One of the more peculiar objections to the design inference is the strident, often repeated claim that the genetic code is not a code, and that DNA and mRNA are not storing algorithmic, coded information used in protein synthesis. These are tied to the string (yes, s-t-r-i-n-g) data structure, a key foundational array for information storage, transfer and application. So, it seems useful to address the string as a key first principles issue, with the onward point being that strings of course can and do store coded information.
Let us begin with, what a string — yes, s-t-r-i-n-g — is (though that should already be obvious from even the headline):
Geeks for Geeks: A string is a sequence of characters, often used to represent text. In programming, strings are a common data type and are used for a variety of tasks, such as representing names, addresses, and other types of information.
Wikipedia confesses: In computer programming, a string is traditionally a sequence of characters, either as a literal constant or as some kind of variable. The latter may allow its elements to be mutated and the length changed, or it may be fixed (after creation). A string is generally considered as a data type and is often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters, using some character encoding. String may also denote more general arrays or other sequence (or list) data types and structures . . . . A primary purpose of strings is to store human-readable text, like words and sentences. Strings are used to communicate information from a computer program to the user of the program. A program may also accept string input from its user. Further, strings may store data expressed as characters yet not intended for human reading . . . . Example strings and their purposes . . . Alphabetical data, like “
AGATGCCGT” representing nucleic acid sequences of DNA . . .
So, it should not be surprising to see that DNA and RNA can store strings of information-bearing elements:
Where, of course, the genetic code is expressed in such strings. The (standard) code, mRNA form is:
For very simple example, HT Khan Academy:
Of course, the above is the mRNA form, which would be transcribed and edited to cut out introns, and it leaves out onward complexities. For example, we can see how Insulin has two strands of AA’s interconnected through di-sulphide bonds, making up a 51 AA protein:
The end-product insulin protein is put together from the preproinsulin produced stepwise in the ribosome, by way of a clever alignment that uses a third, “scaffolding,” chain C sequence:
Using the code one could in principle back-translate to mRNA, however, in the DNA there are intervening Introns between the Exons expressed in the ribosome, so the human genome sequence is:
So, as usual, we see how sophisticated life is at molecular level. That said, we also see that as a key stage of protein synthesis, as ribosomes, mRNA and tRNA interact (with a complex cast of supporting molecules) AA chains are assembled with start, elongate, stop, executing a code driven algorithm. Where, AmHD defines:
[Algorithm:] A finite set of unambiguous instructions that, given some set of initial conditions, can be performed in a prescribed sequence to achieve a certain goal and that has a recognizable set of end conditions.
Illustrating:
That should be enough to show the unbiased mind that coded algorithms are in the cell, and that DNA and mRNA act as string data structures. However, there are those who have proved resistant to such commonplace summaries or to citations from the sort of panels of experts who write major textbooks in biochemistry. For record, notwithstanding, here are Lehninger and heirs:
Lehninger and heirs go on to say, pp. 194 – 5:
We may also now observe a Nobel Prize Laureate, Sydney Brenner, in his article, Life’s code script . . . yes, it’s that obvious, published in 2012 in the leading Science Journal, Nature:
[Brenner:] ” . . . The most interesting connection with biology, in my view, is in Turing’s most important paper: ‘On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem’5, published in 1936, when Turing was just 24.
Computable numbers are defined as those whose decimals are calculable by finite means. [–> that is, effectively, by algorithms] Turing introduced what became known as the Turing machine to formalize the computation. The abstract machine is provided with a tape [–> with marks on it], which it scans one square at a time, and it can write, erase or omit symbols. The scanner may alter its mechanical state, and it can ‘remember’ previously read symbols. Essentially, the system is a set of instructions written on the tape, which describes the machine. Turing also defined a universal Turing machine, which can carry out any computation for which an instruction set can be written — this is the origin of the digital computer. [–> there is also, a more powerful oracle machine, capable of one step decisions]
Turing’s ideas were carried further in the 1940s by mathematician and engineer John von Neumann, who conceived of a ‘constructor’ machine capable of assembling another according to a description. A universal constructor with its own description would build a machine like itself. To complete the task, the universal constructor needs to copy its description and insert the copy into the offspring machine. Von Neumann noted that if the copying machine made errors, these ‘mutations’ would provide inheritable changes in the progeny.
Arguably the best examples of Turing’s and von Neumann’s machines are to be found in biology. Nowhere else are there such complicated systems, in which every organism contains an internal description of itself. The concept of the gene as a symbolic representation of the organism — a code script — is a fundamental feature of the living world and must form the kernel of biological theory. [–> note, again, author, context and publisher]
Turing died in 1954, one year after the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick, but before biology’s subsequent revolution. Neither he nor von Neumann had any direct effect on molecular biology, but their work allows us to discipline our thoughts about machines, both natural and artificial.
Turing invented the stored-program computer, and von Neumann showed that the description is separate from the universal constructor. [–> that ‘description’ of course is encoded] This is not trivial. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger confused the program and the constructor in his 1944 book What is Life?, in which he saw chromosomes as “architect’s plan and builder’s craft in one”. This is wrong. The code script contains only a description of the executive function, not the function itself.
That’s why Yockey adapted Shannon’s architectural diagram for communication systems:
So, we may freely understand that DNA and associated molecules such as mRNA express string data structures, store coded biological information, that such information as used in protein synthesis expresses algorithms, and that therefore we are dealing with computation and associated computer language in the course of protein synthesis.
We may quote a Wiki confession:
[Wiki confesses:] Since 2001, 40 non-natural amino acids have been added into proteins by creating a unique codon (recoding) and a corresponding transfer-RNA:aminoacyl – tRNA-synthetase pair to encode it with diverse physicochemical and biological properties in order to be used as a tool to exploring protein structure and function or to create novel or enhanced proteins.[22][23]
H. Murakami and M. Sisido extended some codons to have four and five bases. Steven A. Benner [–>another guy] constructed a functional 65th (in vivo) codon.[24]
In 2015 N. Budisa, D. Söll and co-workers reported the full substitution of all 20,899 tryptophan residues (UGG codons) with unnatural thienopyrrole-alanine in the genetic code of the bacterium Escherichia coli.[25]
In 2016 the first stable semisynthetic organism was created. It was a (single cell) bacterium with two synthetic bases (called X and Y). The bases survived cell division.[26][27]
In 2017, researchers in South Korea reported that they had engineered a mouse with an extended genetic code that can produce proteins with unnatural amino acids.[28]
In May 2019, researchers reported the creation of a new “Syn61” strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli. This strain has a fully synthetic genome that is refactored (all overlaps expanded), recoded (removing the use of three out of 64 codons completely), and further modified to remove the now unnecessary tRNAs and release factors. It is fully viable and grows 1.6× slower than its wild-type counterpart “MDS42”
Indeed, the function of DNA as an information storage entity is so well established, that as Wiki also confesses, it has been adapted to general archival storage:
DNA digital data storage is the process of encoding and decoding binary data to and from synthesized strands of DNA.[1][2]
While DNA as a storage medium has enormous potential because of its high storage density, its practical use is currently severely limited because of its high cost and very slow read and write times.[3]
In June 2019, scientists reported that all 16 GB of text from Wikipedia’s English-language version had been encoded into synthetic DNA.[4] In 2021, scientists reported that a custom DNA data writer had been developed that was capable of writing data into DNA at 18 Mbps.[5]
Encoding methodsCountless methods for encoding data in DNA are possible. The optimal methods are those that make economical use of DNA and protect against errors.[6] If the message DNA is intended to be stored for a long period of time, for example, 1,000 years [–> a lot longer than most of our digital storage media will likely last], it is also helpful if the sequence is obviously artificial and the reading frame is easy to identify.[6]
CNet gives details:
the next storage technology might use an approach as old as life on earth: DNA. Startup Catalog announced Friday it’s crammed all of the text of Wikipedia’s English-language version onto the same genetic molecules our own bodies use.
It accomplished the feat with its first DNA writer, a machine that would fit easily in your house if you first got rid of your refrigerator, oven and some counter space. And although it’s not likely to push aside your phone’s flash memory chips anytime soon, the company believes it’s useful already to some customers who need to archive data.
DNA strands are tiny and tricky to manage, but the biological molecules can store other data than the genes that govern how a cell becomes a pea plant or chimpanzee. Catalog uses prefabricated synthetic DNA strands that are shorter than human DNA, but uses a lot more of them so it can store much more data.
Relying on DNA instead of the latest high-tech miniaturization might sound like a step backward. But DNA is compact, chemically stable — and given that it’s the foundation of the Earth’s biology, it’s arguably not as likely to become as obsolete as the spinning magnetized platters of hard drives or CDs that are disappearing today . . .
In short, they used a different encoding and have stored Wikipedia in DNA.
At this point, we need to ask, why is it that we have seen certain objectors from the penumbra of attack sites making strident, unyielding objections to understanding DNA and mRNA as string data structure information storage entities, part of a wider information processing, protein synthesis process in the cell?
The manifest answer is simple and sad: because such things point to design, which is being ideologically locked out at all costs.
So, it is time to recognise a key first fact about DNA and mRNA and let the chips lie where they fly. END
L&FP, 66: String — yes, s-t-r-i-n-g — data structures as key information storage arrays (thus the significance of DNA and mRNA)
Who are these objectors? Where is this “penumbra” of attack sites exactly? What does that even mean?
Kairosfocus @OP and 1,
I wouldn’t be worried if Chuck Darwin got hopelessly lost on your post. He’s going to be even more confused after my comment.
After watching Dr. James Tour’s most recent video:
Origin of Life: Controversial Chemist Shakes up Scientific Community | Problems with Primordial Soup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugOrSD7YL4
some thoughts occurred to me regarding the nature of the linear strings of code in DNA and RNA.
1. First off, linear code is only one dimensional while biochemistry involves interactions between 3D organic compounds. This means that the linear code has no direct correlation with utility, but represents the manufacture and repair of cellular components and biochemical cycles.
2. Second, non-trivial code is organized in modules that are designed to optimize maintenance and variation. These modules can be more easily modified and recombined.
3. Next, Dr. Tour points out the combinatorial richness within a single yeast cell. To do this, consider the numbers 90 and 79,000,000,000. While 90 is respectfully large, even Chuckdarwin might be forced to concede that 79,000,000,000 is somewhat larger. Now, Dr. Tour points out that the estimated number of elemental particles in the universe is 10^90, which most people would agree is monumentally large. However, the number 10^79,000,000,000 is the estimated number of protein-protein interactome combinations within one yeast cell.
4. What this understanding highlights is the temporal inaccessibility of protein-protein interactome combinations from random changes to a linear code. Thus, it’s reasonable to conclude that organisms appear to be designed top down rather than bottom up.
The code analogy would be that non-trivial functional code is a top-down design with a bottom-up implementation.
-Q
Rearranging your word salad and lame graphics doesn’t make your arguments any more compelling.
You hear the word “code” and assume the verb tense of the word. Not the way in which Crick and all other scientists use it. Yes, DNA sequences align amino acids in a way that functional proteins are made. But that does not mean that they were “programmed” to do this. You see what you want to see, not what is actually there to be seen. Confirmation bias, thy name is [SNIP, a simple security request often trollishly ignored].
KM/FH/AF, dismissive, insubstantial rhetoric; I see here, what UB has been facing. Where of course, there is considerable fresh information on the table that you overlooked, starting with explanation of what a string is, going on eventually to cases where DNA strings are being used as general digital storage elements, including all 16 GB of Wikipedia being so stored. Meanwhile, your quarrel is not with me or some other arbitrary design thinker, but with the consensus of relevant fields and experts on the subject — I thought your party was that of science? And some of those experts were cited above, including one certain Sydney Brenner in Nature, in 2012. Nor, do I assume a verbal tense, I am looking at substance, at nouns that describe entities and states of affairs, at definitions, at elucidated facts of the matter: linear chains of four possible state elements used to effect stepwise creation of AA chains for proteins, where Insulin is given as a real world example. Similarly the relevant actions involved include transcription of DNA, post transcription editing to mature mRNA, translation as AA chains are created step by step in the ribosome, involving start, elongate, stop (after a finite set of steps). That is a case of an algorithm and it is a case of code in action. Code in the cell (a generally acknowledged phenomenon) requires an adequate causal explanation. Yours is: ______? KF
PS, Do you have a substantial disagreement with the reviewers and editors of Nature, in publishing Brenner’s article? Kindly note this vest pocket bio:
PPS, Definition of code, AmHD:
CD, scroll down to 4 to see an example. As we all know, UD faces a circle of attack sites that have been around for years. KF
Q, I find it interesting that the number of atoms is usually given as about 10^80. Then, while text is linear, at least in languages such as English, the existence of description languages such as AutoCAD’s embedded format, means that alphanumeric text can and does describe 3 d entities. But that points to the core: language, with implicit or explicit rules for representing and communicating information that expresses adequate description. And yes, chains of elements in strings give exponential growth to possibilities, for n elements in a 4 state per element system, 4 * 4 * . . . 4 n times, i.e. 4^n. The configuration space for 250 4-state elements is, for example, 3.27*10^150, unsurprising as 4 is the square of 4. Of that space, only a small fraction will be neaningful, coherent and accurate in describing or specifying a relevant state of affairs for configuration based, complex functional entities. That’s where blind search challenge comes from, yet another manifest issue that is stridently objected to. KF
Q, Tour is as usual deeply informed, informative, entertaining, thought provoking. KF
F/N: strings are of course foundational in computing as the Turing machine tape illustrates. And a
s-t-r-i-n-g
is readily recognisable. KF
UB’s “semiotic hypothesis” fails because there were no codons needed in RNA World.
The reason “ID” proponents are ignored because all “ID” arguments boil down to arguments from personal incredulity. The scientific mainstream has no need of “ID” hypotheses.
There is also the issue there are no “ID” scientifically testable hypotheses to be had. Just telling the scientific community their ideas are wrong is not enough.
Please take note, KF and UB.
Notice paragraphs,too, KF.
I think KF is referring to After the Bar Closes, originally a thread at The Panda’s Thumb that span off into a forum for poking fun at discussions here and for recording the various bans and disappearances of ID critics that used to happen here on a regular basis.
Things are a lot quieter these days now ID has virtually disappeared from mainstream radar.
A question for KF and UB. There are six codons that result in leucine being incorporated into a polypeptide sequence yet only one aminoacyl tRNA synthetase that charges all six tRNAs with leucine. What’s the ID explanation?
Then maybe Professor Tour can answer the question I posed to KF and UB.
There are six codons that result in leucine being incorporated into a polypeptide sequence yet only one aminoacyl tRNA synthetase that charges all six tRNAs with leucine. What’s the ID explanation?
Anyone can answer. In fact delete “ID” from the question, otherwise it’s unanswerable.
Another question regarding, randomness, promiscuity, and specificity.
What if the cellular metabolism we see now evolved from a less complex system? Say at first there was just one amino-acid. Let’s pick the simplest: glycine. What is the simplest way to string glycine units together to form polyglycine? What use is polyglycine in a metabolic system?
Querius @3
So many opportunities for things to go wrong, but somehow they usually don’t, somehow homeostasis is maintained.
Good grief, Origenes, the old one in a gadzillion routine.
Evolution is not a search. You don’t know how many untested (theoretical) protein sequences have function and you don’t need an exhaustive search to find one.
And you don’t need to find the useful sequence all at once. You can stumble on something that works and tune it – promiscuity to specificity.
AF/KM/FH, mockery does not answer to substance. Again, what is a s-t-r-i-n-g? With each element in a DNA/mRNA chain taking up one of four possible values, with prong height differences creating a readable pattern, we have the molecular base for coded information storage using this molecular technology. This has been extended to the point where some have stored 16 GB worth of Wikipedia, in exploring DNA as an archival technology. Where, too, as Turing showed 90 years ago, strings as storage elements are at the core of digital computation. From the 1950s on, the genetic code that uses this capability was elucidated, as was its use in AA chaining algorithms used in protein synthesis. This has been widely noted on and is the consensus, summarised in landmark textbooks such as Lehninger and heirs, and of course with approval of the editors of Nature — the most prestigious scientific journal — by Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner as cited. This, you have rhetorically side stepped, utterly and now irretrievably discrediting yourself, not even a final opportunity to reconsider could move you. Meanwhile you wish to spin tales on the fantasy RNA world. Sad, but all too tellingly real. KF
PS, further rhetoric to sidestep combinatorial challenge has much the same defects, nor is it remotely capable of making the issues go away.
Alan Fox @17
This time I wasn’t talking about evolution, Alan. In #16, I was expressing my awe for homeostasis. How, within one yeast cell, is it possible that 10^79,000,000,000 protein-protein interactome combinations are orchestrated such that homeostasis is maintained?
For you it’s all “just chemistry”, but there are people, like me, who see things differently.
O, notice, AF/KM/FH cannot take up Tour substantially on the chemistry of a Darwin pond or the like, resorting instead to RNA world just so stories. You are of course correct that complex self sustaining functional oeganisation of a smart gated envelope protected metabolising, self replicating entity using coded information in key processes needs to be explained adequately. But it is now clear that we are dealing with zero concessions denialism and a subtext of closed minded contempt driven ideological polarisation in service to agendas that by virtue of such resorts cannot stand on their merits, not a serious engagement of substance. KF
There’s a lot I don’t know, much more than professional biochemists, certainly. I’m learning stuff I never knew and stuff I forgot about where the knowledge has expanded in the ( more-than) half-century since I was a biochemistry undergraduate. I can assure you chemistry is a lot more than “just”.
The above paragraph needs to be explained – or at least turned into meaningful English.
Fox flees henhouse for weekend away before snow melts.
KF @20
It’s horrific and incredibly stupid what’s going on, and I hope that one day there will be an explanation for all of this.
AF/KM/FH, I am pretty sure you full well understand the outline of a living cell but choose to mock to not have to address substance. That bluster and dodging is a bluff, duly called. How do you get to encapsulation with smart gating, no answer. How do you get to the cellular, metabolic process flow network, no answer. How do you record all this and create an integrated von Neumann kinematic self replicator — update to Paley’s time keeping, self replicating watch — no answer. How do you get to codes, strings, underlying language, no answer. Venter et al show that design is capable of doing these things. KF
AF/12
Thanks…….
KF @
Allow me to add the question: how is the body plan encoded in DNA?
Once I asked professor Larry Moran:
Larry Moran’s “answer”:
Let that sink in.
I, as an engineer with decent IT background could talk about data strings all night long.
MAIN REASON why the information stored in DNA molecule is a literal code is the following:
The information in DNA molecule is ENCODED. PERIOD.
During transcription is being DECODED based on decoding table. PERIOD.
(decoding table: UAA stands for Phenylalanine …. CUU stands for Leucine … etc …. )
It is so simple, but obviously, natural science graduates having hard time to understand very simple things … or they do understand, but intentionally lie to lay public (because they hate religious people??)
Again, the information in DNA is encoded and you need a decoder with decoding table/key in order to extract the real data from it — in order to produce a protein … someone had to design this decoding table, then encode the information and to store it in DNA, and then, to design the whole transcription/decoding process … All claims that DNA isn’t a literal code are beyond absurd … it is a literal code and doesn’t matter what biologists, paleontologists, archeologists, and all the other “-logists” think or claim … they should finally shut up, because the damage is already done …
I don’t have any objections to the fact that genetic information can be described with a code, though I think that focusing too much on genes is a mistake.
The concept of genes is helpful, of course. But it is unfortunately also tempting to give in to what Whitehead called ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’, and to miss the fact that the actually existing entity is the biological organism, of which the cell is the minimal unit.
The debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Synthesis is whether evolution should be understood as a gene-centered or as an organism-centered process.
The Modern Synthesis treats genes as the “atoms” of biology, passively reshuffled by mutation and selection. It is therefore an “object theory”: it is a theory of evolution that understands biology in terms of a distinct class of objects. The Extended Synthesis is an organism-centered theory and allows (in some versions!) that organisms are agentsor subjects.
One of the important lessons from 20th century cybernetics is that agency requires self-control, or more precisely, an endogenous locus of modulation that can guide what an agent does in its environment and how it responds to environmental changes.
For cells, genetic information plays that role as part of overall cellular metabolism. But computers have nothing at all like metabolism, because a computer will be at thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment unless someone plugs it in and uses it. Cells do not need to be plugged in, because what it is to be alive is to be engaged in the activity necessary to maintain the system at far from equilibrium with its environment. Genetic transcription and translation are necessary for that self-sustaining, self-maintaining agency.
So, my chief objection to ID at this point is that it is so enamored of engineering metaphors, esp computer engineering metaphors, that it ends up failing to grasp the very category of life as such. It is not a theory of biological organisms; it is a theory of very fancy machinery.
Origenes: Let that sink in.
There is no ‘body plan’ in the genome, no blueprint or schematic. What there is is a bunch of sequences which create various proteins and other sequences which turn those off and on based on environmental data and input. You can’t look at the human genome and find a single sequence that ‘builds’ the brain or a leg.
Also, this is why you don’t need massive number of mutations to get different body plans. What you need is to have the control genes change. All the basic building blocks are already available but changing when they are made is key.
r_M, yes, there is an obvious code, but — give them their due — that is generally accepted. The issue at UD is that some objectors . . . aware of implications . . . have taken to pretending there is no code, and are suggesting to those who do not know better, that to point to the code is a gross blunder of our alleged ignorance [and/or stupidity, insanity or wickedness, doubtless]. That speaks sad volumes on the willingness to suppress the force of the substance that yes, cell based life manifestly rests on code. As for the willingness to mislead those who do not know better and are inclined to be hostile to the design inference, that too speaks even sadder volumes. KF
PM1 & JVL, show us some body plan origin based on “What you need is to have the control genes change . . . ” starting from unicellular organisms, and embracing the main kingdoms and phyla etc of life. Predictably, you will not be able to do so. Meanwhile, can you agree that we find algorithmic, protein AA chain building code and associated execution molecular scale machinery in the cell? That is the actual pivotal point for it points to the need for an empirically adequate cause at the root of biological life. The only empirically observed cause of algorithms, code and associated execution machinery is language using designers. KF
There are people, like JVL, who do not see any problem with this. They do not question things, because, in their child-like mindset, things are what they are, and simply take care of themselves. In their magical world, the body builds itself without explanation, just like grandma’s fridge fills itself up.
JVL has lost his credibility as a commentator.
Relatd: VL has lost his credibility as a commentator.
Well, clearly you don’t understand how the system works. Which means you haven’t read any decent book explaining it. Which is kind of sad since you think you understand it so well.
It’s easy to “predict” that someone won’t be able to do something when no one is able to do it.
No; as per my 29, this whole way of thinking about molecular biology is fundamentally confused because it relies on a category mistake: that of failing to apprehend the categorial distinction between organisms and machines.
The fact that symbol-manipulating intelligent minded animals can collaboratively learn how to construct algorithms and codes and can also, individually and cooperatively, improve and refine algorithms and codes, and do so in order to solve tasks they face in coping with their physical and social environments tells us nothing at all about whether any of those features of empirically observable algorithm generation were necessary for the origin of biological information during abiogenesis.
Origenes: In their magical world, the body builds itself without explanation, just like grandma’s fridge fills itself up.
I didn’t say it happened without explanation (unlike the design inference which did just happen at some undisclosed time and place). In fact, there is a very good book written for non-specialists explaining it all pretty well. And I have suggested it to many people on this forum. Clearly no one actually cares to find out.
It is actual science even if you choose to not learn about it.
Kairosfocus: show us some body plan origin based on “What you need is to have the control genes change . . . ”
As I have already said quite a few times I recommend starting with Neil Shubin’s book Some Assembly Required. It’s a good introduction to the basic idea.
IF you choose not to read it that’s your call but you can’t keep saying no one has tried to provide at least some of what you ask for. It’s up to you to actually spend the time to so some work and some reading.
Predictably, you will not be able to do so.
Read the book. You might even be able to get it from your local library at no additional cost to yourself.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/767633.Neil_Shubin
I’m reading Neil Shubin quotes . 🙂 99% atheist darwinist nonsense.
Bluff and Bluster, Thy name is JVL!
Casey Luskin quoted Shubin himself in his rebuttal of Falk’s claim about fish fins being proof for Darwinian evolution:
etc.. etc.. etc..
Sandy: I’m reading Neil Shubin quotes . ? 99% atheist darwinist nonsense.
So, you’re not reading all the pages of explanation and checking out the references? And you’re being scientific?
JVL,
“Go read a book” sucks as argumentation. You can recommend a book. That’s all you can do.
The idea here is to present your perspective. If the game changer is in a book, quote it or link it or something.
Andrew
Bornagain77: Bluff and Bluster, Thy name is JVL!
You could read the book and find out . . . or are you afraid you’d have to change your mind about something if you did read it?
Pyrrho @29
You see? This is how you Darwinists have been misinterpreting reality for 150+ years. The fact is, that biology is ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING. Why ? It is pretty simple. There is no other way around it :)))))
ONCE AGAIN – THERE IS NO OTHER WAY AROUND IT !
Look at octopus and its real time adaptive camouflage. HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU GET SUCH FEATURES WITHOUT ENGINEERING ????????
Let me guess: YOU DON’T KNOW
OF COURSE YOU DON’T :))))))
Because you CAN NOT :))))) (Only biologists can, when they dream and making up their fairy tales/just-so stories …. )
You people (Darwinists) invented this term “Biology”. As if using this word solves all the engineering problems we see on biology :))))))
You people are so confused …. because species are not made of steel, plastic and copper wires, it is not engineering ? :)))))))) you people are so confused …
You people (Darwinists) have been misinterpreting reality for 150 years.
JVL at 35,
The usual “you don’t understand.” Oh, I understand alright. Long before coming here I dealt with similar non-arguments elsewhere.
From https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020/03/25/book-review-some-assembly-required-decoding-four-billion-years-of-life-from-ancient-fossils-to-dna/
I do not understand why any of you who claim to want to understand how all this unguided evolution is supposed to work would not want to read an explanation about how some of it does work. Unless you’re afraid of having to change your mind. Are you afraid of having to change your mind? Are you?
Anyway, at the very least stop saying that no one has provided you with some evidence. It’s there and easy to get, possibly even in your local library.
Asauber: “Go read a book” sucks as argumentation. You can recommend a book. That’s all you can do. The idea here is to present your perspective. If the game changer is in a book, quote it or link it or something.
I have presented my perspective, many times. When asked why I think that way or what evidence there is SOMETIMES I tell you about an easy to find and read book which lays it out nicely. IF you really want to get a good explanation then you should read it. Unless you’re afraid. Are you afraid?
Change your mind *click* Change your mind.
I do wish you’d realize that unguided means unguided. And the human and ape common ancestor, when did it live (+/- 10,000 years)? I suspect you have no actual evidence.
Relatd: The usual “you don’t understand.” Oh, I understand alright. Long before coming here I dealt with similar non-arguments elsewhere.
Based on some things you say you don’t seem to understand what the real argument is. You seem to replace the real argument with your version of it thereby creating a straw-man version which no one actually supports.
IF you really want to know what the real argument is then you should spend more time trying to learn what it is.
I would recommend Dr Shubin’s book: it’s inexpensive (maybe free at your local library), it’s easy to read and understand, AND it’s more up-to-date than many of the quotes that get copy-and-pasted here.
I’m quite sure you won’t actually read the book which makes me wonder if you’re afraid to read it in case some of your shibboleths are undercut.
JVL at 46,
“Shubin reveals there is a plethora of pathways to rapid evolution and sudden transformations.”
He left out: Only in my imagination. This doesn’t even qualify as science fiction. Vaguely science fantasy…
JVL at 49,
Fear. That’s it. Thank you Doctor JVL… your credibility is not good.
“Hey Bob, what’s a shibboleth?”
What?
🙂 🙂
Relatd: I do wish you’d realize that unguided means unguided. And the human and ape common ancestor, when did it live (+/- 10,000 years)? I suspect you have no actual evidence.
Of course I know what unguided means. Are you intentionally being insulting or just rude?
Which ‘ape’ and human common ancestor are you talking about? There’s fossil and genomic evidence of course. And morphologic. Which you probably know but are denying for some reason.
(Oh and, by the way, when did it live is super easy to find out . . . IF you really want to know. Do you really want to know or are you just changing the subject because you’ve got nothing to say about what I said before?)
Relatd: He left out: Only in my imagination. This doesn’t even qualify as science fiction. Vaguely science fantasy…
You’re quoting a reviewer! You really are afraid to read the actual book aren’t you?
You really don’t want to hear the actual argument and learn about the actual evidence INCLUDING lab work do you?
IF you’re going to ignore actual evidence then please stop saying there isn’t any. If you are going to put your fingers in your ears and chant LA LA LA LA when someone tells you where to find some of the answers you are looking for then please stop asking for it.
“Hey Bob, what’s a shibboleth?”
So, you haven’t got a dictionary either?
JVL at 52,
Morphological? No, there isn’t. The Designer – the Christian God – reused design instructions. Evolution? No, not as presented here.
I’ve got photos of my lemur-like ancestor if you want to see them…
🙂
🙂
Relatd: Morphological? No, there isn’t. The Designer – the Christian God – reused design instructions. Evolution? No, not as presented here.
Clearly you are not interested in the actual evidence that you are always saying doesn’t exist. Clearly you are not even going to put yourself in a position of having to even make a small attempt to understand that which you claim is false. Clearly you are not actually operating in any kind of scientific mode. Clearly you should stop pretending that you care about the evidence, that you understand the unguided evolution theory, that you have any kind of open mind about the issues.
I’ve got photos of my lemur-like ancestor if you want to see them…
So, you invented a Time Machine as well?
It is pretty astonishing to me that ID supporter after ID supporter says: read this article, watch this video, read this book and everyone thinks how lovely that is. When I say: here’s a book that addresses some of your concerns I’m shouted down as being some kind of idiot or insincere agent.
IF not one of you actually cares to consider the evidence you’ve asked for when you are told where you can find it then why do you ask in the first place? Is it all just some kind of game you’re playing to make yourselves feel good? Are you afraid to actually look at the arguments and evidence? Are you being scientific at all?
JVL @
A book that says where the body plan is stored? Where is the body plan stored according to this book?
JVL at 55,
My review: Clearly, clearly, clearly… The author ignores a number of posts made here, including this thread, which refute unguided evolution. He’s clearly afraid to read them. 🙂
“IF you really want to get a good explanation then you should read it.”
JVL,
I submit that if you can’t quote or link to the quote what it is you think is significant, then you are just playing games.
Andrew
Andrew at 58,
Playing games? Here? Who would… oh wait.
Origenes: A book that says where the body plan is stored? Where is the body plan stored according to this book?
The book says there is no body plan. Just like a lot of other books. Does that mean you aren’t going to read it? Because it doesn’t agree with you? What if you’re wrong? Are you NOT going to read everything which you think (ahead of time) isn’t correct?
Relatd: My review: Clearly, clearly, clearly… The author ignores a number of posts made here, including this thread, which refute unguided evolution. He’s clearly afraid to read them.
Okay, you’re afraid to read the book. Noted.
Playing games? Here? Who would… oh wait.
Like I said: you’re afraid to read the book.
Asauber: I submit that if you can’t quote or link to the quote what it is you think is significant, then you are just playing games.
I did link to a review which has a good summary of some of what is discussed in the book.
Are you saying if I can’t reproduce or link to a quote from the actual book which says everything in the book I’m lying? Really? That’s your scientific criteria? You won’t read something because someone can’t provide an online resource which says everything in the book? Really?
This is the level of scientific reasoning that you guys use? Really?
PM1 & JVL, in short, you do not have a viable, empirically well founded theory of origin of body plans from a unicellular ancestor, to join with absence of an empirically founded theory of origin of cell based life by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Meanwhile, it is massively empirically well warranted that cells use coded, algorithmic information in protein synthesis, which directly lends strong support to inferring that the best explanation is the known cause of such, language using intelligence. The difference in institutional preference, meanwhile, is best explained on ideology. Specifically, the dominance of evolutionary materialistic scientism. KF
“Are you saying if I can’t reproduce or link to a quote from the actual book which says everything in the book I’m lying?”
JVL,
I’m not saying you are lying. I’m saying you are lazy, which would probably indicate whatever it is isn’t that important to you, and us. If it was, you would present it to us.
Andrew
Asauber: I’m not saying you are lying. I’m saying you are lazy, which would probably indicate whatever it is isn’t that important to you, and us. If it was, you would present it to us.
Oh, right. Because there are no massive quotes from the book that I can reproduce on this blog (given the posting limits) I’m lazy? Really? Because I can’t find a quote which encapsulates a whole book I’m lazy. Really? I guess you expect me to spend hours and hours and hours converting my hard copy into text I can post here. Yes? Because otherwise I’m not sincere. Yes?
The whole point of recommending the book is because it’s a coherent and concise summary of a lot of research (including lab research) which addressed a lot of the concerns you raise about unguided evolution.
AND, guess what, you keep finding reasons to avoid saying: thanks, I’ll look for that book and read it. Why is that?
Are you really interested in the data and evidence (including lab results) or not? It’s your call.
Oh, by the way: even reviews are limited by copyright laws in what they can reproduce online. But you knew that which makes me wonder why you think I’m lazy for not having given you more text.
JVL @
Starting with a single cell, the body builds itself without an explanation then. Why should I read that book?
These control genes cannot do whatever they want, they must operate strictly according to a body plan. So, please, stop the evasion, and tell us where the body plan is stored.
Kairosfocus: in short, you do not have a viable, empirically well founded theory of origin of body plans from a unicellular ancestor, to join with absence of an empirically founded theory of origin of cell based life by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity.
OR, as is apparent, you’re not interested in read a book which addresses a lot of your concerns. Which means you might be incorrect that we don’t have a viable, empirically well-founded theory that you ask for.
If you won’t look at the evidence when we present it then how serious are you? Really? Do you really want to find out what the recent evidence and data and lab results point to or not?
JVL, there is no body plan? Really, we can and do infer such from massively evident patterns that are reflected in taxonomy but more particularly show up in major structural patterns. The issue is, that there is far too much complex, functionally specific information in hosts of body structures to be explained on a few twists with regulatory genes. And indeed, it is readily seen from genome patterns that an original cell needed 100 – 1,000 k bases in genomes but we jump to 10 – 100 million bases for basic body plans. And more. Meanwhile, going back to the focal question, can you agree with say Sydney Brenner and Nature’s editors or Lehninger and heirs, that there is coded information in the cell? That, for protein synthesis, we have an identified genetic code with some 20 dialects, that such involves initiation, onward steps and halting, i.e. is algorithmic? That is what some objectors have tried to suggest is a gross error. If you think that the consensus that there is code is right, can you let us know, and if you join with AF/KM/FH in denial, kindly explain why the consensus is wrong. KF
AS, the elephant hurling and want of citation imply that the evidence being claimed is probably underwhelming, once the ideological imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism is off the table. KF
Origenes: Starting with a single cell, the body builds itself without an explanation then.
No, not without explanation. Are you sure you really do understand the unguided evolutionary argument ’cause you make some really dumb comments for someone who claims to know the argument.
These control genes cannot do whatever they want, they must operate strictly according to a body plan.
Just like other genes they can be changed by mutations.
So, please, stop the evasion, and tell us where the body plan is stored.
Right, I get it now. You don’t actually care or want to hear anything which disagrees with your view. You’re not being scientific. You’re not going to read anything which might established something which you think isn’t true.
I got it now. There is no point in talking to you. You are absolutely convinced of your view and are closed to anything which says otherwise.
Whew. That’s going to save me some time.
@61
I wouldn’t say that the ID supporters here are afraid of having their beliefs challenged. It’s rather that they are completely incurious and lazy. To read something for themselves requires effort. They want everything spoon-fed to them.
Kairosfocus: there is no body plan?
Yup. If you think there is one then please support that claim.
You are the one saying the accepted view is incorrect; it’s up to you to support that claim. Can you support that claim? Yes or no?
JVL
My question is: where is the body plan stored? My question is not about evolution.
PM1, I ask you the same essential question: i/l/o evidence and indicative authorities as cited [and more] is it the case that we have coded information in DNA and mRA, in accord with what is generally called the genetic code? Which, extends to, the use of string data structures to carry said code. KF
Is this the twilight zone?
OK, JVL.
I have a laundry list of books you should read about my position and I’m sure you’ll go right out and get them and read them as soon as I provide you the list. Let me know when you are ready. I can start with a list of ten, so you aren’t overwhelmed. If you don’t want to, I can only conclude you are deathly afraid.
Andrew
JVL, I already did, you just ignored what I pointed to. As in, look all around you starting with the five-fingered appendages on your fore limbs (also, your alimentary canal from input end on), and going to contrast between sea urchins, fungi, pine trees, flying birds (and penguins), whales, seals, lizards vs dinosaurs, sponges, molluscs, prokaryotes vs eukaryotes — and what are viruses — etc, just to list out various templates manifest in body forms. The issue is not whether there are evident deeply stamped body plans but where they are stored and how they are effected. Body plans are key FSCO/I and need to be adequately explained. This comes down to things as basic as the differences between us and chimps etc or how our teeth mesh together. Meanwhile, is there coded information in the cell needs to be addressed, not least as this is a calibration of your responsiveness to strongly empirically founded conclusions. KF
Origenes/75
Could be. I do sense this place is strong with the Dark Side of The Force.
79 comments – approximate – a typical thread of a few people talking with each other over nothing
Kairosfocus – 16
Querius – 1
Bornagain77 – 1
Qrigines – 9
Alan Fox -10
JVL – 21
Relatd – 7
Seversky – 1
Other – 13
Seversky at 78,
[said with a Stormtrooper voice] This is the Seversky we’ve been looking for. You’re under arrest!
No trip to Alderaan for you…
Jerry at 79,
Then why do you post here?
Seversky,
is there coded information in the cell, including string data structures?
Jerry,
the same?
Relatd,
you too?
KF
~ Body Plan in Action !! ~
Tufts Biologist Asks, Where Is Anatomy Coded In Living Systems?
Origenes: My question is: where is the body plan stored? My question is not about evolution.
There is no body plan. What is the matter with you? If you think it exists then find it. Support your own beliefs. Or shut up.
Is this the twilight zone?
Find it if you think it exists. Or shut up.
Pretty much.
Though, I will definitely say that I have been introduced to some new things by you over the years. So thank you for that. And a couple comments by others have led me to some interesting ideas, especially diet and health.
Aside: I post here to mainly leave a record of what I believe are interesting ideas I come across. Many of them are from UD that were discussed several year ago. I am interested in truth and learning so I leave a record of my thoughts here, a lot of it based on what others have said elsewhere and in the past.
I will continue to do so. Am currently going over comments made here 16 years ago as well as several written pieces by the most knowledgeable on ID.
I have little expectation that anything I say will lead anyone here to some better insight. Most of those who post here are not interested in anything new. That’s obvious.
Asauber: I have a laundry list of books you should read about my position and I’m sure you’ll go right out and get them and read them as soon as I provide you the list.
Not exactly the point is it? You keep asking me and other for evidence so we expect you to respect our responses. Which you don’t.
I haven’t asked you for evidence for your stance but please tell me the top book on your list.
JVL,
telling people to shut up is quite rude, kindly refrain from doing so again.
As for:
You have reconfirmed that you are unwilling to examine even massively obvious evidence that there are well defined architectures for various life forms. The issue is not whether they exist but where they are stored and how they are expressed.
Next, I cannot but observe that you have steadfastly ignored the central question posed from the OP on. I am on the verge of inferring that you know the correct answer is, yes there is coded info, but to answer yes would violate the now obvious zero concessions policy of too many objectors to the design inference.
Please, prove me wrong.
KF
JVL and Seversky definitely do exist in the twilight zone of ‘just-so story telling’. Not in the real world of empirical science.
JVL, nor any other Darwinists, have ANY real-time empirical evidence that body plans are reducible to mutations to DNA. Darwinists haven’t even changed one species of bacteria into another species of bacteria,
,,, Much less do Darwinists have any evidence that it is even possible to change bacteria into a multi-cellular creature.
Shoot, even giving Darwinists the benefit of a multicellular organism as a head start, Darwinists do not even have any empirical evidence that it is even possible to change one multicellular organism into another one.
It is all ‘just-so story’ telling on the part of Darwinists. And it is certainly NOT empirical science. Darwinists simply have no real-time empirical evidence to back up any of their grandiose claims that it is even possible to change one body plan into another. In fact, they simply ignore many lines of empirical evidence that directly challenge, if not falsify, their claims.
Moreover, the failure of the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form and/or shape of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Simply put, Darwinists will NEVER have a ‘bottom-up’ materialistic explanation for biological form.
Of supplemental note to ‘bottom-up’ vs. ‘top-down’ causation
More like the Dork Side of the Farce.
I’ve explained why I think you’re asking the wrong question. In any event I’m not going to answer a question that I’m convinced is the wrong question to ask.
BA77, interesting points, however on what is clearly a distractive tangent. Can you answer for us the focal question in the OP, whether there is coded and esp string data structure information in the living cell, specifically in DNA/mRNA. KF
PM1, evasive in the teeth of the actual consensus that there is indeed coded information in DNA/mRNA. The that’s the wrong question gambit just shows us how you set out to evade it. That act of evasion tells us a lot. KF
PS, we need not confine string data structure to our mechanically constructed machines. We observe sonar systems with bats and whales not just ships. We see that hearing uses a mechanical fourier transform in the cochlea. We see that vision uses networks of sensors sensitive to light and to differing specta, and more. There is a lot of chemistry in biochemistry. That string data structures would be present in DNA/mRNA and that there is a genetic code can be elucidated from molecular biology and was from the 1950s on. The issue here is where that might point, given that codes are fundamentally a matter of language used with communication systems.
“I’m not going to answer a question…”
Drop the mic. PM1 is just another politician at a press conference.
Andrew
Martin_r @ 28, also Origenes, Kairosfocus, Bornagain77,
Great points! Earthquakes or differential erosion never create new buildings. Highly engineered and structured code (including structured DXF data, Kairosfocus), mechanical designs, aeronautic and chemical engineering, along with other human engineering display human brilliance, but they ALL pale against the massive complexity of even so-called “simple” life!
To draw other conclusions is simply wishful thinking resulting in science fantasy. Dr. Tour’s simple challenge of “Okay, show me,” has resulted in vacuous MUSTA, MIGHTA, and EMERGED blah blah along with pathetic ad hominem attacks such as we’re seeing here.
Such responses exhibit the desperation of some people trying to defend their flimsy ideologies. I was surprised and disappointed that even Pyrrhomanic1 indulged in such blather @71, rather than his more usual, substantive objections and contributions.
In contrast, many people with an ID perspective were once Darwinists, myself included.
I would have absolutely no trouble in believing that God could have initiated an evolutionary development of life on earth. Actually, I think that would be pretty cool! But beyond some microevolutionary variation, there really isn’t any support for Darwinist macroeveolutionary theory and plenty of falsifying evidence, not to mention its disgusting use in justifying racism, European colonialism, and eugenics.
Origenes . . . yes, it does seem like we’re in some sort of twilight zone regarding the OBVIOUS morphological and genetic evidence for the existence of body plans. Anyone who has ever used a taxonomic key would know this (yes, I have done this many times).
-Q
JVL @
Read #83
KF, of course I know “there is coded and esp string data structure information in the living cell”. We have been debating Darwinists on this subject on UD for how long now?
Sorry, for the ‘distractive tangent’, I will refrain from ‘feeding the trolls’ on your thread.
Bornagain77 @95,
It would be different if some of them came up with substantive, coherent information and supported objections rather than unsupported assertions and ad hominem attacks. It would raise the level of discourse rather than reducing it to the equivalent of conversational flatulence.
My advice is not to respond to troll and trollbot posts.
-Q
Kairosfocus: telling people to shut up is quite rude, kindly refrain from doing so again.
When I think people are being disingenuous, saying things they don’t actually believe or are willing to stand behind, what do you think I should say?
You have reconfirmed that you are unwilling to examine even massively obvious evidence that there are well defined architectures for various life forms. The issue is not whether they exist but where they are stored and how they are expressed.
It’s clear there are no body plans stored in DNA and anyone who says otherwise needs to support their claim with hard, solid, clear evidence.
Please, prove me wrong.
I am responding to the questions raised to me. Whether or not they relate to the OP is not what I am considering.
@91
I presented my reasoning above for why I think it’s the wrong question. You have (thus far) evaded my reasoning. That act of evasion tells us a lot.
Bornagain77: JVL, nor any other Darwinists, have ANY real-time empirical evidence that body plans are reducible to mutations to DNA. Darwinists haven’t even changed one species of bacteria into another species of bacteria,
I think some of the evidence you request is present in Neil Shubin’s book. But since you are clearly averse to actually reading that book then I have to ask: why are you asking for evidence which you refuse to consider?
It is all ‘just-so story’ telling on the part of Darwinists. And it is certainly NOT empirical science.
Again, if we present a source of evidence and you refuse to consider it then . . .
Why you want to get off your copy-and-paste train and are willing to engage in a real question and answer session let me know.
Origenes: Read #83
I did. When you can address the actual evidence let me know.
Querius: It would be different if some of them came up with substantive, coherent information and supported objections rather than unsupported assertions and ad hominem attacks. It would raise the level of discourse rather than reducing it to the equivalent of conversational flatulence.
When we do you ignore them. I’ve suggested you read an easily found book and you and other just keep assessing that we haven’t stepped up to the plate. You are intentionally ignoring my responses. Why?
That there is coded information in the genome is obvious.
No serious person denies that. When someone does, let them stew in their intellectual cul de sac.
It’s what led Crick to the codon/amino acid relationship. However, the most interesting thing is not the codon specifying an amino acid but how it is physically done and assembled. It is similar to an ascii string being interpreted into a machine code instruction inside a computer.
JVL, the body plans are manifested in the bodies, so where are they is relevant. And again, you need to answer say Brenner in Nature. KF
Jerry, the denial or evasion of the manifest is a telling sign, and that is what we are seeing. KF
Kairosfocus: the body plans are manifested in the bodies, so where are they is relevant.,
Fine. Show us where the body plans are in the genome and end the argument.
Nothing to do with ‘the manifest’, just show us the evidence.
This is not new so why address it and waste everyone’s time?
PM1 @29
What an organism is, is not the issue here. The focus is on D/RNA as a string data structure. Kairosfocus does not claim that an organism is exhaustively explained by this code or any other code. It cannot be the case that aspects of an organism, such as information in DNA, cannot be discussed because of the glorious insight that the organism is not a machine.
That would be a fair critique if ID’ers in general would claim that an organism is nothing but a computer or a machine. I say that this is not the case.
Here is Jonathan Wells, a wellknown ID figure, writing about Stephen Talbott:
Jerry: This is not new so why address it and waste everyone’s time?
Because it’s becoming clear that many commenters here are not actually interested in considering the data and evidence even though they continually request it be present to them.
What is the point of this forum? If it’s just to promote ID then tell everyone who tries to present an alternative view to forget it.
JVL @ 100
The actual evidence that there is a body plan is in the experiments. The “Picasso-frogs” turn into normal frogs every time. The body plan has real causal power.
https://uncommondescent.com/biology/tufts-biologist-asks-where-is-anatomy-coded-in-living-systems/
JVL (attn, Jerry): We have now passed a sad but significant threshold, which is not a waste of time. The OP documents quite clearly that there is observationally backed reason to accept the consensus that there is coded string data structure information in the cell, but objectors are in at least one case [confirmed, multi label] case denied and on others evaded. And so we have reason to freely conclude not only that it is warranted but is fatal to objectors to the design inference. We have a further case where another objector is unwilling to acknowledge the manifest fact of body plans, something at the root of taxonomy. The veneer of science for objections is shattered; we are dealing with ideology. We may freely hold that the presence of complex coded algorithmic information in the cell is a strong sign of language using design as its best causal explanation. And of course the many evident body plans point to relevant FSCO/I involved in their manifestation. KF
O, I agree that an organism is not a simple machine, but it does have in it key features that we can examine that function as biological technologies. For an example, our vocal tract is a wind instrument and our hearing effects a fourier transform of sounds using the hairs along the spiral of the cochlea. Our elbows have a hinge joint and our arms and legs are in key parts levers in chains that make up position-arm devices, and our head and neck can be similarly analysed — for birds, fish and many animals, the head and mouth are key manipulators. Our hips have ball and socket joints. Turning to the cell, the specific feature DNA/mRNA clearly stores information using a four state per character, prong height using string data structure. This is further seen to involve coded algorithmic information used to assemble AA chains towards creating proteins. That can be responsibly taken as empirically anchored fact. That we find persistent denial and evasion in response is sadly telling. KF
origenes
From what I could see and understand so far, I, as an engineer can only repeat that biology is all about engineering. Or, most of the biology is about engineering and I hope and believe that there is something more than a hardcore engineering. But you need that hardcore engineering in the first place. There is no other way around it.
Despite Jonathan Wells is one of my most favorite creationists, but biologists should not comment on design and engineering in biology. Doesn’t matter whether it is a creationist or darwinian biologist. This is beyond absurd. These people — natural science graduates — are not qualified to comment on design and engineering in biology. They don’t understand what they are looking at.
That is the reason why are all these natural science graduates permanently wrong, and it started with Darwin.
The fact that biology is so complex it is not a coincidence. There is no other way around it, these systems have to be that complex, to meet all the requirements we see in nature.
Again, biology has to be that complex. It is like wondering, why are Boston Dynamics’s humanoid robots that complex :)))))))) Boston Dynamics’s engineers wish there will be some other — a simpler — way around this complexity :))))))
Only biologists think that complex species can be built on simple footing …
PS: JVL suggested to read some book. If the author of that book is a biologist or any other natural science graduate, it is a time waste. Just another just-so story. I would suggest, that JVL reads YOUR DESIGNED BODY book, written by an engineer. JVL complains that we don’t want to read his book, but he never reads “our” books :))))))) JVL, I hope that one day you will finally get it, that reading our books makes way more sense …
Reposted from another current thread that was mainly about OOL. This thread is also about OOL but mainly focuses on the information content that must have arisen to reach life. So the thinking is the same.
———
ID people have to start thinking in a new direction, one that uses logic.
There is too much emotion involved on both sides. This discussion is mainly about OOL. But OOL uses natural selection just as Darwinian Evolution does. However, people are in a straight jacket on just what natural selection is. They think if only refers to the final state of a population of live entities called a species. But we readily use if for viruses which are nothing more than a combination of proteins and not alive. So why not chemical compounds?
Natural selection is essentially a tautology. Whatever ends up as a stable situation is what natural selection is, that is it cannot be temporary but has to be stable and enduring. It is what ever nature says is a stable situation. This was explained over a month ago as an attempt to discuss natural selection. See
https://uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/paul-davies-on-the-gap-between-life-and-non-life/#comment-775881
No one was interested in trying to understand just what natural selection is.
If there is a natural origin to life, it had to follow a natural selection path to the first cell. In other words, it had to evolve or pass through an extremely high number of stable states to become life.
For example, if it was a hundred steps, then each step must lead to a stable state, not one that is temporary. My guess it would require thousands of steps, and each step along the way has to be a stable end point. Because it became stable, it was an example of natural selection. In other words nature kept this state as a permanent state for a long period of time.
It could also require that two or more separate processes are working to reach the state called life. For example, one process could be the nucleotide accumulation and another could be the cellular wall building independently of each other. But each would have to have many step all of which are stable because it represents some process of many steps that leaves a stable end product.
The above has to be logically true, if life was assembled somehow naturally. The search for an OOL solution is then reduced to a search for the possible various steps.
The end product is easily done by a superior intelligence but almost impossible for a natural process.
Until everyone starts thinking logically and not emotionally, there will be no progress.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bob-marks-knocks-it-out-of-the-park-on-ai/#comment-778097
Ken Middlebrook @4
Ken is a typical Darwinist. He doesn’t care about reality and facts. He ignores reality and facts like all Darwinists do.
Ken, let me repeat why the information stored in DNA is A LITERAL CODE. This is not an argument with you or with any other Darwinist. I won’t argue with you people about facts. I am just telling you. I am telling you what the facts are …
Information in DNA is encoded — therefore it is a code — In order to decode it, you need a decoding table/key. Do you get it Ken ? This information is useless without the decoding table. For encoding/decoding you need that decoding table.
Here are decoding tables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_and_RNA_codon_tables
Therefore, the information stored in DNA molecule is a literal code. P E R I O D.
And it doesn’t matter what some Ken or any other Darwinist says. It doesn’t matter at all.
Ken, you people are so brainwashed, that you deny simple facts.
Alan Fox: The reason “ID” proponents are ignored because all “ID” arguments boil down to arguments from personal incredulity.
Incredulity is a good thing to possess in the face of “scientists” peddling [SNIP].
The scientific mainstream has no need of “ID” hypotheses.
The OOL “scientists” are a fairly small, and pathetic group, who make a lot of idiotic claims that are lapped up and amplified by their colluders in the popular press. Anyone with at least 1/2 a brain including my dog can see the con.
There is also the issue there are no “ID” scientifically testable hypotheses to be had.
The probabilities involved are a very strong argument. The condition of the early earth is a very strong argument. A theory isn’t needed. All available evidence point to intelligence as the only plausible cause.
Just telling the scientific community their ideas are wrong is not enough.
Says who? You? Pointing out their foolishness and paucity of anything close to an explanation for OOL is a good and righteous thing. And enjoyable.
Ram @115
Touche. by the way, my dog can see it too …
Basically, these OOL-researchers use gold alchemy methods to re-create the most advanced technology on this planet, perhaps in the whole universe.
Jerry,
actually, this OP was about the presence of string data structure, coded information in DNA/mRNA. This is the scientific consensus, and we can see how we get the strings by inspection of what has been found out about DNA and mRNA chains, including, first, what a string is.
What this thread established, is that we are dealing with objectors who deny, evade or refuse to acknowledge readily ascertained, empirically well founded facts, so we further know that we cannot trust them to be inrtellectually responsible much less truthful on matters that are less direct, such as the course of events in the remote past of origins.
We may then freely point out the consensus fact and then from such, infer as to the known cause of codees, string data structures, algorithms and execution machinery. Intelligently directed configuration by language using knowledgeable designers. Where, for infancy stage cases in point we may call forth Venter et al.
When we go on to see noise about how ID has no testable hypotheses or the like, we know now to utter certainty, that we are dealing with untrustworthy ideologues who must know their preferred partyline doctrine cannot stand up to the fact of coded algorithms in DNA and mRNA in the cell.
The substantial matter is over, on the merits.
The design inference won.
But, the ideologues will never admit inconvenient truth.
Negative credibility.
======
M_r,
Sadly, we are dealing with a multiple personality objector, KM, FH and AF, demonstrably, are one and the same. The refusal to acknowledge evident facts has been clearly established, this objector is of negative credibility.
Sadly, other objectors, evade the fact, showing that they are more interested in debate points in support of their side than truth.
At this point, we know that the design inference has won on the merits.
======
Ram,
it is obvious that we are dealing with those who refuse to be accountable before inconvenient, evidence backed truth.
With string data structures in DNA and mRNA holding algorithms we may freely infer to the known cause of such phenomena, language using intelligence. At baby stage, we have genetic engineering and the work of Venter et al.
In the case of algorithmic code in DNA, we are not telling the scientific community they are wrong, as this is a well evidenced knowable fact. Indeed it is now being turned into a technology.
What we are doing is to infer to the known cause of such, design by language using intelligences. Where, as this applies to OOL and OO main body plans (simply to make the proteins for the tissues, organs, limbs etc) we have good reason to hold that design is the best explanation of the world of life we observe.
The ideological lockout we also see, then, stands exposed as intellectually irresponsible and abusive.
We may now freely proceed on that basis.
And, DV, we shall.
KF
And just as the alchemists of old were never able to achieve their promises, so also are the bio-alchemists of the last few hundred years, who still haven’t made progress let alone demonstrate spontaneous generation.
Dr. Tour points out in his brilliant videos that pre-biotic evolution is NOT possible. Kairosfocus once again points out the characteristics of structured code, data, and compression in DNA. Others here have demonstrated innumerable times how ID is far more pragmatic than Darwinism.
That a number of people here are simply sock puppets of one (maybe two) real people is no surprise to me. In a technical forum some years ago, we exposed someone who also resorted to this tactic.
And Ram, the more I’ve learned about science, the more amazed and humbled I’ve become at the brilliant genius of the Creator! It’s made me far more respectful, appreciative., and honored that Hashem chose to make us.
And if the biochemistry and DNA design data is so phenomenally complex, how much more so the thoughts of the Creator!
-Q
Q, actually, it’s been about 100 years since Oparin, though we did have earlier fringe stuff and fantasies such as Frankenstein. Ironically, through nuclear bombardment, Au has been made from Hg. And of course there is a vast store of Au in ocean water, so in principle ocean water can be turned into Au. Though, that is refining not transmuting, the alchemists did not know that they did not know of a world of particle and nuclear forces required for transmutation of elements. Where, we can draw a comparison to ignorance of information as a key force. We are seeing engineering of life in preliminary stages through Venter and Co, which of course respects the informational nature of life and of DNA. However, this thread is a marker of decisive high ground. We know that cell based life uses string data structure components, specifically using molecular, prong height based information technology as we see from DNA complementarity and tRNA-mRNA anti-codon codon coupling. The same illustrated by AF/KM/FH’s “lame” diagrams in the OP. Where, too, this is based on code, which is inherently linguistic. Absent ideological imposition, the best explanation for cell based life and of associated body plans, from the root of the taxonomic tree on up, is design. The case against the design inference for the world of life has collapsed for want of merits, and those backing ideological censorship have some ‘splaining to do. KF
Kairosfocus writes:
No, we have been engineering life for many centuries. And, strangely enough, using selection processes.
And the fact that we can now manipulate DNA is no more proof of ID as the best explanation for life than our probable future ability to create life would be.
I take the argument be roughly as follows:
1. The relationship between nucleotide triplets and amino acids is a code.
2. If something is a code, then it is a language.
3. Therefore, the relationship between nucleotide triplets and amino acids is a language.
4. If something is a language, then it was created by a mind.
5. Therefore, the relationship between nucleotide triplets and amino acids was created by a mind.
I have no objection to (1). But premises (2) and (4) are false. Therefore (3) and (5) are false.
it should be
The problem with the original is that language is a code but a code is not necessarily a language because it could be some inanimate entity controlling another inanimate entity by the code. They are similar but not identical.
FP/AH/KM/FH, breeding is not engineering. And of course yet again, you duck the string data structure, coded information issue, refuse to acknowledge the body of evidence leading to the consensus on the genetic code and its role in protein synthesis. You cannot even acknowledge the manifest fact that engineering of life by Venter et al is intelligent design. KF
PS, that makes four aliases in one thread.
Jerry (& attn PM1): Codes are linguistic phenomena (as I noted), not necessarily full orbed languages themselves. They may appear in machines and systems without someone who is a conscious language user immediately acting, but that is about function not causal origin. We empirically know the causal origin of symbolic codes, language using intelligence, so I for cause read the code as a sign pointing to the causal source. If PM1 wishes to object, let him highlight an actually observed case of complex symbolic encoding of known origin that was not caused by a language using intelligence; instead of pretending that he is dealing with faulty syllogisms. As he is at that task, let him also identify the distinction between what is linguistic and what is a language. Let him further explain how symbolic frameworks and protocols associated with algorithms are not acts of language using intelligence. Indeed, the design of such a complex code based system is a case of FSCO/I. KF
Kairosfocus writes:
Do you ever get tired of seeing conspiracies everywhere? I admit posting as KM (my real name btw). I am toying with the idea of dumping anonymity. But I have never posted as AF or FH.
I feel I should point out that it is not the job for those of us who can clearly see the obvious, to convince the nincompoop anti-ID crowd of their error. Our job is not to convince the nincompoops but to expose their lunacy.
Kairosfocus writes:
Sure it is. It is just indirect genetic engineering.
From our friends at Wiki:
How does artificial selection not fall under this umbrella?
More generally, the burden of proof requires that a claimant provide evidence and arguments to support their claim if they are concerned about persuading an audience of the merits of such claims.
No, they are not necessarily.
They may be most of the time but there is no necessity that a code be a language. I can imagine someone creating a series of steps based on physical entities which have the only purpose of controlling other physical entities.
So they are not a language unless you want to say a physical entity controlling another physical entity is a language. Unless you are saying that anything controlling something else is a language. It is certainly like a language but is definitely not a language in how anyone uses the term.
Suppose I construct a series of water channels that lead water out of a valley. As the water get higher, the water goes to a different valley. But if the water gets too high it cuts off all the water coming into a valley through the main source by some sort of mechanism. Maybe a mud slide or maybe some other physical event that is reversible when the water level goes down. Tell me how that is different than your code and why it is a language.
There is definitely information in the water flow construction and It’s definitely intelligent made. No one would deny that. But no one would call it a language.
Language is reserved for live entities communicating with other live entities. Codons while in a live entity are not a live entity.
Who isn’t using an alias in this thread? I’m in the minority using my real name. Fair enough, I was posting using the pseudonym Fred Hickson until I gathered the current moderation policy here at UD has relaxed a bit compared to other times, when I reverted to my much-preferred real name. I have never posted comments concurrently under more than one user name.
The genetic code is not a language. Using words carelessly and anthropomorphically doesn’t change the fact that talking of codes and languages is an exercise in poor analogy.
Alan Fox (not Ford Prefect or Ken Middlebrook) writes:
Not to mention an exercise in misdirection.
When describing a scientific observation, we are limited by the language we use to describe it. Certain strings of DNA undergo chemical reactions to form a specific protein. The arrangement of amino acids in the protein is dependent on arrangement of nucleotides in the DNA/RNA. For lack of a better word, biologists refer to the DNA “code.” Which, as an analogy to describe the link between DNA triplet nucleotides and amino acids, is a reasonable analogy. But all analogies have their weaknesses. With the DNA “code,” the weakness is that some people, due to their religious views, misrepresent the term to argue that an intelligence must be behind the “code.” Which is a leap of faith, not of science.
@131
I’m certainly no expert in linguistics or in philosophy of language, but from what I’ve read over the years, natural languages have some features in common, including syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
1. Recursive grammar that encodes morphosyntatic alignment.
2. A topic/comment distinction that marks the difference between what one is talking about and what one is saying about that topic.
3. A range of utterances including declaratives, indicatives, interrogatives, and imperatives.
4. Pragmatics including use of language to track avowals, commitments, attributions amongst inferences
5. Distinction between indexical and non-indexical terms to indicate what assertions are agent-relative and which ones are not.
6. Syntactical devices such as anaophora and deixis to indicate context-dependent senses and references.
Again, I’m no expert in any this stuff. I’ve read a few books and it’s come up in my research over the years.
Regardless, my understanding is that these are found in all natural languages, which makes sense if one considers the importance of language in facilitating social learning in hominids.
Needless to say, I don’t see how there’s anything like a natural language when it comes to genetic information. How would one identify whether a genetic sequence is an interrogative or a declarative? What would be the nucleotide analogue of anaphora or deixis?
I honestly think that anyone who insists that the genetic code is a language, needs to take some time to study linguistics and find out what actually makes something a language.
Jerry, codes are languages and languages are codes. It’s about the (functional ) information that is encoded ,transmitted – received and decoded. It’s not important the way :spoken or written words,smoke signals, flashlight signals, morse signals or transcription translation signals.
There is no way around there is no known code that is created by a natural process. All the codes are designed by a mind. DNA is a code therefore is designed by a Mind. 😉
FP/AF/KM/AF, drop it, we have the receipts. KF
Living entities use signals all the time to indicate a particular situation.
It doesn’t have grammar or syntax but definitely there is communication going on about a particular state of the organism or the environment in which the entity is currently in. Is this a language. I would say so but trying to use human language to analyze it is absurd.
In a cell or very primitive life form it could be a chemical signal indicating a state of the cell or life form. We have all witnessed birds singing or making noises. That is communication and a language. But not all codes are life based but all codes are intelligent or life based. The more complicated the code, the higher is the intelligence that created it. Codons are definitely highly complicated codes.
But here we are wasting time commenting on the obvious. But this is UD where ID gets ignored and obvious minutiae gets discussed in detail.
AF et al, The genetic code is a symbolic code, which is inherently linguistic, having characteristics of language. Where, we see that DNA and mRNA use the code to express algorithms for AA chaining towards protein synthesis. You have repeatedly ignored the consensus based on Nobel Prize winning experiments, because of ideological reasons, just as you have tried to pretend for months that to suggest that the genetic code is a code just as the label on the tin says, reflects ignorance, and you refused to be corrected from Lehninger and heirs, Brenner and the reviewers and editors of Nature, or just simply the well known facts. You had ample opportunity, you doubled down on denial. You shattered your own credibility, live with the consequences. KF
PM1, codes used in information processing, storage, communication and computation systems, especially machine codes use arbitrary symbols and implied patterns of meaning. As the Khan Academy example in the OP shows (scroll up, it was there all along), for mRNA, AUG means start, load Met, when in initial position or simply load Met otherwise. Various other codes [and there are about 2 dozen dialects] mean, elongate with particular AAs. There are three classic stop codes. Variants have been created as the OP mentions, dozens of AAs have been added artificially. The codons have been refocussed to store up to 16 GB of Wikipedia, illustrating the string data structure framework. I doubt that any of the main points is new to you. KF
Why direct this comment at me?
That’s exactly what I said. I just said that all codes are not a language but are created by an intelligence. A language is a code but not all codes are a language.
Aside: I was a communication officer in the Navy so I know the various ways that are used to communicate to other living entities. We used flashing light, flags, semaphore and even hand signals occasionally in addition to radios.
Jerry (attn PM!, AF et al, Sandy etc), there is a grammar and there is a syntax sufficient to express step by step AA chaining, with start and stop, i.e. algorithms. The string structure and three character codon establish a reading framework. The code is not a general purpose language but it is a meaningful, SVO oriented symbolic character adequate to execute algorithms; AUG does not chemically force a tRNA with anticodon to have Met on it, that is loaded by a separate enzyme beforehand, loaded at the CCA tool tip at the end away from the anticodon. The instructions are given to the ribosome, an execution unit, which initialises, acts in symbolically controlled steps then halts, using mRNA as a string data structure code tape and tRNA as both AA taxis and position-arm devices to aid in chaining, where the tRNAs have a universal CCA tool tip opposite to their anticodons. The key point of coding, as Yockey notes [cf OP] is loading tRNA with loading enzymes, using the universal CCA tool tip. Chemically, obviously, CCA can bind with any AA [and as Yockey notes misloading does happen], it is the aaRS that determines the particular, correct loading. And more. The dragged out objections have simply shown that we are not dealing with sober minded objections but with ideology. KF
PS, to correct a strawman, codes are of linguistic character, they do not have to be complete languages to be effective. In context *** – – – *** means SOS, a code for rescue us, similar to Mayday. But being of linguistic character, they are observed and known to be signatures of language using agents.
Slight nitpick:
DNA in the cell nucleus being transcribed into mRNA do not undergo chemical reactions, only the physical breaking and reforming of hydrogen bonds. Also individual DNA nucleotides act as templates for the mRNA sequences being copied. The triplet code is not involved in transcription. A pairs with T/U, C pairs with G, and vice versa. No codes, just templates.
Did I already ask how it is there are six codons and six leucine tRNAs that result in a leucine residue being added to a growing polypeptide when there is only one leucine tRNA synthetase?
Sandy at 134,
Exactly right. In order to reproduce successfully, signals from within a cell must be triggered correctly, and the genetic code must be transferred correctly. During its life, a cell contains molecular switches that turn on and off, while some stay on for a specific time period in order for the correct amount of water and nutrients to enter the cell and for waste products to exit.
This information is coded but it is specific information designed to work as designed. It did not get there through random events.
I wrote:
KF writes:
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, what is projection?
@Jerry
Thanks for sharing your experience in semiotics and using codes. Apart from questioning that a language is itself a code, I agree with you.
ETA I’d also wonder whether people use “code” when they mean “cipher”.
Is there symbolism and machine language at work in the computer you are typing on?
While everyone here is fiddling and Rome is burning, I will add to the fire.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070208230116.htm
Jerry at 147,
That’s impossible! I’ve lost my faith in Unguided Evolution! What will I do!? I know – Intelligent Design.
FP/AF/ et al, this is not a matter of Alinsky tactics. There are established facts on decades of experiment and analysis which, for months you have set out to obfuscate and pretend are not so. You are in denial of an established scientific consensus, while pretending to defend science, so it means the problem is ideology, specifically evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers. Congratulations, you have succeeded, you have shown yourself to have negative credibility, especially on the genetic code and protein synthesis. On this, you have been less credible than what Wikipedia confesses, a new low. We may freely use cognitive dissonance to infer that your projections to the other show that the actual facts are fatal to your ideology, and so you have irresponsibly set out to create rhetorical chaos. KF
PS, to date you have failed to soundly address what Sydney Brenner had to say, as publ;shed by Nature’s editors and reviewers. This is after you tried to obfuscate what Lehninger and heirs were so insistent on that they put a comparison of a cuneiform artifact and a bacterium on the table. Even Wikipedia does better:
and:
A new low for ID objectors.
This is pretty much garbled nonsense.
Whereas this description is fine directed at a high school or undergraduate audience. How KF can quote reasonable descriptions yet transcribe it into the nonsense he writes himself is a mystery.
FP/AF et al, ignoring abusive commentary to try to obfuscate, code and language should be first appreciated in computational context.
Wikipedia confesses a few things here:
Machine code or language is what is executed by the physical machine, extending obviously to numerically controlled machines including the ribosome. Which, as is well known, executes algorithms to assemble AA chains towards proteins.
To make it clear, symbolic codes are used, and such codes are of linguistic character. Hence talk of things like register transfer language, used to be RT Algebra way back. They come from language using agents and are a strong sign of such designers having been at work.
In short, the root problem is in the 1940s – 70s, on parallel tracks, we were developing computers that work by executing machine code and found out that key features of the cell were working in the same fundamental way, but using 4-state elements. (There was a Russian effort to build 3-state computers.)
KF
Try my question at 142, KF.
Ram
Touche.
Pyrro
so you accept that the information stored in DNA molecule is encoded. You agree that it is a literal code.
Who created the encoding/decoding table ?
Let me guess …. Natural selection did it :)))))))))))
Why should it? As far as I can see, it has led ID proponents, you most of all, into much error.
I have no idea.
My point was that codes are not languages and also that languages are not created by minds. Even if we accept that the transcription-translation process involves encoding and decoding, that does not show that this process was created by a mind.
A long undecipherable OP and a 157 comments and all that was needed is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxhuxg3WRfg
But codes certainly are even if this is an incredibly dumb statement.
And then an even dumber one
Martin_r
Well done, sir. My apologies for underestimating your abilities.
Kairosfocus @119,
Ideally, science should be immune from fantasies, from Oparin’s soup to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster to Darwin’s racist and colonialist rationale that directly lead to eugenic exterminations.
Indeed! Here are two questions regarding the appearance of design.
1. If the earth was a genetic experiment by some highly advanced interstellar civilization, how could we differentiate that compared to the current presumed OOL.
2. What measurable evidence do we have for spontaneous dramatic increases in complexity such as is present in a cell or the presumed evolution of RNA or DNA?
Ram @126,
Agreed! I think it’s far more scientific to admit that we’re completely clueless about the OOL as does Dr. James Tour than to pretend we understand it to any extent beyond pure speculation.
I delight in science, not science fantasy.
-Q
Ford Prefect
I like how you people see engineering everywhere … the only engineering you can’t see is the cell :))))))))
pyrro
how much self-deception is required to write something like that ? :)))))))
A Stephen Meyer video? Good grief, Jerry! His Ph D is in philosophy.
I don’t agree with those who claim that code = language.
To create/invent a code is way more complex, it requires higher knowledge and higher intelligence.
I don’t know anyone in mainstream science who claims to know how life got started on Earth. Not even Nick Lane!
Alan Fox
if I am not mistaken, you are a biologist … So why on earth are you commenting on codes ?
Alan Fox
So …. as for today, a special creation/creationism has not been falsified, right ?
PM1 at 157,
“My point was that codes are not languages and also that languages are not created by minds.”
How did human beings learn to talk or develop hand signals?
AF et al, that there is a code expressed in a table, is the real — and decisive — issue. That is, there is a code, a symbolic system of rules that is used to express algorithms for assembling AAs toward proteins. Codes expressing symbols, rules etc are inherently linguistic and point to language using intelligence as cause, certainly, with many examples, that is the known cause. As to why there is one start code, why there are three stop codes, why some AAs have multiple codes and others have but few, at most, those are onward questions that can be investigated with profit, with the utility of redundancy likely relevant. At worst, squid ink cloud rhetorical tactics to evade accountability over trolling UD for months pretending there is not a code in this context and that it is ignorance and bias to suggest that there is a scientific consensus based on well known work that there is a code. Code there is, expressing algorithms, code that is linguistic in character, pointing to language using intelligence as the design source of life. KF
I trained in biochemistry but did not make a career of it. I just keep an active interest in developments.
What codes? I’m pointing out the genetic code is not a code in the language or computer sense.
Good point. As we all know, languages are created by blind particles in the void.
Where in the cell is the table?
M_r, codes are of linguistic character and yes it takes a lot more to create a code or a language than to use one that is a going concern, or to recognise that such a code is in use. Machine codes are serious achievements, as are high level languages or communication codes for telecommunication and artificial languages such as Esperanto. I suspect, people who haven’t a clue about computer organisation and linked execution units or what goes into communication systems etc are trying to dismiss an obvious, observed case of machine code driven operations in the cell. Probably, as that opens dreaded doors they would rather be kept locked. KF
AF, still twisting on the hook? The table is implicit in the loading operations of the tRNAs, so our laying out a matrix represents and summarises the relevant tRNA loading rules. Quite similar, BTW, to the tables of machine language instructions for processors. KF
Stephen Meyer
Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science. University of Cambridge, England, 1991. Thesis: “Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin-of-Life Research.” Analyzed scientific and methodological issues in origin-of-life biology.
M.Phil. in the History and Philosophy of Science. University of Cambridge, England, 1987. Emphases: History of Molecular Biology, History of Physics, Evolutionary Theory.
Six hours of graduate applied mathematics, 1983-84, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
B.S. in Physics/Earth Science (double major program), Minors in Philosophy and Math. Graduated Cum Laude 1981, Whitworth College.
Lot of science courses. Then there were books on science. For example,
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design – 620 pages all science – It was about the coding of DNA.
It’s in the closet behind the chairs. Actually I believe it is connected to the Ribosome.
Alan fox
An excellent question …. It got to be somewhere, that is for sure … most probably hardcoded in transcription enzymes ….
It is similar problem like genome map. How does a cell know what is the location of a particular gene in order to read it when needed ….
Thanks, Jerry. So Dr Meyer has no professional expertise in biology or biochemistry.
His Ph D is in philosophy of science.
Good grief . Indeed.
Look at these people considered as “competent” but not knowing what they are talking about:
In 1976 Richard Dawkins summarized this view in his book The Selfish Gene. “The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.”
Lesley Orgel and Francis Crick, 1980: “Much DNA in higher organisms is little better than
junk and can be compared to the spread of a not-too-harmful parasite within its host.”
Douglas Futuyma, 2005: “Only Darwinian evolution can explain why the genome is full of
‘fossil’ genes.”
Michael Shermer, 2006: “The human genome looks more and more like a mosaic of
mutations, fragment copies, borrowed sequences, and discarded strings of DNA that were
jerry-built over millions of years of evolution.”
Jerry Coyne, 2009: “We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced, or ‘dead,’
genes: genes that once were useful but are no longer intact or expressed.”
John C. Avise, 2010: “Noncoding repetitive sequences—‘junk DNA’—comprise the vast
bulk (at least 50%, and, probably much more) of the human genome.”
If you are referring to RNA polymerase, not so. Transcription from DNA to mRNA does not involve codes. The mRNA is an anti-sense copy that relies on the complementary A to T/U and G to C base pairing which is inherent to nucleotide stereo chemistry.
You should try to answer my question in comment 142. It is very relevant to your misconception.
Alan fox
You said that you are a biochemist … so how on earth could YOU make any claims about linguistic or computer codes?
Alan Fox
I would like to note that it is not always the case that those who have that particular professional expertise make any sense. Take for instance Larry Moran who is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, who holds that virtually all of our genome is junk.
Once I asked him:
Larry Moran’s “answer”:
– – –
Good points by Whistler #178
—-
Where in your computer is the table?
Origenes quoting Larry Moran
Professor Moran is right. Multicellular organisms develop from the embryo in a process of cell differentiation, growth, migration and dieback under the control of Hox genes. There is no encoded body plan.
Well, I speak French reasonably well, living there for the last twenty years.
Alan Fox
<
Then what codes the Hox genes?
Besides this Hox genes concept is now outdated and replaced by bioelectric-code. Try to keep up.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bioelectric-code-gains-new-recognition-as-body-organizer-and-form-of-intelligence/
They are DNA sequences, part of the genome. No coding is involved.
Regarding bioelectrics, I’ll respond in that thread.
“The non-coding genome” is the title of an upcoming conference. So, even though the word code is there it does not mean code?
https://www.embl.org/about/info/course-and-conference-office/events/ees23-10/
Alan Fox
The Hox genes control the building process from zygote to adult. They orchestrate the build of all the different organs, but they don’t require any information. Really? Do they do it *just like that*?
You and Moran must be kindred spirits then.
Follow up #189
Meyer makes a lot more sense than Moran:
Martin_r writes:
A special creation/creationism cannot be falsified. That is why it is not science.
AF, notice, you were already answered that the table summarises what is in the enzymes that load tRNA. KF
PS, Wiki confesses:
Also:
We see here how there is a repeated refusal to acknowledge basic facts on the table, part of the negative credibility zero concessions policy for certain objectors.
FP et al, what practical conditions would lead you to seriously reconsider evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers? Not, the self refuting undermining of freedom required to credibly warrant things as knowable. Not the undermining of moral government of reasoning that founds a devotion to sound reasoning. Not, the utter want of an empirically anchored means to produce the required functionally complex organisation at OOL, just so RNA world stories and the like notwithstanding. Not, the utter want of an empirically anchored means to produce the FSCO/I for the body plans that are foundational to the taxonomical tree of life. So, we see here a classic bit of projection. KF
PS, just for starters, Creationism would require, a creator. So, were it the case that an inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being were incoherent as a square circle is, then creationism would necessarily be falsified. So, instantly your talking point that it is not falsifiable fails. As a matter of fact, up to 50 years ago it was common for atheists and fellow travellers to try to argue such incoherence, but post Plantinga that collapsed. So, your assertion is grossly ill founded. Not, that such is likely to faze you.
Kairosfocus writes:
If you mean unguided evolution rather than your lame derogatory labelling of anyone you disagree with, there would be any number of things that could make me reconsider it.
1) A fossil record consistently showing increased complexity as you go back in time.
2) significant differences between morphological cladistics and genomic comparisons.
3) proof that geological dating significantly overestimated the ages of various strata.
4) the presence of mammalian fossils from the Cambrian.
5) a significant trend amongst researchers towards ID.
6) plausible and testable mechanisms by which the “designers” could have realized their designs.
I’m sure if I thought about it there would be many more.
And what conditions would convince you that this being were incoherent? If it was conclusively demonstrated that humans evolved from an earlier ancestor without any intelligent intervention? No, that doesn’t apply because they could have designed life such that all subsequent life could evolve in an unguided fashion.
Maybe if it could be conclusively demonstrated that life arose without intelligent intervention? No, that wouldn’t do it either; god could simply have created the universe such that life could arise without further intervention.
Please provide a concrete example of a condition by which a creator would be incoherent. Keeping in mind that science, other than math, does not deal with proofs.
FP et al,
you are now resorting to typical Alinsky style personalise-polarise well poisoning tactics, hence derogatory labelling and the like, confirming your negative credibility. Similarly, in the face of actual cases in point you are pretending that nothing is on the table. And of course all of this is intended to be distractive and obfuscatory regarding what is established through the OP. For that, we can simply note that not one objector has been able to touch the Nature article by Sydney Brenner published in 2012. The title, duly approved by Nature, the leading scientific journal family in the world, is already decisive.
Namely, “Life’s code script.”
It is duly noted, that objectors and detractors have nothing to say in answer to the leading Journal and a Nobel Prize winner who affirm the scientific consensus that the cell contains coded information.
Coded algorithms and string data structures are a fact of life in the cell, thus linguistic phenomena. A viable inference, therefore, is that the cell is a product of intelligently directed configuration by language using intelligent agents. Indeed, with Venter et al, we are beginning the journey of engineering on cell technologies. DNA has been repurposed for archival storage, and all 16 GB of English language Wikipedia at the time has been stored using DNA strings.
The zero concession, you are ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked rhetorical gambits by your circle of et als have collapsed. But predictably this will never be acknowledged.
You would be well advised to retire such tactics.
Next, you know or should know that up to 50 or so years ago, the alleged incoherence of the core concept of God was a standard skeptic’s tactic. It fell apart when Plantinga’s free will defence shattered the problem of evil, but the mere existence of the failed attack itself shows a first falsifiability criterion for theism, thus necessarily for creationism. So, the approach that creationism [which is not being advocated as part of the design inference but needs someone to speak up for it] is unfalsifiable and meaningless, falls apart at once.
Speaking of which, the underlying invitation to implicitly use logical positivism is also a failure of similar vintage. For, the verification principle intended to discredit metaphysics, ethics and theology cannot meet its own criterion. Recall, I have been highlighting how self referentiality is core to the hard problem nature of philosophy. It is not an analytic truth, nor is it an operationally testable proposition, that what is not so testable is meaningless.
It’s not the 50’s and 60’s anymore.
Those are over, too, they fail; it’s a settled matter anchored on history.
BTW, Mathematics is not a science no more than a sheep’s tail can be labelled its fifth leg. Mathematics does not warrant in the way that sciences do, even though post Godel, it cannot claim perfect inexhaustible coherence or completenes. Trying to call Mathematics a Science fails.
Now, we turn to actual science and the issue of falsifiability, thence the issue of ideologies and agendas. For, Popper’s falsifiability as popularised is simplistic as a criterion of science, vs non science vs pseudo science etc. And, in particular, there are no hard and fast definable criteria for science vs not science vs pseudo science and so forth.
Why do I say that?
Because, the proper focus of science is a positive one: empirical warrant supporting the best current explanation. Absent such warrant, a claim falters, and the need for such warrant automatically gives a criterion of epistemic merit. However, this also means that reliability of observations is pivotal, and that no explanatory construct of science, whether theory or model, can rise above provisionality. You and your et al have been around when this has been thrashed out at UD. But obviously, the penumbra of objectors assumes it needs not pay attention to those ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked ID-iots.
Where, too, as Feyerabend et al long since recognised, there are no definable methods of particular reliability that are unique to and definitive on identifying sciences. This is one of the many points of failure for scientism. What we have is responsible, evidence and observation anchored prudence towards warrant. Something that extends to history, finance/investment, management, essay writing and the like. And, Cicero long ago highlighted that we are governed by built in first duties of reason: to truth, right reason, warrant and wider prudence etc. (Another point of zero concession denialism, of course.)
The subtext of contempt lies exposed and it has led to failure.
Negative credibility, utter unreliability again.
That means, scientific theories and models are not true, they are empirically tested as reliable so far, due to the logic of implication and the use of implication in abductive reasoning. So, for instance, Newtonian Dynamics once ruled the roost but now is known to be a limited framework for large, slow moving bodies.
Now, we can turn to evolutionary materialistic scientism and its fellow travellers.
Already, Haldane is instantly decisive:
Thus, evolutionary materialistic scientism is a self refuting non starter, taking down its fellow travellers with it.
Turning to actual warrant and empirical evidence, not side debates on revelation and textual exposition, we can start with the key evidence on the table your et al circle from the penumbra are so desperate to deny: cell based life, in key part, is based on string data structure, coded algorithmic information used to synthesise proteins.
Established knowledge, with Nobel Prizes.
The irresponsible denialism we have seen only serves to show, by inadvertently exposing cognitive dissonance, that this is decisive.
Why reject the notion that lucky noise filtered by somehow hitting on islands of function, assembled cell based life in some darwin pond or the like? Easy, there is no adequate empirical warrant for it, speculations on RNA worlds etc notwithstanding. FSCO/I — as close to hand as the English text of your objections — does not come from nowhere by grossly inadequate sources. It is the known signature of design, on trillions of actually observed cases.
I care not, for this, whether or not, we are looking at a molecular nanotech lab in orbit, long since disposed of by crashing into a handy star, Sol. The point is, evident design on reliable sign.
Similarly, body plans (evident from the forms and patterns of life that drove taxonomy), are full of FSCO/I and that needs to be accounted for. Design is the best explanation, minor adaptive radiation does not account for body plans.
As for various outdated but still popularised or even imposed claims:
In short, empty, distractive rhetoric.
KF
PS, just for record, Brenner, in Nature, 2012:
That is what is being dodged and distracted from, the utter collapse of the credibility of FP and the et al circle.
What you quote in that comment is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn’t cover the fact that there are six leucine tRNAs and only one leucine tRNA synthetase. How can leucine tRNA synthetase “recognize” all six leucine tRNAs and charge them all with leucine?
AF, one of the et als pops up, with a red herring. There is already on the table a suggestion regarding redundancy in the codon table. Where, it has long since been put up that aaRS enzymes recognise general conformations of tRNAs, not merely particular anticodons, so this is a distractive side issue. And oh yes, the codon table summarises how the loading enzymes work collectively. Of course side stepped, it is oh so easy to pretend that what is on the table is not. Meanwhile, the months-long pretence that there is no code in the cell stands shattered. KF
Ah, so you do know what I am pointing out. The code is secondary to the shape matching.
So we know that the inherent structure of RNA results in the molecule acting as a template for its own replication. In fact RNA viruses still use RNA as genes. We know that RNA sequences are at the heart of protein synthesis in living organisms. The ribosome’s active site is RNA. We know that aa tRNA synthetases “recognize” and charge tRNAs accurately based on their shape rather than any code. So much for RNA World being a just-so story.
AF, nonsense. The loading of tRNAs which have the in common CCA tool tip is how the encoding is effected, not in opposition to encoding. As you know but have consistently side stepped, chemically, any given tRNA chemically matches any other. The encoding then goes on to be used create the aaRS enzymes, which are of course proteins. That is, the going concern system is reflexive; the issue is its origin, and the nature of codes, algorithms and strings is relevant to that. On this, the matter is utterly clear, symbolic, coded information and its use in algorithms are strong signs of design by language using intelligence. That is what you tried to evade by denying existence of codes, which is manifestly false. KF
Ford @191
What ???? Sometimes I really think that all Darwinists are hoaxers/trolls, or don’t use their heads …
It is nothing easier than to falsify a special creation/creationism.
All what you have to do is to demonstrate, that life can emerge from a chemical soup or from whatever you want (ocean’s hot vents, Yellowstone ponds, rotten meat, thin air ) … In that moment, I will publicly admit, that I was a stupid creationist who believed in fairy tales.
Relatd
This is typical Darwinian. They call things machines, but they don’t mean machines. They call things engineering, but they don’t mean engineering. They call things design, but they don’t mean design. They call things codes, but they don’t mean literal codes … :))))))) It is like in a madhouse.
Nope,you know nothing. Atheistic imagination is not knowledge.
M_r, parts that do not have codes for proteins. There are other functions involved and of course a debate over junk. Slide up to the OP and notice in making insulin, there is a chain c that acts as scaffolding. Is that non functional? Junk? I suggest not, nor the signal sequence also snipped off. Then, we have RNA sequences, e.g. those that make differing tRNAs, and so forth. Then there is what we do not yet know. KF
PS, Wiki sees the thumbscrews again, and confesses:
KF,
I’m confused, as your argument appears to be counter productive.
First, someone might assume that you’re making the flawed argument that distant past will resemble the past. That’s flawed because has the same problem as the idea that the future will resemble the past. Surely, that’s not what you’re suggesting, right? The problem is, there are multitude of ways the future does not resemble the past. No one has formulated a principle of induction that actually provides guidance that we can use in the sense induction implies. So, how could you use in in the case of the origin of organisms?
So, if we rule out an argument that “the distant pass would resemble the past”, then surely you must be referring to explanations, right? IOW, the times we thought we were using induction, we were actually referring to explanations or even useful rules of thumb, regardless how poor they were.
However, this seems particularly problematic for your argument, should we try to take it seriously, for the purpose of criticism. The appearance of design is being well adapted to serve a purpose. This is what Paley was referring to in regards to a watch he stumbled upon…..
IOW, Paley’s big contribution here is to describe the appearance of design. Namely, something has the appearance of design when it is well adapted to serve a purpose. If it was less well adapted, it wouldn’t serve that purpose nearly as well. The watch is a hard to vary configuration of matter. You can’t modify it without reducing its ability to serve that purpose.
Now, let’s try to take your claim seriously, in that it’s true in reality and that all observations should conform to it. Specifically, you’re claiming a designer designed all life on earth. However, part of that design includes all of those strings, algorithms, etc. They themselves reflect hard to vary configurations of matter. So, where was all this complexity before said designer supposedly put it in organisms when creating them?
IOW, any such designer would, itself, have the very same properties we’re trying to explain in the biosphere. Or to rephrase, how can being well adapted to serve a purpose be the explanation for being well adapted to serve a purpose?
It’s the knowledge in living things that needs to be explained as living things start out as balls of cells, which then transform raw materials into proteins, features, etc. They do not poof into existence. They are programmable constructors. That knowledge is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. What is the origin of that knowledge?
So, there must be some assumption you’re making which isn’t present in the above. Otherwise, it seems that you’re merely pushed the problem up a level without improving it. Perhaps you can fill in the gaps?
In addition. constructor theory is a generalization of catalysts, information and even the theory of computation. It provides a way to bring them into fundamental physics by reformulating them into which physical transformations are possible, which physical transformations are impossible and why. The entire process of replication, including aaRSs, etc can be presented as a tree of constructor tasks.
Are you suggesting reformulation isn not possible?
Kairofocus @24,
didn’t you notice my sarcasm @202 ?
CR, the most relevant part of Paley is in his ch 2, which has been dodged ever since the 1850s. More later. KF
PS, I excerpt:
M_r, well warranted, too. Take me as adding wood for the bonfire. KF
Martin-r writes:
The fact that something can happen does not mean that it did happen. Scientists can never prove that life arose without god. The most they will ever be able to achieve is to theorize highly plausible mechanism for it to happen. This always leaves the door open (a gap) for god.
PPS, CR, I am saying, without warrant, there is nothing but just so stories and that the cell has in it strings, codes and algorithms. If you wish to posit a past in which something comes from nothing, let us know on what empirically founded warrant. KF
Ford @209
:))))))
I agree with you on that one :)))))))
You have stumbled on the basis for ID.
ID does not say the life did not arise by natural means. It says that it is highly unlikely that it did. In fact ID admits that because the creator of the universe is one of massive intelligence and power this creator could definitely find a way to make life appear naturally and for life to advance in the way it did. All it would take would be carefully designed initial and boundary conditions. No meddling after the fact.
But ID looks at the science and logic and then says there are likely no natural ways we can observe that could do either. ID is based on the fine tuning of the universe so OOL and Evolution are minor things for the creator of the universe to accomplish. It then asks what would be the purpose to tinker with the original creation in probably a countless number of ways?
The people who endorse ID rarely ask that question but some have. On UD they avoid it like the plague. The people commenting here are not the B team or the C team, but the Z team. Also those who oppose ID and are in good faith are non existent here. Only one has ever contributed anything worthwhile and he left over 15 years ago.
As far as what science can do, is be honest. If life arose, it arose by natural selection of non life compounds and the number of steps were probably in the thousands. Which is why it is unlikely. But science is not honest.
@KF
Friedrich Miescher isolated DNA in 1967. And, even then, that was just the beginning.
IOW, your argument is counter productive because you have undermined Paley’s perspective. Why? Because Paley didn’t have access to all of the details which you just outlined. At which point, his designer would itself be a complicated entity that itself is well adapted to serve a purpose. It too would have the appearance of design. So, how can being well adapted to serve a purpose be the explanation for being well adapted to serve a purpose?
To use an analogy, Empiricism was the idea that all knowledge comes from the senses. However, this is problematic because, as it turns out, we discovered our senses operate via complicated, long chains of hard to vary explanations, such as geometry, optics, electromagnetic radiation, etc. And, you’d have to admit, those theories are, well, not observed. Right? So our observations are themselves theory laden. IOW, we do not observe things even when they are right in front of us. As such, how can all knowledge come from our senses?
In the same sense, you’ve claimed the fact that living things are well adapted to serve a purpose is explained by a designer. However, this is problematic because, as it turns out, we’ve discovered designers are themselves well adapted to the purpose of designing things. They are complicated, knowledge laden entities. Their contrivances depend on complicated, long chains of hard to vary explanations. If you vary them significantly, they do not serve that purpose nearly as well.
Furthermore, as you’ve illustrated, there is no designer inside a living thing that constantly provides explanatory knowledge of just the right genes that will result in just the right proteins that will result in just the right features. That knowledge exists independent of a knowing subject, in the form of non-explanatory knowledge. So, the very thing that needs to be explained is that knowledge.
As, such the real question is what is the origin of that knowledge? How does knowledge grow? Or does it even grow at all? Is there any genuinely new knowledge in an organism, or was it always in some designer, or even in the laws of physics?
So, what is ID’s account for the origin of that knowledge? Apparently, that designer “just was” complete with that knowledge already present? But this does not serve an explanatory purpose. if we’re willing to accept bad explanations, we could more efficiently state that life “just appeared” with that knowledge already present, then skip the designer.
Both fail to account for the knowledge in organisms.
CR
The watch is well adapted to serve the purpose of a person. You say that the designer is also well-adapted to serve a purpose. What purpose and whose purpose would that be?
CR, Paley pretty well anticipated von Neumann’s kinematic self replicator of 1948, in 1802. His cam bar idea was a stored program technique. KF
Jerry:
What you are missing is any evidence from other than the Earth as we know it. What we need is a second data point. That should be available in a few years now if all goes to plan.
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp.....ata-point/
The watch is well adapted to serve the purpose of keeping time.
You’re the one claiming ID’s designer, well, designed life on earth. That would reflect serving a purpose, right? As such, would that not imply ID’s designer would, itself, exhibit the appearance of design? If not, why?
To rephrase, can ID’s designer be significantly modified without impacting its ability to design living things? If so, then how does it achieve its purpose – designing organisms?
To start, there’s all that knowledge KF keeps referring to. How could ID’s designer have been said to design life if it did not possess that knowledge, at the outset? IOW, it too would be, well adapted to design organisms.
If not, it’s unclear what it means to say it designed life on earth. In what sense? And ID would still leave the of the origin of the knowledge in living thinks unaccounted for.
Where was that knowledge before it was placed in living things by ID’s designer?
CR @217
To serve a person’s purpose of knowing the time. There is no purpose without a person.
If so, tell me whose purpose you are talking about.
A cat’s eye has no function, has nothing to serve, and has no purpose if there is no cat.
You seem to think that a designed object and the designer of the object fall into the same category. They do not.
Perhaps you mean functional specified organization because knowledge does not exist distinct from consciousness (the knower).
“Function”, “purpose”, and “service” are also terms that require a specific context.
@KF,
An accurate self replicator requires a blueprint, as opposed to replicating the organism itself, which is the replicator vehicle. If the vehicle itself was replicated, this would result in an error catastrophe, as all of the damage to the cell would be copied as well.
The blueprint is first copied, then the cell divides. And, while copying is high-fidelity, it is still prone to errors. So there must be a means in which errors can be repaired in the blueprint.
IOW, the knowledge in play is in living things, not some external designer. Nor is it maintained by an intervening designer. That’s the thing that needs to be explained.
What is the origin of that knowledge according to ID?
I read the article.
It is irrelevant to anything I said. Based on what we know if life had a natural origin, life had to evolve from chemical compounds probably using thousands of steps, each step being stable.
Martin_r @202,
Haha, so true!
Jerry @212,
Yep, Ford Prefect nailed it.
But ID is much LESS than any assertion about God. All ID suggests is that it’s far more pragmatic and dependable to investigate a poorly understood biological structure, feature, or function AS IF it were designed rather than presuming it must be random junk (“junk” DNA) or useless vestiges of evolution (“vestigial” organs).
-Q
CR, replication requires materials and components, properly arranged, oriented and coupled; requisites of configuration based function. That has to come from somewhere, by adequate cause, so no it is not merely copying a blueprint (passive information) but replication of the means by which a self-sustaining, self replicating entity can proceed with operating now and preparing the next generation. But as Paley highlighted, we have to explain the origin of the contrivance, where beyond 500 – 1.000 bits, blind watchmaker becomes utterly implausible. Adequate, empirically grounded cause is required and just so stories and handwaving over earth is a one point sample do not cut it, nor does success filtered lucky noise. As for mutations, with exceedingly complex systems, accidental changes are overwhelmingly likely to be either trivial or deleterious. In any case, we are back at the recorded blueprint, which in context is of course based on strings and information recorded in a description language of some form. Which means, the constructor must have a machine language. What is the empirically grounded source of linguistic phenomena? Are we putting up just so stories, not empirically testable inferences? KF
KF @222
You know what any replication requires?
THE MATERIALS in the first place.
Look how many chemical building blogs are freely floating in cytoplasm — just waiting to be used for e.g. replication or similar molecular assembly …
All these needful materials ARE ALWAYS AVAILABLE like a miracle :)))))))
M_r, the metabolic network dwarfs a petroleum refinery. KF
First, if I didn’t know any better, you seem to be suggesting the appearance of design can only be attributed to something unless it is known, at the outset, to have a purpose in mind by whatever designed it? But whether people were designed, is the very thing that’s in question. So, apparently we cannot attribute the appearance of design to living things?
IOW, you seem to be suggesting that until the first person stumbled upon something and devised some use for it, that something didn’t the appearance of design. At which point it suddenly gained that attribute?
More relevant to Paley’s essay, we can compare a watch, which is well adapted to serve the purpose of telling time, and a stone, which a person can use as a sundial. The knowledge of how to tell time is embodied in the watch itself. It is a rare, hard to vary configuration of matter. However, in the case of the rock, the knowledge of how to use it to tell time is within us. The rock is not well adapted to serve the purpose of telling time as the role of casting a shadow can be performed by a wide variety of rocks, or even thinks that are non-rocks, like sticks, plants, etc.
living things are vastly more like watches, not stones.
Indeed. The very idea that something serves a purpose reflects an explanation. And only people can create explanatory knowledge. So, yes. There is no purpose without people.
For example, plants cannot conceive of problems, like we can. We are universal explainers. This includes the ideas that plants need energy, that photosynthesis serves the purpose of solving that problem for plants, etc. That reflects a long chain of hard to vary explanations, and only people can create explanatory knowledge.
In the context of the appearance of design, “serves a purpose” is referring to something that could serve a designer’s purpose, should someone intend it to. You could say , it has the appearance of having been designed to serve a purpose.
In the case of photosynthesis, it cannot serve a purpose to plants because plants cannot create explanatory knowledge. Yet, I’m guessing you do not think photosynthesis did not have the appearance of design until we discovered it, came up with some use for it, like as an alternative form of generating energy using algae, etc. Right? The appearance of design refers to the attribute of solving a problem that could have been intentionally targeted to solve.
A cat’s eye solves a problem for a cat, even though a cat cannot conceive of problems like we can. It’s possible that, in the future, we could stitch the genes of a cat into our DNA so we could see much better at night.
Furthermore, a cat’s eye represents a long chain of hard to vary explanations. This includes the use of rods, cones, optic nerves, etc. It works on the same principles of human eyes, such as geometry, optics, electromagnetism, etc. So, it’s unclear why a cat’s eye wouldn’t detect light if it was kept in a nutrient bath and exposed to photons. Assuming we do not destroy ourselves first, decide to stop looking for explanations, etc. we will discover how to perform eye transplants in human beings. And with the right knowledge we could adopt a cat’s eye to be used as a replacement, not unlike how kidney, livers and even lungs are becoming viable transplant sources for human beings.
I made an argument that they did. Your argument just said I was wrong without actually making a counter argument.
Specifically, they would both have the appearance of design, as opposed to both being a human being, instead of an alien, or breathing air, or being a specific age, etc. All of those differences are, well, actually different categories. But they are not relevant to the argument I’m presenting.
Ohh.. That’s right. I think we agreed to call it CTKnowldge? Words are shortcuts for ideas. And despite not disagreeing with the more fundamental reformulation, you seem to object on the grounds of semantics. But, as long as we know we’re talking about information that plays a causal role in being retained when embedded in a storage medium, it doesn’t really matter to me.
So, I’ll rephrase the question so it’s more to your liking…
Where was that CTKnowledge, KF was referring to, before it was placed in living things by ID’s designer?
@KF
It’s unclear how you’ve managed to create a probability calculus. For example, you’re probably assumed that human beings were intentional outcome, which would significantly affect any vague calculation you might have come up with. But, this doesn’t address the argument I’m presenting.
Paley’s argument is, the watch is well adapted to serve the purpose. Specifically, that of telling time. If you vary it, it will not serve that purpose nearly as well. It’s a rare configuration of matter. This is what it means to have the appearance of design. You could use a rock to tell time, by using it as a sun dial, but it’s not well adapted for that purpose. The knowledge of how to tell time is in us, not the rock. Right?
ID’s designer would itself be well adapted to serve a purpose: designing organisms. It too would have the appearance of design, which is exactly the thing ID is trying to explain via, well, a designer. IOW, ID is trying to explain being well adapted to serve a purpose with being well adapted to serve a purpose. This leaves us with the same problem we started out with.
This is like stirring the food around on your plate, then claiming to have ate it. Yet it’s still right there staring you in the face.
CR, the circle is yours. You forget that we are designers and observers. So we know designers are possible and that it often produces recognisable patterns. Patterns such as complex fine tuning, functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, applications of linguistic ability. This last points to cases such as composition of extensive original speech or text that reduces that to writing, such as your own. These are reliable signs, tested against observation. Paley’s time keeping self replicating watch is a thought exercise extension, one that in key parts anticipated von Neumann’s kinematic self replicator. Now, too, we know that design is an act of intelligence, in relevant part, intelligently directed configuration. So, all we need to accept is that intelligence with that capability is real, and that acts of design may and often do, reflect reliable signs of design. Relevant cases in the natural world include the fine tuned physics of the cosmos or aspects of it, the living cell, body plans, discovery of complex coded algorithmic information in the cell. On the strength of such, we have every epistemic right to infer design on such signs, then to ask about onward issues. Where, as we are only using that inductive, abductive form, inference to the best explanation reasoning that is a good slice of our reasoning, we have no need to be cowed by attempts to pretend that such reasoning should not be trusted. In fact, such attempts become self referential and incoherent, very quickly, as we ask on what basis we claim knowledge of our world. KF
PS, Dallas Willard and heirs provide a good dose of corrective regarding knowledge:
PPS: Can you bring yourself to acknowledge that complex, algorithmic code has been identified in the cell? Why or why not? (At this stage, litmus test. Which brings to bear the related question, when litmus paper goes red, do we have an epistemic right to infer on such a sign, acid? Why or why not? Extending, why do we accept the indications of a pH Meter or a Digital Caliper, or a speedometer, or a coincidence artillery range finder?)
As von Neumann pointed out, replication cannot merely copy the cell itself to be high-fidelity. If it did, there would be an error catastrophe, as all of the mutations of the cell would be copied. Also error correction must be limited to the blueprint, instead of trying to correct errors across the entire cell, before replication. The scope of the latter would be exponentially greater than applying error correction to the blueprint. Specifically the blueprint is in a format where the information can be corrected, instead of the expressed outcome.
From this paper on the constructor theory of life….
I have? According to ID, we exhibit the appearance of design. Which exactly the thing that ID is trying to explain. So, I’m at a loss here as to what I’ve forgotten.
First, the claim that “the distant past will resemble the past” is just a reformation of the flawed argument that “the future will resemble the past.” The future is unlike the past in many ways, which I’ve addressed earlier in this thread.
Second, my own writing refers to other living subjects, designed things, explanatory concepts, etc. The works of Shakespeare refers to human beings, concepts and emotions such as love, loss, betrayal, etc. This reflects explanatory knowledge, which is unique to people. So, only people would be able to create them. IOW, comparing the knowledge in the genomes of living things, which isn’t explanatory, to Shakespeare is a highly flawed argument.
But, this is a distraction, as your response does not address the criticism presented. Probability claims of alternative theories, which are based of a dubious calculus at best, does not pull the plank out of the ID’s eye. Namely that ID’s designer would, according to ID, itself exhibit the appearance of design.
First, 2+2=4 can be reformulated as 2*2=4. Right? In the same sense, all that complex, algorithmic code can be reformulated into constructor theoretic terms: which physical tasks are possible, which physical tasks are impossible and why. See section 3.2 above. Constructor theory is the generalization / unification of catalysts, information and even quantum computation. It allows us to bring them into fundamental physics.
Second, those interactions and complexity reflects being well adapted to serve a purpose. It’s a more fundamental description of the vague “Functionally Specified Information”, etc. To quote Paley….
What Paley just described, fundamentally, reflects being well adapted to serve a purpose.
So, my question is, where was all of those algorithms, etc. before some designer put them in living things?
Was it in the designer? If so, it too would have the very same attributes ID is trying to explain in living things. It too would have the appearance of design. How can being well adapted to serve a purpose be the explanation for being well adapted to serve a purpose?
If not, then where was it? How did it end up in living things? Did that knowledge just “appear” when the designer created them? But that would reflect spontaneous generation, would it not? At which point it’s unclear what we need ID’s designer for, as apparently all of that complexity can appear fully formed, spontaneously.
CR at 229,
A sad state of affairs. The Designer is outside of space and time and creates without using pre-existing matter. Again, He is reduced to a man. A very smart man but with capabilities far beyond any man.
The Universe and Earth was designed for human life.
Viewed from your perspective, things happen spontaneously. How is that possible? Without internal instructions, it is not possible.
Martin_r @223,
Well said! Reminds me of a joke.
A scientist stands before God in the judgment. God asks the scientist, “Didn’t the complexity of life on earth, especially in yourself as a human cause you to consider the Source of this human from mere clay?
The scientist responds, “Pshaw, I can make a human from the elements and compounds found in clay.
God replies, “Okay show me.”
The scientist says, “Sure, give me some clay.”
God replies, “No, make your own clay.”
-Q
Can you point to this in the supposedly scientific theory of ID? Last time I checked, ID says nothing about its designer operating outside space and time.
Rather, what you seem to be describing is creationism.
Critical Rationalist @229,
It’s amazing to me that someone would try to debunk ID without actually understanding ID. All you’ve done is torch a strawman.
So, how about this for a change? Let’s see whether you can provide an accurate definition of ID.
We can go from there.
-Q
Can anyone do that?
It would certainly be a useful development to have a definition of what “Intelligent Design” is.
Can anyone do that?
Querius
Haha … a good one! Never heard before.
anyway, there is a small bug … Darwinian scientist in this joke is lying again … this time directly in God’s face.
This Darwinian scientist can’t make a simplest life form even if given all “the elements and compounds”, let alone to assembly a human out of it :)))))))))))))))
PS: this joke perfectly illustrates Darwinism…. they can do anything … in theory :)))))))
Alan Fox
Intelligent design definition:
A system of multiple parts working in concert for a purpose.
So simple..
Now you people (Darwinists, biologists, microbiologists, archeologists, paleontologists, anthropologists and all the other “-logists”) have to show us ONLY ONE EXAMPLE of such a system where no intelligence was involved. Of course, your example has to be outside biology – because we consider biology designed.
KF,
these metabolic networks … I would like to understand, how something like that can evolve by random mutations, copying errors, and trial-error process :))))))))))))
Darwinists believe in never ending series of miracles :)))))))))))))
PS: I admit, I am not a chemist, but I would like to understand, how the first self-replicating molecule should have worked …. to keep self-replicating, when you don’t have these building blocks floating around … in other words, when you don’t have the materials/compounds needed for the self-replication — moreover, this self-replicating molecule has to be encapsulated in some membrane and sort of isolated from the outside materials …
AF & circle, further distractive tangents. As a first step, the Resources Tab, accessible from this and every UD page, for perhaps a decade, has had a page, ID Defined: https://uncommondescent.com/id-defined/ Similarly, almost a year ago, as part of this L%FP series, I discussed the design inference, theory and movement https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-55-defining-clarifying-intelligent-design-as-inference-as-theory-as-a-movement/ Meanwhile, there is the significance of complex algorithmic, symbol using code in DNA and mRNA to be assessed, in the context of a causal circle including tRNA and asociated enzymes, part of a wider metabolic system in a self replicating cell. KF
Classic burden shift. Martin_r makes stuff up and challenges everyone to prove him wrong.
M_r, I doubt that life ever boiled down to a single, self replicating cell. Just the need for smart gated encapsulation points to a first big problem. For, such a complex entity would be vulnerable and needs to be in a protective environment. Where, smart gating and bilipid layers etc show how complex that is instantly, involving many types of molecule already, and soon, we are looking at metabolic, process-flow networks with materials and energy issues. With of course, von Neuman’s kinematic self replicator peeking in. KF
From KF’s link:
That’s a mission statement, not a definition.
AF & Circle, strawman with ad hom. M_r is simply saying, very reasonably, that in real science, claims need to be warranted through empirical observation. There are trillions of examples of FSCO/I that are observed, in every case they come from intelligently directed configuration, which is backed by needle in haystack, blind wandering in a configuration space issues. Your reaction tells us, you have no counter examples but wish to impose Lewontin’s a priori evolutionary materialism and/or fellow travellers. That is ideological question begging. And meanwhile, you have been in similarly ideological denial of the well warranted conclusion that there is complex, string data structure, algorithmic code in DNA and mRNA, showing again how ideology is taking priority over evidence. KF
AF & circle,
ID as theory is a research programme, which would be defined by core theses; in other forms, it is stated on core focal research questions, as that scientific research programme which seeks to explore and answer the question as to whether entities, processes etc can and do exhibit reliable signs of cause by intelligently directed configuration.
As inference, we note a key regularity:
These are not hard to understand, nor are they unreasonable. Save, to those dedicated to ideologically driven selective hyperskepticism. As a commonplace example, a major metric in telecommunications is signal to noise ratio, which pivots on identifiable differences between signals and noise. Where, those same characteristics obtain for the algorithmic code in the cell that you spent months trying to dismiss.
And now we see snide dismissiveness towards engineering. Where it is obviously being forgotten that engineering is applied science, and that engineers therefore have extensive scientific training, involving core and specifically engineering sciences, with of course a fair slice of Mathematics and some economics.
The readily accessible answer to the thematic question is, yes, there are several strong signs of design as cause. Some are found in cells, in body plans, and in the physics of the cosmos. Such raises onward, revolutionary questions on the approach we should take to understand the past of origins.
It is that challenging of a dominant, deeply flawed and too often domineering school of thought that is the real locus of debates.
Meanwhile, we still see a zero concessions policy, here directed against the actual — but obviously ideologically inconvenient — scientific consensus that there is indeed algorithmic code in DNA and mRNA.
Obviously, for some objectors, evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers comes first, not actual empirically founded evidence.
KF
Alan Fox
what did I make up ? Could you be more specific ?
You asked for intelligent design definition. I gave you one.
And it is so simple so even you can understand that …
CR at 232,
Back to politics? Darwinism left the lab and became a guide for Communists and others. ID is not some abstract thing. It tells people that they, and all living things, were designed. Period. Once people hear that, what are they supposed to think? The Designer – the source of Design – is nothing? Nobody?
Just because the science called ID doesn’t name the Designer, the average person will.
Kairosfocus @ 243 and Martin_r,
As is obvious, detractors of ID cannot actually define what they’re mocking. Also unaddressed is their uncritical support for an historically racist, colonialist, and genocidal theory! This is the scientific mask of the Victorian Age and they cannot bring themselves to denounce it, nor Darwin’s noxious theories about white supremacy!
Since neither Critical Rationalist nor Alan Fox can come up with a coherent definition of Intelligent Design as applied to Biology, let me put forward a simple version:
That’s it.
• There’s no appeal to the Darwinist gods of the gaps: MUSTA, MIGHTA, and EMERGED.
• There’s nothing in ID that assigns any particular Designer.
• There’s no science fantasy, only reverse bio-engineering that consistently leads to breakthroughs.
Let me also continue to encourage the rational folks here not to “feed the trolls” who simply splatter vacuous, generic phlegm all over UD topics, somehow believing that their unsupported assertions constitute irrefutable proof.
-Q
Relatd @245,
Average people include Christians, Muslims, and Jews. There are also cosmic humanists and panpsychists who hold different views than those of the Bible, such as a brilliant physics professor with whom I’ve had some interesting discussions.
After retiring, this professor has been on speaking tours promoting his mystical views. He impressed me once when we talked about the maximum practical precision of Pi, depending on application (NASA-JPL uses 16 decimals). My question to him was how many decimal places for Pi is necessary to differentiate between points that are a Planck length apart on the circumference of the known universe. I happen to remember Pi to 78 decimals and wanted to know whether it was sufficient. The professor quickly SOLVED IT out loud in his head. Wow! But his panpsychism was truly weird. A friend of mine claims that such brilliant people often “go gaga” in their later years for some reason.
So, you can see why ID pragmatically stays away from any source of the design. Besides, our religious faith is not based on scientific knowledge or a high IQ, but our human experiences.
-Q
Querius at 247,
Our religious faith is based on truth. All truth. Do you understand? Some want to believe that “faith” does not contain truth. That it is something completely outside of it.
John 14:6
‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’
Was Jesus talking about a faith concept as opposed to actual truth? Our “human experience”? Which means what? Something that does not include God? Or man is isolated completely from God? God is off limits since only human understanding, as defined by other humans, is all there is?
John 16:13
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
So the “all the truth” mentioned above does not include all truth?
@Relatd
Absent in your reply is pointing out where ID indicates the designer is outside space and time. Try again?
CR at 249,
Nothing was absent in my reply. You seem to be very, very concerned about ID, but not as science. ID as science is well established. And yes, the attributes of the Designer are not reducible to Darwinian processes. In fact, as has been pointed out numerous times by Ba77, the required attributes correspond to existing knowledge about God. The two ideas are not separate. Sure, some want ID to be completely stuck in the lab.
But others, like Richard Dawkins, want you to enjoy life by not “worrying” about God who he claims probably does not exist. You see, people are “afraid” of God because He might judge them based on their actions in life.
KF
I completely agree … moreover, the cell division itself is a highly orchestrated process full of check-points. Of course, that makes sense, you have to make sure, that all the data from mother cell are transferred to daughter cell 1:1.
How on earth can you do that without those check-points ? :))))))))
What is worse, Darwinists trying to trick lay public that a cell membrane division occurs by some natural law … like oil bubbles ….
Of course not.
Even the simplest bacterial cell is using molecular machines for membrane division. Cell membranes do not divide by itself AT ALL — they get cut in half by nanomachines !!!
Martin_r,
The next time someone claims there are no codes or instructions in a cell, send them this.
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Chromosomes-Fact-Sheet
if life evolved naturally, it had to require probably thousands of steps of stable compounds that slowly took on more complicated forms till it evolved into an extremely complicated form we call the first life but was itself just a simple cell.
So far no one can isolate one of these thousands of steps, all of which must be stable. All we get is speculation about one or two possibly simple compounds that could be the start of this long process, a process that apparently happened very quickly.
Seems a contradiction.
CR, in addition to matters empirical, there is a logic of being challenge in your arguments about designers. We are designers, empirical fact with your own comments as cases in point of FSCO/I, and we are contingent beings with signs of being designed ourselves. So, were life on earth the product of an ancient biotech lab long since disposed of in Sol, that would just be a similar case of design. However, it is seriously arguable that the cosmos shows signs of design, and we know that a necessary being root of reality is a viable cause of our world. But, there is nothing in being a necessary being that would preclude being an intelligent agent able to direct configuration of entities up to and including say a universe. So, too, the validity of the design inference is separate from the ontological status of the designer in question. KF
PS, a necessary being, reality root designer comes up on matters of cosmological design, not design of cell based life. All the way back to Thaxton et al, that was public record in TMLO, 1984.
Are you suggesting the above would not, at a more fundamental level, reflect being well adapted to serve a purpose? The more bits you have, the more well adapted the storage medium is.
Furthermore a mechanical watch is analog. It has zero bits in the digital sense. Nor does it self reproduce. So, watches do not have the appearance of design, but a digital watch would? Replicating organisms are even more well adapted to serve a purpose.
Or, to rephrase, are things that exhibit FSCO/I not well adapted for a purpose? If you were to create a venn diagram of (1) reliable signs of design and (2) being well adapted to serve a purpose, would anything in (1) fall outside (2)? If so, why? If the order of something is important, that reflects being well adapted, right?
We can reformulate “Functional information” as information that plays a causal role when embedded in a storage medium.
All of those bits of information in the genomes of living things reflect a storage medium that has been well adapted for the purpose of, well, storing that particular information, allowing it self replicate, etc. If you modified it, it wouldn’t serve that purpose nearly as well. Specifically, it would refer to some other information. Right?
Some prior knowledge was used to adapt the medium to have the right bits set. That reflects a copying process. And copying information requires specific physical tasks are possible so the destination medium can, well, become well adapted to hold a copy of that information.
So, I’ll again ask, in the case of ID’s designer, where was all that knowledge instantiated previously? That instantiation would reflect being well adapted to serve the purpose of designing organisms. If you modified said designer in respect to that instantiated knowledge, it couldn’t serve the purpose of designing those organisms as well. Right?
At which point, it’s unclear how that designer wouldn’t itself have the appearance of design. Explaining being well adapted for a purpose via being well adapted for a purpose is circular. It too would need s designer, etc.
IOW, what I’m not hearing is an objection to whether the shoe fits or not. Rather, it seems that you just only want to wear it when it’s convenient.
Except, I’ve exhibited no such policy. So, what gives?
Rather, I keep asking, what is the explanation for the algorithmic code in DNA and mRNA, not a claim that it’s inconvenient.
The question is, what is the origin of it? Where was it before some designer supposedly put in in the genomes of organisms? If the explanation for that knowledge is merely “that information was instantiated in some designer” then you have just pushed the problem up a level because the very same knowledge was instantiated in the designer, instead of the biosphere. At which point, the designer has the very same propriety we’re trying to explain in living things.
As an analogy, hypothetically, imagine I found a computer with an application on it and a 3-D printer. When I boot up the system, it asks me which bacterium I want to print. I pick a specific bacterium and click “OK”. The computer sends commands to the printer which indicates how to transforms raw materials into the bacterium.
Did I design the bacterium? It’s unclear how this is the case as I just ran an existing application that exercised some existing knowledge. The origin of the bacterium is not its proximate cause. It’s the knowledge in the computer itself. That’s what would need to be explained. So, the question is, what is the origin of the knowledge in the computer? Right? After all, it would be well adapted for the purpose of printing bacterium, not me. Hypothetically, I’m clueless about the design of bacteria. I just clicked a button.
Now, I’d point out that the computer, software, etc has affordances that target human beings. Specifically, it refers to concepts like Users, printing, offers the ability to confirm my choices, displays information in English or may even be localized, etc. Only people can create explanatory knowledge. So, people would be the explanation for that knowledge. However, no one person was just born with the knowledge of how to do any of those things.
Knowledge grows via variation and criticsm. Or, in the case of people, conjecture and criticism. The knowledge in the system wasn’t already present somewhere, such as in the laws of physics, at the outset. That would imply all knowledge comes from the senses, etc. Rather that knowledge would reflect hard earned, decades worth of work by people.
So, across the board, the explanation for the knowledge in the system would be variation and criticism.
The bacterium has a recipe. Some person would have created the knowledge of how to translate the recipe from instructions the bacterium would execute to a recipe that the printer could execute. This would reflect the interoperability of information (in the same sense that a IBM G3 chip could run an appellation designed for an Intel Xenon chip.) The origin of that original recipe in the bacteria was variation and selection in nature. And the origin of the knowledge in the system itself was conjecture and criticism. So, the entire thing reflects the growth of knowledge. It was genuinely created in that it may not have every existed anywhere but on earth.
Furthermore, the system would need to include the recipe for the bacterium in its original form, so the printer could include it as part of the bacterium. Otherwise, the bacterium could not reproduce itself once printed. Right?
In the case of ID, where was this knowledge located before it was put into the genomes of organisms?
CR at 255,
The same old same old. Using a lot of words does not hide the core problem.
“… well adapted to serve a purpose.” Adapted how? I need to eat today, not 1,000 or a million years from now. I can’t wait for some new adaptation.
The knowledge you ask about was part of a being that is far, far beyond its human creations.
Romans 9:20
“But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”’
CR, so many points.
The design description of the analogue watch reduces it to bits, compare AutoCAD.
FSCO/I is about thresholds of complexity for things where function relies on fairly precise configuration, merely being well adapted is far too vague.
The zero concessions policy is quite manifest, that any particular objector is not using it does not change its sad reality.
Next, your bacterium example is a case of manufacturing not design, observe Paley on the issue of a chain of self replicated entities.
The logical first place a design is, is in the imagination and reasoning of the designer, such is a non issue readily seen from where your objection was before it was typed.
And so forth.
Meanwhile, it is quite clear that objectors have been unable to undermine the algorithmic, complex code in DNA and mRNA in the cell, even as we have seen tangential issue after tangential issue. The reality of coded algorithmic information in the cell speaks for itself.
KF
Related @48,
Yes, and I treasure John 14:6 as well. However, I don’t dare mix scientific “truth” with the reality of the Messiah Yeshua, the Word of God. Why? It’s because science is always changing. The scientific method as an experimental and intellectual discipline remains the same (and is actually described in in the Bible), but many so-called “truths” such as those I was taught in grade school (for example, that Jupiter has 12 moons and Saturn 10), is not considered truth anymore. Darwin’s racist theory continues to implode under the weight of mounting evidence against it, and even the quantum mechanics and astrophysics that I learned in college is obsolete and no longer considered anywhere near “the truth.” Additionally . . .
• Legal outcomes for the “truth” only approximate justice and are often miscarriages.
• Political “truth,” if it exists at all, resembles farcical fantasies promoted by groups of people with ulterior motives. Pontius Pilate lamented, “What is truth?”
• All human institutions including religion, education, scientific research, benevolent organizations, business, etc. are plagued with phonies, charlatans, corruption, lies, toxic abuses of power, and the power hungry.
So, when Yeshua speaks of Himself as THE truth, this is a very profound statement about the nature of our existence. I still love science, but recognize that science should never be syncretized with my faith–or vice versa.
-Q
Querius at 258,
You’re splitting hairs. There’s no need. Man is not perfect?! Really??? You appear to hold science up not as a tool to be used but as a kind of god. Don’t do that. Science can be corrupted as well.
Jesus didn’t die for a concept but for all men.
Isn’t that the job of “Intelligent Design” proponents? I’ve spent nearly twenty years asking what “Intelligent Design” amounts to, the first time directly to Bill Dembski not long after he set up this blog as his “personal playground”. I suggested he offer his definition of ID as clarification.
Unfortunately due to some glitch, my comment containing the question disappeared and the account I had registered became unusable.
There’s no code, just copying by direct templating due to the hydrogen bond pair matching between adenine and thymine/uracil and between cytosine and guanine. The genetic code, where triplet codons cash out as amino-acid residues, evolved later.
*gets popcorn*
AF,
first, ID was long since defined as the scientific research programme that investigates whether entities can and do have in them observable, reliable signs of design. Your refusal to take that seriously does not change the fact or the success on the actual merits: there are signs, they are observable in codes and ciphers, they are present in coherent texts, they are present in the cell [see the genetic, protein building code], they are present in body plans, they are present in the cosmos. The import of that is monumental, many features of the natural world are replete with signs that they are a result of intelligently directed configuration, rather than blind wandering about in configuration spaces utterly dominated by seas of non functional gibberish, but with islands of function.
Next, the truth is, for months you tried to claim that there is no code in DNA and mRA by extension, all you are doing above is repeating a claim in the teeth of the empirically founded consensus of science over the past seventy years. Indeed, in the teeth of a Nobel Prize winning consensus, cf: https://uncommondescent.com/darwinist-debaterhetorical-tactics/protein-synthesis-what-frequent-objector-af-cannot-acknowledge/
And, as Relatd highlighted:
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Chromosomes-Fact-Sheet
Third, combining 1 and 2, we readily see why you now want to entertain yourself (fetching popcorn and all) on where did the code come from.
The answer, that you skipped over, is obvious: designs are present in the intelligent thought and action of the relevant designer before they are put on the ground so to speak. For example, where was the design behind the text strings of your objection before they were put up in your comment boxes?
The triviality of this last goes to the underlying lack of careful consideration behind too many objections.
KF
Alan Fox @260,
See @246 for a simple definition of ID that apparently has eluded you for nearly twenty years.
-Q
Oh, wow, *scrolls back in excited anticipation*.
That’s it? Your personal wishful thinking? That’s past simple into simplistic.
Is this going to be the lame analogy with human designers?
What you are asking is in fact an interesting question. Rhesus Macaques share s common ancestor with us going back some thirty million years. They are social animals and use vocal communication using a vocabulary of around thirty sounds. NMR studies have shown they have a homologous (to human) region of the brain involved in sound processing, Broca’s area. So the evolution of speech in the human line started millions of years ago. Selection had to favour all the necessary co-adaptive changes, morphological and cognitive, in both speaking and listening. Anatomically modern humans show up around 200,000 years ago, so it’s fair to assume that talking and listening was happening then. What delayed the emergence of cultural evolution for another 180,000 years is (to me at least) a fascinating question.
Mind you Querius has the simple answer. Looks designed, so it is! Let’s not worry about by what, when, where, how and why?
AF at 265,
Why? You’ve gotten the answer many times.
Why what?
An answer perhaps. But the answers vary depending on who is answering. Do you agree with Querius that “it looks designed so it is designed” is the definition of “Intelligent Design”?
AF at 267,
Oh brother.
“Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.”
Source: https://intelligentdesign.org/whatisid/
O’rly!
More wishful thinking!
AF at 269,
Time for you to leave. You’re obviously not here to discuss.
So what? Are you here to discuss? What, if anything, is up for discussion by your lights?
Alan Fox @264,
No, not personal wishful thinking. Since you said you struggled with the definition for “nearly twenty years,” I thought you might be able to understand a simple definition of “If it looks designed, let’s study it as if it were designed.”
Oh, cool! Now you’re misquoting me! No, that’s NOT what I wrote! Check it for yourself. The difference is significant.
So, once again . . . I wrote, “If it looks designed, let’s study it as if it were designed.”
-Q
PyrrhoManiac1 @271,
Let me ask you if you understand my simple definition of Intelligent Design as “If it looks designed, let’s study it as if it were designed.”
-Q