For one, the mind-boggling complexity of something like DNA seems to me to be an unlikely production from only the forces currently accepted by science. I understand this is in no way an ironclad argument because it COULD have happened through just the forces accepted by current science.
But DNA -- or RNA, if we're talking about the original molecule -- is
not mind-bogglingly complex, it's just mind-bogglingly
long. I wouldn't call a mile long chain more complex than a foot long chain.
For two, I am not a follower of scientism and respect and learn from those who I believe to be advanced and inspired souls that tell us of the advent of physical life on earth and that it involved conscious intelligent fostering.
So your opinion is a blind faith in the revelations of "advanced, inspired souls." Ie: it's
a priori, un-reviewed, untested and unfalsifiable. Actual evidence cannot change it.
Question: How did you choose which revelations to follow?
DNA is literal digital code that is hierarchical just like the code behind this forum.
Is it the molecule that's hierarchical, or the systems it codes for?
we might even 'randomly mutate' these parameters and let the best combos be 'naturally selected' But you understand that tweaking these parameters can never write a a new program, or the software application that supports this functionality, far less the operating system in turn supporting that
i.e. this leap from micro to macro adaptation is not just ' unlikely' to happen by this method- it's inherently impossible
I don't understand why it's impossible. You have four letters and the arrangements are constantly being tweaked. What keeps it from becoming a new program by the same mechanisms that created the current one? How do small changes know when to stop, so as to avoid accumulating into a big change?
Again this is not just a quirk of human programming, it is inherent to any hierarchical information system. And physics is another good example. You cannot author the mechanisms of quantum mechanics using classical physics.
Author?
Organism's didn't pop into existence like the laws of physics, and they're constantly changing.
what drives these changes according to the theory?
chance or 'random' mutations if you prefer.
STOP IT, already!
You know perfectly well what drives these changes. You learned the mechanisms in high school, and every subsequent biology course you've taken assumes them.
Mechanisms: the processes of evolution