Observe, this screen-shot, a citation from Dawkins:
(Pardon the bars.)
Let's type that out:
CRD: "We may say that a living body or organ is well designed if it has attributes that an intelligent and knowledgeable engineer might have built into it in order to achieve a sensible purpose . . . [A]ny engineer can recognize an object that has been designed . . . just by looking at the structure of the object." [The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p. 21.]
Yes, Dawkins et al try to suggest all sorts of rebutting arguments, but in the end, that stands there.
And, when we start by looking at just the cell, we see a gated, encapsulated, molecular nanotech metabolising entity with an integral self replicating facility that uses codes, algorithms, storage tapes and more.
So much so, that this is what Michael Denton had to say, in his 1985 Evolution: a theory in crisis:
To grasp the reality of life as it has
been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand
million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter [[so each atom
in it would be “the size of a tennis ball”] and resembles a giant
airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York.
What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity
and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions
of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and
closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If
we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.
We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching
in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading
to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants
and processing units.
The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a
kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we
would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of
coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw
materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly
ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer
regions of the cell.
We
would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so
many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect
unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines . . . . We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial
languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information
storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated
assembly of components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices used
for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of
prefabrication and modular construction . . . . However,
it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any
of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of
replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours . . . .
Unlike our own pseudo-automated
assembly plants, where external controls are being continually applied,
the cell's manufacturing capability is entirely self-regulated . . . .
[[Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler, 1986, pp. 327 – 331. This work is a classic that is still well worth reading. Emphases added. (NB: The 2009 work by Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute, Signature in the Cell, brings this classic argument up to date. The main thesis of the book is that: "The universe is comprised of matter, energy, and the information that gives order [[better: functional organisation] to matter and energy, thereby bringing life into being. In the cell, information is carried by DNA, which functions like a software program. The signature in the cell is that of the master programmer of life." Given the sharp response that has provoked, the onward e-book responses to attempted rebuttals, Signature of Controversy, would also be excellent, but sobering and sometimes saddening, reading.) ]
[[Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler, 1986, pp. 327 – 331. This work is a classic that is still well worth reading. Emphases added. (NB: The 2009 work by Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute, Signature in the Cell, brings this classic argument up to date. The main thesis of the book is that: "The universe is comprised of matter, energy, and the information that gives order [[better: functional organisation] to matter and energy, thereby bringing life into being. In the cell, information is carried by DNA, which functions like a software program. The signature in the cell is that of the master programmer of life." Given the sharp response that has provoked, the onward e-book responses to attempted rebuttals, Signature of Controversy, would also be excellent, but sobering and sometimes saddening, reading.) ]
Time to think again, about the abundant evidence all around us that points to a designed world. Including, a designed world of life. END
