aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
Intelligent Design states, in part, that biological structures are so extraordinarily put together that they could only have been designed that way by some intelligence. However, I think at the DNA level this may be a weak argument.
I'm struck by the fact that whenever someone discovers a harmful gene and tries to correct the problem by knocking it out, the organism begins to experience a number of other problems as well. For instance, disabling the "suicide gene" to extend life has the opposite effect, as this gene is apparently instrumental in preventing cancer.
This behavior of DNA and genes seems very familar to me as a programmer. It's just like spaghetti code. This type of software code, instead of being well-organized and easy to read, is a sort of stream-of-consciousness consisting of one statement after another, sending execution flying randomly from one spot to the next with "go to" statements. The finished product may work very well, but it is fiendishly difficult to maintain. Any change to the code will have unpredictable results, and it could take many gruelling hours to figure out what went wrong. This is partly because spaghetti code is usually not written all at once, but evolves over time, as patches are stuck into place that fix specific problems as they come up. This is done with little thought for future maintainability; it is only the short-term gain that is considered.
Of course, the finished product works well, otherwise it wouldn't be in use. This is not the same, however, as saying it is well-designed, or even designed at all, by most standards of design.
If DNA were designed, rather than having evolved over time in response to short-term environmental pressures, one would expect it to be much better organized. If it were not designed, then one would expect it to look exactly like it does -- a confused jumble with redundancies and unutilized fragments, just like spaghetti code. The RESULT of the coding may look the same regardless, but it is evident at a lower level what has actually been going on.
I'm struck by the fact that whenever someone discovers a harmful gene and tries to correct the problem by knocking it out, the organism begins to experience a number of other problems as well. For instance, disabling the "suicide gene" to extend life has the opposite effect, as this gene is apparently instrumental in preventing cancer.
This behavior of DNA and genes seems very familar to me as a programmer. It's just like spaghetti code. This type of software code, instead of being well-organized and easy to read, is a sort of stream-of-consciousness consisting of one statement after another, sending execution flying randomly from one spot to the next with "go to" statements. The finished product may work very well, but it is fiendishly difficult to maintain. Any change to the code will have unpredictable results, and it could take many gruelling hours to figure out what went wrong. This is partly because spaghetti code is usually not written all at once, but evolves over time, as patches are stuck into place that fix specific problems as they come up. This is done with little thought for future maintainability; it is only the short-term gain that is considered.
Of course, the finished product works well, otherwise it wouldn't be in use. This is not the same, however, as saying it is well-designed, or even designed at all, by most standards of design.
If DNA were designed, rather than having evolved over time in response to short-term environmental pressures, one would expect it to be much better organized. If it were not designed, then one would expect it to look exactly like it does -- a confused jumble with redundancies and unutilized fragments, just like spaghetti code. The RESULT of the coding may look the same regardless, but it is evident at a lower level what has actually been going on.
At the molecular level we're all Rube Goldberg machines.
