[RainbowcityKun]

- Cells work like this because DNA is under constant attack from mutations. - Mutations most commonly arise during cell replication.

It's fascinating to realize that the "messiness" of DNA isn't a bug, but a feature—a side effect of evolution's raw material supply chain.

Mutations, repeats, transposons, and imperfect repairs all contribute to a noisy genomic landscape. But it's exactly this noise that enables biological diversity. No mutations, no variation. No variation, no selection. No selection, no evolution.

The genome is not a blueprint—it's a living, adapting scratchpad. Messiness is the canvas on which nature paints diversity.

[esafak]

Don't forget sexual reproduction.

[nickpsecurity]

Let me add to that. It requires a universe with specific laws that remain stable and encourage optimization. Then, a planet hospitible to life. Then, specific creatures with biological machinery more complex than anything humans have created. The machinery has plenty of reliability and adaptation baked in.

Godless evolution suggests randomness produced all of it overtime. Yet, that's never worked in anything we've built. Even our GA's required laws, an environment, a computer, software, and fine-tuning. Pre-existing or by intelligent design (human inventors). Without these, it produced no results.

So, I'll correct you by saying empirical data suggests evolution didnt produce this. We're seeing God's design skills in adaptive, resilient, complex, self-replicating systems. His work is truly beautiful to behold. Humans still can't produce something similar from scratch. Actually, they can't even be sure how the existing design works.

[kaibee]

> Godless evolution suggests randomness produced all of it overtime.

Nope. Randomness _and_ a selection function. Natural selection, ie: surviving to create the next generation.

> Yet, that's never worked in anything we've built.

It works completely fine in things we've built. We don't have the processing power to simulate something on the scale of computational complexity happening a small tide pond though. But you can see 'evolution by natural selection' in a rule set as simple as Game of Life.

> Even our GA's required laws, an environment, a computer, software, and fine-tuning. Pre-existing or by intelligent design (human inventors). Without these, it produced no results.

The laws/environment/computer are the equivalent of having a universe with physical laws. If you want to claim that god created the universe and tuned the constants of the universe, well, maybe. Or maybe every possible universe exists and we're just not around in the ones that don't lead to conscious life, in the same way that Game of Life universe is too simple/constrained to evolve conscious life on the scales we can simulate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHb07ynsPgo

[nickpsecurity]

"Randomness _and_ a selection function"

It takes more than that for the chemical bonds to form, for the encoding to exist, for the bootstrapping environments to form, for the transitions to happen, and so on. Also, if a selection function exists, where did it come from and why does it work? Why does the math work? Why isn't math less useful or changing constantly?

"But you can see 'evolution by natural selection' in a rule set as simple as Game of Life."

That's false. You're repeating the same false premises as in the original claim I refuted. If godless and random could do it, then the questions below would all be No.

Does the game run in an environment made by intelligent designers? Does that environment need to be maintained?

Does it require rules made and maintained by intelligent designers?

Does it take an initial state in those rules to get to the specific outcomes you are looking for?

Does it produce simple, temporary patterns that are useless? Or complex machinery that's actually useful?

Or did all of the above happen randomly, keep happening, and produce increasingly complex and useful things?

"Or maybe every possible universe exists"

Science starts from observations to produce hypotheses. That is a faith-based belief popular in science fiction. It's also sort of a cop out because they're going to imagine something as infinite as God, but not mention God, to hope this would pop out randomly. If one does, they still have the "maintain it with stability over long periods" problem for that or those universes. They'll probably drag it deeper into infinity to say it will finally happen accidentally. Let's do science instead.

What we observe is a universe that is highly chaotic, almost every cubic inch is deadly, and the safest places are dead. We see nothing happening from it with Earth and humans being mind-boggling exceptions. Looking deeper at classical physics, we find reality itself also emerges in an orderly fashion from endless, quantum events that should be too random to support order. It also appears to work perfectly without failure for long periods of time.

We've also observed countless phenomenon that are truly random and chaotic, like July 4th fireworks, which never produce life or complex machines. Never self-replicating artifacts whose complexity increases over time. Never emergent intelligence from anything that didn't show evidence of design or have human input. We have billions of observations of chaotic events which themselves sometimes have a high magnitude of particles, chemicals, etc. Also, nothing lasts on its own due to physics with our intelligent designs requiring maintenance over time.

Our first hypothesis is that our reality should be total chaos. Our second hypothesis is something with unimaginable power is forcing a specific order to consistently come out of chaos. Second hypothesis is that the universe doesn't support life without being forced to. Third hypothesis is an intelligent being went uphill against the deadly universe to create us and our planet. Fourth hypothesis is that being is sustaining us despite a whole universe of threats to our lives. Fifth is that the creator is perfect. God is the Occam's Razor explanation of all of this.

There's also revelatory knowledge. God revealed Himself to us via His Word which came with prophecies, miracles, and testable predictions about lifestyles. Jesus, who died for humanity's sins, had a perfect life on top of the same, other attributes. Neither nobody nor nothing else had these traits to support their claimed revelations. So, outside empirical knowledge, revelatory knowledge reinforces the God theory into a highly-proven, saving belief. The life transformations that follow add anecdotal evidence to it.

[SalmoShalazar]

Really? Creationists on HN? There are mountains of peer reviewed research articles you can read to see that evolution is real and evidence based. To claim otherwise is idiocy.

[nickpsecurity]

Most top scientists were deists or Christians at one point. Newton's Principia Mathematica was even written to glorify God. Clearly, neither atheists nor evolutionists found the number of people making that claim to be good enough to ignore another claim.

Scientists tell us all ideas, whether a proposal or dissent, are evaluated strictly on evidential merit. Yet, evolution as origin of life had little evidence, many flaws, was forced on people anyway, and dissenting papers aren't allowed.

If it is dogmatic, and dissent isnt allowed, it is not science at all. Just a godless religion or political domination done with scientific wording in their papers. A consensus by people who force everyone to think one way isnt a scientific consensus. A theory whose rebuttals aren't even allowed in scientific journals isnt a scientific theory.

Until alternatives are allowed, and a real debate happens, I reject macro-evolution as either the truth or even a scientific consensus. I'll throw in some example counters, most being strong, which I wasn't taught in high school or college.

https://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Oct/3/ten-major-flaws-evo...

https://www.icr.org/article/four-scientific-reasons-that-ref...

[RainbowcityKun]

I want to clarify first: I'm not trying to defend "evolutionary theory" itself — what I'm pointing out is:

> Mutation, chaos, and randomness may actually be the fertile ground where biological diversity emerges.

At the same time, I fully agree with your key point:

> "The adaptive, complex, self-replicating systems we see > don’t persist just because of pure randomness."

In my view, this doesn’t necessarily mean a “God” designed it in a human-like way. But it does point to a deeper structural order and cosmic regularity.

Maybe we can call it a kind of “design of laws,” rather than a personal designer.

After all, nature seems to operate within a set of elegant, consistent rules:

- F = ma (Newton's 2nd Law): A foundational rule in classical mechanics. - E = mc² (Einstein): Energy and mass are interchangeable. - V = IR (Ohm’s Law): Governs how voltage, current, and resistance relate. - a² + b² = c² (Pythagorean Theorem): Geometry’s timeless backbone. - Entropy always increases (2nd Law of Thermodynamics): Order tends toward disorder unless something resists it.

So maybe we can say:

- In religious terms, this is “God’s design.” - In philosophical terms, it’s the “underlying order of the universe.” - In scientific terms, it’s the “laws of nature, structural stability, and the boundary conditions of evolution.”

[nickpsecurity]

Why are those rules there? Why don't they break? Why are they small, elegant, and beautiful? Why are many connected to each other in harmony?

This doesn't fit what random, survival-oriented processes produce. It doesn't fit what random, chaotic systems produce. It looks more like an intelligent being designed and maintained the universe. That should amaze you.

They also hardwired us with a specific morality. Children are born looking for God, wanting to be loved, and with a sense of justice (fairness). That the creation has these morals implies the creator either has them or knows of them. If people have done evil, they should be quite afraid of what that implies.

Divine revelation came later with miracles as proof. God's Word told us we have to seek God, love others, do good, and do justice. That fits with our natural design. That specific God fits the profile of one who would design that elegant universe with only human life in it. That should reinforce the need to repent and follow Christ, or burn alive. In His Word, he also said He created us very personally before He began driving those laws you're talking about.