'm assuming there is a scientific explanation but am still looking.

Can anyone help?

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Permalink Reply by matt.clerke on June 23, 2011 at 1:11am

If he wants to talk about codes then let him.....codes are structures which humans RECOGNISE...not necessarily create.

A simple example is ascii codes, the CODE 'M' is represented by 01000001, which is merely a pattern of 1's and 0's. There is NO REASON to believe that this pattern could not appear in nature. From this we can reason that DNA is merely a pattern of <whatever DNA is made up of>.

Athiests win this argument. BTW is there a name for this argument? "Just because something CAN be created does NOT mean it was created"

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Permalink Reply by Landothedead on February 18, 2011 at 4:18pm

And here's the kicker:

"I’m about to go on vacation for the long weekend, so I’d like to clarify my #3 from earlier. Your inductional inference is wrong because it’s backwards.
If you look at something and see it has long legs, gray skin, flappy ears and a trunk you can infer it’s an elephant.
You can’t look at a cat, call it an elephant and then infer it has long legs, grey skin and a trunk. That’s silly.
You’re looking at something, calling it a code and then inferring it is designed instead of finding the design and then inferring we should call it a code, which is what you have to do if you want this to actually have any meaning. Dempski has been failing spectacularly at it for a while now."

My diagnosis: demolished.
Don't screw with scientists.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on February 18, 2011 at 11:25pm

His argument is just another version of the "I don't know of a natural explanation for this, therefore god did it." This reasoning is always wrong. That should be your first response. His reasoning is the same as that used to support all the other gods of the gaps. Second, nature does indeed make patterns. Nature also encourages the propagation of more and more complex patterns that provide the pattern with an advantage over simpler ones.