I’m not done mining the rich little vein of error ore that Evolve managed to compress into one paragraph. Evolve writes: “DNA is a chemical molecule whose components are present in nature. It is not a software program.”
Now, it is certainly true that DNA is a chemical molecule whose components are present in nature. Here is a brief description from Wikipedia:
DNA is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions . . . Each nucleotide is composed of a nitrogen-containingnucleobase—either guanine(G), adenine (A), thymine (T), or cytosine (C)—as well as a monosaccharide sugar called deoxyribose and a phosphate group. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain by covalent bonds between the sugar of one nucleotide and the phosphate of the next, resulting in an alternating sugar-phosphate backbone. According to base pairing rules (A with T and C with G), hydrogen bonds bind the nitrogenous bases of the two separate polynucleotide strands to make double-stranded DNA . . . The two strands of DNA run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of nucleobases (informally, bases). It is the sequence of these four nucleobases along the backbone that encodes biological information. Under the genetic code, RNA strands are translated to specify the sequence of amino acids within proteins.
Everyone has seen an old-fashioned floppy disk, which consists of a round piece of plastic coated with iron oxide that can be magnetized. When one saves data to a floppy, a machine called a recording head creates a magnetic pattern in the iron oxide. The pattern of magnetized iron oxide is a digital code that can later be read by the computer. Back in the old days computer software came on floppy disks. I remember back in the 90’s installing one of the earlier versions of Windows which was shipped on 20 floppy disks.
Suppose I had said something like: “A floppy disk consists of chemical molecules whose components are present in nature (e.g., plastic polymers; iron oxide). It is not a software program.” Now there are two ways to interpret my statement. If I meant that the polymers and the iron oxide themselves were not the software program, I would be correct. The statement is trivially true. But suppose I had a meaning similar to Evolve’s meaning along the lines of “the information in a floppy disk is reducible to its chemical components.” You would be excused for thinking I was a blithering idiot. Not only is the statement false; it is obviously false and no sane person would say it.
Yet that is exactly what Evolve would have us believe concerning the information in DNA. It beggars belief that someone is still trying to peddle the “information is chemicals” pabulum long after it has shown to be, without the slightest doubt, false. What is more staggering still is that Evolve tries to pass it off with an air of intellectual superiority. The irony of someone pushing an idea with a confidence that is inversely proportionate to its veracity is rather amusing (if one finds irony amusing, and readers of these pages know I do). And what is most stunning of all? What is most stunning of all is that Evolve probably believes what he is saying. He has to. His religion is very demanding.
As Phillip Johnson said, “I would love to be a materialist; my life would be so much easier. I just can’t handle the faith commitments.”