Intelligent Design

Orthomyxo Types on Keyboard; When Letters Appear on Screen “It’s Physical!”

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The appalling depths to which materialists will sink in attempting to insulate themselves from the conclusions compelled by the evidence were demonstrated in this exchange between Orthomyxo and Upright Biped regarding the genetic code:

UB: There is a point in time and space where an association is made between a codon and an anticodon. There is also a point in time and space when there is an association made between an anticodon and an amino acid.

UB: the association between the codon and the amino acid is a discontinuous association. It is not established by dynamics, but by a) a specific type of organization, and b) simultaneous coordination between two independent sets of multiple sequences

Note that the nothing UB said is the least bit controversial. All he is saying is that the genetic code works like any other code. As KF frequently notes, Crick knew this from the very beginning. Nearly 70 years ago (March 19, 1952) he wrote:

Which is why Orthomyxo’s reply is so stunning. Ortho’s deeply held metaphysical views are threatened by UB’s observation, so he says:

I really can’t say I find this to be a very good argument. The question is does the genetic code work through a series of chemical reactions. You say the chemical reaction that links amino acid to tRNA and the one that links loaded tRNAs to a codon are “discontinuous” because they happen at different times. (I presume by this you a referring to the fact loaded tRNAs used in translation are drawn from a pool of already made “translation-ready” tRNAs?). But I don’t see how that changes the fact that the genetic code works via a series of chemical reactions.

Ortho: Never mind that hyper-sophisticated “string data structure carrying a prong-height-based alphanumeric, 4 state per character code that uses chemical interactions and geometry at physical level.”* Nothing to see here. It’s chemical reactions all the way down.

UB sums up Ortho’s willfully obdurate reaction to the evidence:

You can push the “A” key on your computer and the letter “A” will appear on your screen. You can then ignore everything else and steadfastly argue that this entire process “works” by dynamics. This is the cop out that Ed chooses because he is intellectually unwilling to face the necessary coordination of symbol vehicles and constraints (i.e. the discontinuous association) required for the system to actually function as it does. If this is your cop out as well, then you are certainly free to take it. Is this your cop out? Regardless of your answer to that question, when you say that it is ”absolutely the case that the next amino acid in a developing protein is determined by chemistry” you are wrong. That chain of events from DNA to binding is undeniably discontinuous, just as it is from the “A” key on your computer to the letter “A” appearing on your screen.

__________

*HT: KF

169 Replies to “Orthomyxo Types on Keyboard; When Letters Appear on Screen “It’s Physical!”

  1. 1
    Seversky says:

    Seriously?? You are both denying the material/physical structure and functions of the genome and a computer, that there is no physical chain of events between me pressing the ‘A’ key on my keyboard and the letter ‘A’ appearing on my screen?

    I’m starting to wonder if UD is actually an AI Turing test.

    BTW, has Ed George been banned?

  2. 2
    daveS says:

    I’m severely underqualified for this discussion, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more detail on this:

    There is a point in time and space where an association is made between a codon and an anticodon. There is also a point in time and space when there is an association made between an anticodon and an amino acid.

    Is there an animation which shows this association being made? Does it occur when molecules come together or something along those lines?

    I’m used to thinking of associations as abstract things, so the notion of an association being made at a point in space and time is puzzling to me.

  3. 3
    Barry Arrington says:

    Sev,

    Seriously?? You are both denying the material/physical structure and functions of the genome and a computer, that there is no physical chain of events between me pressing the ‘A’ key on my keyboard and the letter ‘A’ appearing on my screen?

    Of course there is a physical chain of events between you pressing the ‘A’ key on your keyboard and the letter ‘A’ appearing on your screen. No one denies that.

    Do you deny that that the reason an “A” appears on your screen instead of nothing or gibberish is that your computer employs a code that translates the pressing of a particular key on your keyboard to a particular arrangement of pixels on your screen?

    Sev’s statement is like saying: Do you deny that when a book is written that ink is actually put on paper?

  4. 4
    bornagain77 says:

    Seversky and Orthomyxo, I have a question for you guys, I wonder if you guys will be brave enough to answer it honestly. ,,, Here it is, ‘Did you write your posts or did the laws of physics write your posts for you and inform you of that event after the fact?’

    Assessing the Damage MN Does to Freedom of Inquiry
    Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds.
    MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact.
    “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer?
    Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,,
    You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent.
    – Paul Nelson
    https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/

    Or better yet, ‘Did Einstein discover relativity or did the foundational laws of the universe discover themselves and inform Einstein of that event after the fact?’

    Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will – July 27, 2014
    Excerpt: And free will?:
    Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will?
    Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options.
    I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say.
    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....free-will/

  5. 5
    orthomyxo says:

    Remember that this started because you are incredulous at the idea the genetic code could when through a series of chemical reactions.

    As far as I can tell, everyone agrees the association between a specific tRNA and its amino acid of achieved by a chemical reaction. The binding of amino acids into peptides is a chemical reaction, and the sequence of amino acids is determined by a chemical affinity between the loaded tRNA and mRNA (which was itself produced in a chemical reaction between DNA and RNApol).

    That’s how the genetic code works, and I really don’t think it’s credible to claim that’s not a series of chemical reactions.

    Upright thinks that saying the reactions are discontinuous is changing something, but I honestly have no idea why that is relevant.

    Finally, you have a bad habit of assigning anyone who disagrees with you to some opposition tribe. I’ve never mentioned anything about materialism or any other religious position here.

  6. 6
    Ed George says:

    Sev

    BTW, has Ed George been banned?

    Nope. Just placed in moderation limbo. 🙂 I guess Barry took exception to something I said. Maybe it was when I said that DNA functions through chemical reactions. Something every school kid knows to be true.

  7. 7
    bornagain77 says:

    Ed George, you saying that “DNA functions through chemical reactions”, and leaving it at that, is just as naive as saying that a Chemical Factory functions solely through chemical reactions.

    Here is what a Darwinist termed to be a ‘horrendously complex’ biochemical metabolic pathway chart of a ‘simple’ cell:

    ExPASy – Biochemical Pathways – interactive schematic
    http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1

    Moreover, “In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.”

    Cell-inspired electronics – February 25, 2010
    Excerpt: “A single cell in the human body is approximately 10,000 times more energy-efficient than any nanoscale digital transistor, the fundamental building block of electronic chips. In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.”
    http://phys.org/news/2010-02-c.....onics.html

    Life Leads the Way to Invention – Feb. 2010
    Excerpt: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. “In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an obvious conclusion: inventors ought to look to life for ideas.,,, Essentially, cells may be viewed as circuits that use molecules, ions, proteins and DNA instead of electrons and transistors. That analogy suggests that it should be possible to build electronic chips – what Sarpeshkar calls “cellular chemical computers” – that mimic chemical reactions very efficiently and on a very fast timescale.
    https://crev.info/2010/02/life_leads_the_way_to_invention/

    Also of interest is that the integrated coding between the DNA, RNA and Proteins of the cell apparently seem to be ingeniously designed and/or programmed along the very stringent guidelines laid out in Landauer’s principle, (by Charles Bennett from IBM of Quantum Teleportation fame), for ‘reversible computation’ in order to achieve such amazing energy/biochemical efficiency as it does.

    Notes on Landauer’s principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell’s Demon – Charles H. Bennett – September 2003
    Excerpt: Of course, in practice, almost all data processing is done on macroscopic apparatus, dissipating macroscopic amounts of energy far in excess of what would be required by Landauer’s principle. Nevertheless, some stages of biomolecular information processing, such as transcription of DNA to RNA, appear to be accomplished by chemical reactions that are reversible not only in principle but in practice.,,,,
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/s.....980300039X

    As the following article, which looked at ‘Landauer’s Bound”, put it, “biological translation,,, is,,, about 100,000 times more efficient than a computer.”

    The astonishing efficiency of life – November 17, 2017 by Jenna Marshall
    Excerpt: All life on earth performs computations – and all computations require energy. From single-celled amoeba to multicellular organisms like humans, one of the most basic biological computations common across life is translation: processing information from a genome and writing that into proteins.
    Translation, it turns out, is highly efficient.
    In a new paper published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, SFI researchers explore the thermodynamic efficiency of translation.,,,
    To discover just how efficient translation is, the researchers started with Landauer’s Bound. This is a principle of thermodynamics establishing the minimum amount of energy that any physical process needs to perform a computation.
    “What we found is that biological translation is roughly 20 times less efficient than the absolute lower physical bound,” says lead author Christopher Kempes, an SFI Omidyar Fellow. “And that’s about 100,000 times more efficient than a computer.”
    https://phys.org/news/2017-11-astonishing-efficiency-life.html

    Yet even the comparison to a Chemical Factory does not do the ‘simple’ cell justice, A ‘simple’ cell is far more complex than any Chemical Factory that has ever been Intelligently Designed by man.

    “To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings with find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus of itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell. We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine – that is one single functional protein molecule – would be completely beyond our capacity at present and will probably not be achieved until at least the beginning of the next century. Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules.
    We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction. In fact, so deep would be the feeling of deja-vu, so persuasive the analogy, that much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late twentieth-century technology.
    What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth. However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours. To witness such an act at a magnification of one thousand million times would be an awe-inspiring spectacle.”
    Michael Denton PhD., Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, pg.328

    As David Berlinski puts it:

    “…applying Darwinian principles to problems of this level of complexity is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound caused by an atomic weapon. It’s just not going to work.”
    – David Berlinski

  8. 8
    Ed George says:

    BA77

    Ed George, you saying that “DNA functions through chemical reactions”, and leaving it at that, is just as naive as saying that a Chemical Factory functions solely through chemical reactions.

    Apples and aardvarks.

    DNA is a chemical, residing in an environment full of other chemicals, interacting (ie, reacting) with these chemicals, facilitating (through chemical reactions) the formation of proteins, which interact (ie, react) with other chemicals in the cell, etc. Biochemistry 101.

  9. 9
    bornagain77 says:

    LOL, ‘nothing to see here’ eh Ed George? Just ‘chemicals interacting with other chemicals’, eh Ed George?

    On top of what I’ve already posted at 7 showing just how naive Ed George’s “just chemicals interacting with other chemicals’ view of the cell is, the cell is certainly NOT “just chemicals interacting with other chemicals.’

    Aside from molecules performing chemical reactions, the molecules of the cell also use light and electricity in a very sophisticated way so at to communicate with one another.

    Electric DNA
    Excerpt: unbroken DNA conducts electricity, while an error blocks the current. Now Dr Barton has found that some repair enzymes exploit this. One pair of enzymes lock onto different parts of a DNA strand. One of them sends an electron down the strand. If the DNA is unbroken, the electron reaches the other enzyme, and causes it to detach. i.e. this process scans the region of DNA between them, and if it’s clean, there is no need for repairs.
    http://creation.com/electric-dna#endRef5

    Care for Appetizers? Electric Proteins, Spidey Sense, and More – January 2, 2020,
    Excerpt: Electron transport has been well known in the cases of photosynthesis and metabolism. But a few years ago, his team was astonished to find that a run-of-the-mill protein conducted electricity. The protein was acting like a wire!
    Further observations revealed that all proteins conduct electricity — even the ones that had “weren’t designed to do this”—
    “Until quite recently, proteins were regarded strictly as insulators of electrical current flow. Now, it seems, their unusual physical properties may lead to a condition in which they are sensitively poised between an insulator and a conductor. (A phenomenon known as quantum criticality may be at the heart of their peculiar behavior.)”
    https://evolutionnews.org/2020/01/care-for-appetizers-electric-proteins-spidey-sense-and-more/

    Cellular Communication through Light
    Excerpt: Information transfer is a life principle. On a cellular level we generally assume that molecules are carriers of information, yet there is evidence for non-molecular information transfer due to endogenous coherent light. This light is ultra-weak, is emitted by many organisms, including humans and is conventionally described as biophoton emission.
    http://www.plosone.org/article.....ne.0005086

    Symphony of Life, Revealed: New Imaging Technique Captures Vibrations of Proteins, Tiny Motions Critical to Human Life – Jan. 16, 2014
    Excerpt: To observe the protein vibrations, Markelz’ team relied on an interesting characteristic of proteins: The fact that they vibrate at the same frequency as the light they absorb.
    This is analogous to the way wine glasses tremble and shatter when a singer hits exactly the right note. Markelz explained: Wine glasses vibrate because they are absorbing the energy of sound waves, and the shape of a glass determines what pitches of sound it can absorb. Similarly, proteins with different structures will absorb and vibrate in response to light of different frequencies.
    So, to study vibrations in lysozyme, Markelz and her colleagues exposed a sample to light of different frequencies and polarizations, and measured the types of light the protein absorbed.
    This technique, , allowed the team to identify which sections of the protein vibrated under normal biological conditions. The researchers were also able to see that the vibrations endured over time, challenging existing assumptions.
    “If you tap on a bell, it rings for some time, and with a sound that is specific to the bell. This is how the proteins behave,” Markelz said. “Many scientists have previously thought a protein is more like a wet sponge than a bell: If you tap on a wet sponge, you don’t get any sustained sound.”
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....084838.htm

    The Real Bioinformatics Revolution – Proteins and Nucleic Acids ‘Singing’ to One Another?
    Excerpt: the molecules send out specific frequencies of electromagnetic waves which not only enable them to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ each other, as both photon and phonon modes exist for electromagnetic waves, but also to influence each other at a distance and become ineluctably drawn to each other if vibrating out of phase (in a complementary way).,,, More than 1 000 proteins from over 30 functional groups have been analysed. Remarkably, the results showed that proteins with the same biological function share a single frequency peak while there is no significant peak in common for proteins with different functions; furthermore the characteristic peak frequency differs for different biological functions. ,,, The same results were obtained when regulatory DNA sequences were analysed.
    http://www.i-sis.org.uk/TheRea.....lution.php

    Again, as David Berlinski puts it:

    “…applying Darwinian principles to problems of this level of complexity is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound caused by an atomic weapon. It’s just not going to work.”
    – David Berlinski

  10. 10
    bornagain77 says:

    Ed George, you could almost argue that it was ‘Intelligently Designed’ for you, and the other Darwinists on this thread, to see this video that came out today,

    Message from the Molecules – They Say “Intelligent Design”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Jdyuh27b0
    Biology, cosmology, physics, mathematics, computer engineering, chemistry… You could have an interesting argument among proponents of intelligent design about which field of science will ultimately clinch the argument for ID. Famed chemist Marcos Eberlin claims the honor will go to chemistry. Chauvinism, you say? Perhaps. You could take that up with the three Nobel laureates who endorsed his recent book, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose.
    https://www.discovery.org/store/product/foresight/
    “The molecules speak for themselves,” says Dr. Eberlin here. “The molecules will speak louder and louder and louder and finally we will have to surrender to the message that the molecules are sending to us. They say clearly, ‘Intelligent design is the source of life.’”

  11. 11
    Latemarch says:

    I sometimes want to throw up my hands in exasperation watching you all talk past each other. Let me approach it another way though I don’t expect success.

    Let’s return to Sev’s original comment to the OP. (Edited for brevity.)
    Seversky@1

    Seriously?? You are both denying the material/physical structure and functions of the genome and a computer, that there is no physical chain of events between me pressing the ‘A’ key on my keyboard and the letter ‘A’ appearing on my screen? ….

    Yes Sev, there is a nice neat physical chain of events from the ‘A’ key to the pattern of pixels that are displayed on my screen. Odd the pattern I see on the keyboard looks nothing like what shows up on the screen. It’s gone from an upside down ‘V’ with a bar across the middle to a small circle with a bar on the right. Encoded one way, output completely different. We’ll set that aside for just a bit.

    Now let’s compare that to the cell. Again what’s happening is physical. There’s a series of DNA bases that when physically read by the right enzyme in the presence of enough of the right kind of amino acids will output a protein. There’s a vague similarity in your example to the transfer of the ‘A’ key (plastic with inlaid white marks) to its unlike ‘a’ (with light and dark pixels).

    But wait! We’ve left something out. Who selected the ‘A’ key before pressing it? Why it was Sev. He’s an integral part of the whole process. And who recognized the output as having meaning? Of the thousands and thousands of possible shapes (fonts) that could represent the concept of ‘A’ who recognized ‘a’ as a representative of the concept of ‘A’? I believe that was Sev again!

    Who selected those base pairs to represent that particular protein? Don’t you wonder about the Who that is just as much a part of the processes in the cell as the who was that picked that key?

    Col. 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

  12. 12

    First of all, thank you to BA77 for all the amazing info I’ve gleaned from your comments over the years. So much of the material you cite is _way_ over my head, but I take what I can manage

    DaveS wrote:
    “I’m severely underqualified for this discussion, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more detail on this”
    I’m also very unqualified, so maybe I can give it a try, since I really like the whole DNA coding-mRNA-tRNA-protein pathway.

    If I’m understanding what the author meant,
    //There is a point in time and space where an association is made between a codon and an anticodon.//
    That is, inside the ribosome the mRNA codon is ‘read’ by a tRNA molecule with the matching anticodon. That’s the first ‘association’.

    The next one
    //There is also a point in time and space when there is an association made between an anticodon and an amino acid.//
    Simply put, that is accomplished by the tRNA molecule. But to get tRNA you need the aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, one for each of the 20 tRNA molecules

    An animation of protein synthesis
    https://youtu.be/kmrUzDYAmEI

    A short one on aminoacyl tRNA synthetases
    https://youtu.be/180_sM9iYVk

    Two related montages I made. The first one Joe DeWeese covers tRNA
    https://youtu.be/sOI5u01LwyQ

    The second one Stephen Meyer describes Francis Crick’s elucidating the need for translation of DNA in order to get to proteins, through what he called the ‘adaptor hypothesis’
    https://youtu.be/rDLPjxzt1YE

  13. 13
    Seversky says:

    Barry Arrington @ 3

    Of course there is a physical chain of events between you pressing the ‘A’ key on your keyboard and the letter ‘A’ appearing on your screen. No one denies that.

    Good, so we agree thus far.

    Do you deny that that the reason an “A” appears on your screen instead of nothing or gibberish is that your computer employs a code that translates the pressing of a particular key on your keyboard to a particular arrangement of pixels on your screen?

    No, I agree with that as well. So where do we differ?

  14. 14
    Seversky says:

    Bornagain77 @ 4

    Seversky and Orthomyxo, I have a question for you guys, I wonder if you guys will be brave enough to answer it honestly. ,,, Here it is, ‘Did you write your posts or did the laws of physics write your posts for you and inform you of that event after the fact?’

    I had the conscious experience of writing the post.

    The laws of physics don’t “do” anything. They are the observed regularities in the behavior of the physical universe.

    Do you accept that there is a lot of mental activity which we think of collectively as “the mind” but which happens outside our conscious awareness? I’m thinking of the extensive processing of data input from the eyes which result in what we see and the same is true for the other sensory channels. There is also the processing which converts an intention to move to the command signals to our muscles by which we actually move or the proprioception system by which we know our orientation to the outside world.

    Doesn’t this suggest that the conscious “I” is not the whole of “me” and that, given the relatively slow speed at which signals propagate through our nervous system and the processing involved, our conscious perception lags slightly behind reality?

  15. 15
    Seversky says:

    Latemarch @ 11

    Who selected those base pairs to represent that particular protein? Don’t you wonder about the Who that is just as much a part of the processes in the cell as the who was that picked that key?

    I have no problem with the possibility that some extraterrestrial intelligence may have seeded or even created life on Earth. If it could be demonstrated, it would be a fascinating discovery. But it would raise inevitable questions about the nature and origins of such a being as well. Would such a designer employ a medium for conveying information over many generations that is subject to continuous and largely unpredictable mutation?

  16. 16
    Bob O'H says:

    Who selected those base pairs to represent that particular protein? Don’t you wonder about the Who that is just as much a part of the processes in the cell as the who was that picked that key?

    Wait, are you suggesting the Intelligent Designer is Roger Daltrey (on cells) and Pete Townshend (on proteins)?

  17. 17
    bornagain77 says:

    In a nutshell, Darwinists in this thread are trying to claim that life is reducible to ‘chemical reactions interacting with other chemical reactions’. Whereas IDists are claiming that information lies at the heart of life. and that chemistry alone simply can never explain information in life.

    As Paul Davies stated in 2002, “Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won’t work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level. ”

    How we could create life – The key to existence will be found not in primordial sludge, but in the nanotechnology of the living cell – Paul Davies – 2002
    Excerpt: the living cell is best thought of as a supercomputer – an information processing and replicating system of astonishing complexity. DNA is not a special life-giving molecule, but a genetic databank that transmits its information using a mathematical code. Most of the workings of the cell are best described, not in terms of material stuff – hardware – but as information, or software. Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won’t work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level.
    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/11/highereducation.uk

    And as Paul Davies stated in 1999, “”How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software … ? Nobody knows … … there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.”

    “How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software … ? Nobody knows … … there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.”
    – Paul Davies, Life force, New Scientist 163(2204):27–30, 18 September 1999

    And as Paul Davies reiterated in 2020, (after a few decades of thinking about the problem), “Asking chemistry to explain coded information is like expecting computer hardware to write its own software.” and “The biologically relevant information stored in DNA therefore has very little to do with its specific chemical nature (beyond the fact that it is a digital linear polymer). ”

    Hey, Paul Davies — Your ID is Showing – Robert F. Shedinger – March 6, 2020
    Excerpt: With a nod toward James Clerk Maxwell’s entropy-defying demon, (Paul) Davies argues that the gulf between physics and biology is completely unbridgeable without some fundamentally new concept. Since living organisms consistently resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter are subject to, there must be some non-physical principle allowing living matter to consistently defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And for Davies there is; the demon in the machine turns out to be information.,,,
    “Semantic information is a higher-level concept that is simply meaningless at the level of molecules. Chemistry alone, however complex, can never produce the genetic code or contextual instructions. Asking chemistry to explain coded information is like expecting computer hardware to write its own software.”
    – Paul Davies
    https://evolutionnews.org/2020/03/hey-paul-davies-your-id-is-showing/

    (Paul) Davies And Walker On Origin Of Life: Life As Information – March 7, 2020
    Excerpt: However, the genome is only a small part of the story. DNA is not a blueprint for an organism:1 no information is actively processed by DNA alone [17]. Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins. The biologically relevant information stored in DNA therefore has very little to do with its specific chemical nature (beyond the fact that it is a digital linear polymer).
    – per uncommondescent

    The reason why it is impossible, in principle, for the physical, i.e. reductive materialistic, explanations of Darwinists to ever explain the origin of information in life is that information is, in its foundational nature, immaterial. As Stephen Meyer explains,

    “One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin?
    And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce.
    In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires.
    Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.”
    -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences.
    – Intelligent design: Why can’t biological information originate through a materialistic process? – Stephen Meyer – video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8

    In short, it is impossible, in principle, for the unguided material processes of Darwinian evolution to ever produce information since information is, by nature, immaterial.

    The fact that information is immaterial is easily demonstrated by the fact that we can inscribe information on an almost endless variety of material substrates, using on almost endless variety of different languages, and yet the meaning of the information never changes between the material substrates as long as the information is faithfully encoded and decoded on the almost endless variety of material substrates. In other words, there is something profoundly immaterial about information that refuses to be reduced to materialistic descriptions..

    As George Williams pointed out, “Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn’t have bytes…”

    “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term ‘reductionism.’… Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn’t have bytes… This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.”
    George Williams – Evolutionary Biologist – “A Package of Information”
    https://books.google.com/books?id=V3x1YPgvOJcC&pg=PA43

    And as George Ellis pointed out, information is a ‘top down’ “higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves.” and Ellis goes on to note “The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities.”

    Recognising Top-Down Causation – George Ellis
    Excerpt: Causation,,,
    Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter).,,,
    Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities:
    Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored.
    The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts.,,,
    The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities.
    http://fqxi.org/data/essay-con.....s_2012.pdf

    In other words, it is the ability of the immaterial mind to have knowledge of a particle’s position, and to then arrange that particle’s position in relation to other particles, that allows us to impart immaterial information into material substrates in a ‘top-down’ manner. To repeat what George Ellis stated, information is a ‘top down’ “higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves.”

    And indeed, it has now been empirically demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.

    Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010
    Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.
    http://www.physorg.com/news/20.....nergy.html

    And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”

    Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010
    Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski.
    http://www.scientificamerican......rts-inform

    As if that was not bad enough for the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, the recent experimental realizations of the ‘Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment go even further than that. Quote-unquote, “James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
    quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
    Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

    The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017
    Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”
    In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply.
    They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,,
    Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
    https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

    To repeat, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

    This experimental realization of the Maxwell Demon thought experiment is simply shattering to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists!

  18. 18
    bornagain77 says:

    And to get a bit more technical, but hopefully not too technical, classical sequential information, (such as what is encoded on DNA), is now shown to be a subset of ‘positional’ quantum information,,,,

    Image: Classical information is a subset of quantum information
    https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/images/figure1.gif

    ,,, classical sequential information, (such as what is encoded on DNA), is now shown to be a subset of ‘positional’ quantum information by the following method. Specifically, “when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,,
    In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. ”

    Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 1, 2011
    Excerpt: The new study revisits Landauer’s principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,,
    In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,,
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....134300.htm

    The fact that classical sequential information is a subset of ‘positional’ quantum information is further driven home by looking at the physical relation of quantum information to sequential information in DNA. As Dr Reiper remarks in the following video, “practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.”

    “What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.”
    Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it)
    https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176

    Thus we now have many lines of empirical evidence, (particularly from quantum information theory and from the recent experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment), establishing the fact that information, regardless of the fact that it is immaterial, is, none-the less, physically real and that it has, of all things, a ‘thermodynamic content’ that can be imparted, in a ‘top-down’ manner. onto material substrates by an intelligent, and immaterial, mind..

    As far as empirical science is concerned, these experiments establishing the physical reality of immaterial information are direct empirical falsifications of the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, Materialistic presuppositions that hold immaterial information, (as well as immaterial mind), to be merely ’emergent’ from some material basis.

    Of supplemental note, perhaps the simplest, non-technical, way to demonstrate that immaterial information is a physically real entity that is separate from matter and energy is with quantum teleportation,

    As the following article states, “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”

    Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016
    Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world.
    Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,,
    This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,
    ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another.
    http://blogs.discovermagazine......-HqWNEoDtR

    And as the following article states. “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”

    First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009
    Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.
    Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.
    Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance
    https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms

    Simply put, if the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought were actually true, then the preceding quantum teleportation experiments that demonstrated the transfer of information without the particles ever physically interacting, should have been impossible.

    Quote and Verses:

    “There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly”
    Adam Sedgwick – quoted from a letter that he wrote to Charles Darwin – 1859

    Mark 8:37
    Is anything worth more than your soul?

    John 1:1-4
    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

  19. 19
    daveS says:

    Chris Messier,

    Thanks, those comments help. I’ll take a look at the videos today.

  20. 20
    bornagain77 says:

    Chris Messier, at 12, that was an excellent response to DaveS’s question.

    I think a few, if not all, of your videos that you highlighted should have their own thread dedicated to them, especially the last one with Stephen Meyer in it.

    per Chris Messier at 12

    An animation of protein synthesis
    https://youtu.be/kmrUzDYAmEI

    A short one on aminoacyl tRNA synthetases
    https://youtu.be/180_sM9iYVk

    Two related montages I made. The first one Joe DeWeese covers tRNA

    Translating the genetic code : a huge barrier to the theory of evolution – Dr. Joe DeWeese
    https://youtu.be/sOI5u01LwyQ

    The second one Stephen Meyer describes Francis Crick’s elucidating the need for translation of DNA in order to get to proteins, through what he called the ‘adaptor hypothesis’

    The genetic code and tRNA: discovered using ID logic that evolution couldn’t predict – Stephen Meyer
    https://youtu.be/rDLPjxzt1YE

  21. 21
    ET says:

    Ed George:

    Maybe it was when I said that DNA functions through chemical reactions.

    And yet there isn’t any evidence that it arose via chemical reactions.

  22. 22
    ET says:

    Ed George:

    DNA is a chemical, residing in an environment full of other chemicals, interacting (ie, reacting) with these chemicals, facilitating (through chemical reactions) the formation of proteins, which interact (ie, react) with other chemicals in the cell, etc. Biochemistry 101.

    Except for the fact that DNA is basically inert. It doesn’t o anything. It needs the proteins to be already in existence in order to do anything.

    Biochemistry 101 has no idea if chemical reactions produced the genetic code. And according to Ed George all scientists that support his position must be stupid because they cannot produce life in a lab. If it was really just chemical reactions then that should be easily accomplished.

    Chemical reactions do not explain the existence of the genetic code. They do not explain proof-reading, error-correction, splicing, editing and processing. They do not explain the existence of the ribosome, a biological compiler.

    Ed George is clearly ignorant of biochemistry.

  23. 23
    ET says:

    Ortho:

    That’s how the genetic code works, and I really don’t think it’s credible to claim that’s not a series of chemical reactions.

    If what you say were true then the genetic code would run in a test tube. Yet it doesn’t. That means you are either ignorant or just a liar.

  24. 24
    Bob O'H says:

    If what you say were true then the genetic code would run in a test tube. Yet it doesn’t.

    Yet it does

    That means you are either ignorant or just a liar.

    No further comment needed.

  25. 25
    ET says:

    Wow. Thank you, Bob. So if we take a living cell, that has said functioning system, we can get it to continue to function in a designed environment. Clueless.

    What we can’t do, Bob, is synthesize all of those chemicals and get it to run without the use of anything from any living organism. If what Ortho and Eddie say was true, we could do that.

  26. 26
    daveS says:

    So if I understand, UB is saying that the associations between codons and amino acids are like the associations between code points and ‘characters’ in Unicode, to pick an example that we’re all using right now.

    In Unicode, the number 1F926 (in hexadecimal) is associated to the “facepalm” emoji 🤦. Obviously this association does not follow from the laws of physics. It was created by whoever is in charge of assigning code points to ‘characters’. The association between codons and amino acids likewise is not determined by the laws of physics.

    I guess the challenge to the evos is how this system actually did arise, if not through the laws of physics.

  27. 27
    Seversky says:

    DaveS @ 26

    I guess the challenge to the evos is how this system actually did arise, if not through the laws of physics.

    That’s right. And the honest answer is that no one knows how it happened. Not anyone. Not yet.

    Of course, that we don’t have an answer now doesn’t mean we won’t have one a couple of hundred years from now. Maybe we’ll come up with a purely materialistic explanation, maybe we’ll find evidence of an extraterrestrial intelligence’s handiwork.. In the case of ETI, it would be nice if there was more than just a name on offer.

  28. 28
    daveS says:

    Sev,

    Indeed.

    I’m still trying the understand the emphasis on the contingent nature of codon/amino acid associations. Aren’t there a lot of contingent associations in the world, that cannot be derived from the laws of physics? For example, the fact that Asian giant hornets exist and are in the US in 2020 doesn’t follow from physics as far as I know.

    Edit: Perhaps another example: The laws of physics + the conditions of the universe 5 minutes after the big bang (perhaps) don’t imply that Mt Everest will be the tallest mountain on Earth several billion years later.

  29. 29
    kairosfocus says:

    DS,

    I’m late to the party. tRNA folds into a secondary cloverleaf structure then into the arm shape with the anticodon loop at one end and the standard CCA tool-tip that bonds to the loaded AA [COOH end] at the other. As the tip is a standard joint, it is non-specific. That’s not the magic step.

    That oh so humble source, Wikipedia, by principle of embarrassment, now tells an astonishing point or two of truth on how:

    Aminoacylation is the process of adding an aminoacyl group to a compound. It covalently links an amino acid to the CCA 3′ end of a tRNA molecule. Each tRNA is aminoacylated (or charged) with a specific amino acid by an aminoacyl tRNA synthetase. There is normally a single aminoacyl tRNA synthetase for each amino acid, despite the fact that there can be more than one tRNA, and more than one anticodon for an amino acid. Recognition of the appropriate tRNA by the synthetases is not mediated solely by the anticodon, and the acceptor stem often plays a prominent role.[17] Reaction:

    amino acid + ATP –> aminoacyl-AMP + PPi
    aminoacyl-AMP + tRNA –> aminoacyl-tRNA + AMP

    In some ways, even more tellingly, we find evidence of adaptation to apparent loss of function and/or alternative pathways:

    Certain organisms can have one or more aminoacyl tRNA synthetases missing. This leads to charging of the tRNA by a chemically related amino acid, and by use of an enzyme or enzymes, the tRNA is modified to be correctly charged. For example, Helicobacter pylori has glutaminyl tRNA synthetase missing. Thus, glutamate tRNA synthetase charges tRNA-glutamine(tRNA-Gln) with glutamate. An amidotransferase then converts the acid side chain of the glutamate to the amide, forming the correctly charged gln-tRNA-Gln.

    This stage is when the correlation between anticodon and targetted AA is assigned. Notice, it is not solely based on the anticodon, reflects conformation of the folded tRNA and in some cases has a workaround compensating for somehow missing information that leads to absence of a particular loading enzyme. H pylori loads a chemically related AA to the true target then brings up enzymes to modify to the correct AA. I have already noted that artificial AAs have been inserted and are capable of loading then being added to peptide chains.

    It bears noting that in the tertiary structure, the anticodon and AA are at opposite ends of the tRNA. Which AA is there is set in a way that is modular and there can even be workarounds.

    This is of course the point where a mobile, molecular scale position-arm device is loaded with the properly coded AA for protein synthesis. (I assume we can look that up for ourselves.)

    Wiki’s disclosures against known ideological bent are not finished, we now go to the ribosome, the molecular machine that assembles a peptide chain based on the mRNA tape, using the coding.

    Notice, the position-arm action at molecular level:

    The ribosome has three binding sites for tRNA molecules that span the space between the two ribosomal subunits: the A (aminoacyl),[19] P (peptidyl), and E (exit) sites. In addition, the ribosome has two other sites for tRNA binding that are used during mRNA decoding or during the initiation of protein synthesis. These are the T site (named elongation factor Tu) and I site (initiation).[20][21] . . . .

    Once translation initiation is complete, the first aminoacyl tRNA is located in the P/P site, ready for the elongation cycle described below. During translation elongation, tRNA first binds to the ribosome as part of a complex with elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu) or its eukaryotic (eEF-1) or archaeal counterpart. This initial tRNA binding site is called the A/T site. In the A/T site, the A-site half resides in the small ribosomal subunit where the mRNA decoding site is located. The mRNA decoding site is where the mRNA codon is read out during translation. The T-site half resides mainly on the large ribosomal subunit where EF-Tu or eEF-1 interacts with the ribosome. Once mRNA decoding is complete, the aminoacyl-tRNA is bound in the A/A site and is ready for the next peptide bond to be formed to its attached amino acid. The peptidyl-tRNA, which transfers the growing polypeptide to the aminoacyl-tRNA bound in the A/A site, is bound in the P/P site. Once the peptide bond is formed, the tRNA in the P/P site is deacylated, or has a free 3’ end, and the tRNA in the A/A site carries the growing polypeptide chain. To allow for the next elongation cycle, the tRNAs then move through hybrid A/P and P/E binding sites, before completing the cycle and residing in the P/P and E/E sites. Once the A/A and P/P tRNAs have moved to the P/P and E/E sites, the mRNA has also moved over by one codon and the A/T site is vacant, ready for the next round of mRNA decoding. The tRNA bound in the E/E site then leaves the ribosome.

    The P/I site is actually the first to bind to aminoacyl tRNA, which is delivered by an initiation factor called IF2 in bacteria.[21] However, the existence of the P/I site in eukaryotic or archaeal ribosomes has not yet been confirmed. The P-site protein L27 has been determined by affinity labeling by E. Collatz and A.P. Czernilofsky (FEBS Lett., Vol. 63, pp. 283–86, 1976).

    This is a tape-controlled assembly process dependent on the correctly loaded tRNAs to operate correctly. Where, proteins are the workhorse molecules of the cell.

    Indeed, we effectively have a transfer machine with a miniature assembly line, with preloaded parts attached to position-arm carriers brought up and applied then exiting even as the target of the manufacturing process is being produced and held in place until complete.

    The mRNA tape, of course, carries initiation, stepwise elongation, finite succession and halting. Thus we see an algorithm at work, with an information bearing tape as controller and an assembly line using mobile position-arm units.

    This is seriously advanced automation and manufacturing, using algorithms and code on string data structures [let’s only mention editing to form mRNAs], thus language. Where the coding is present twice in two separate subsystems, processed effectively independent of one another. DNA is unzipped and used to assemble mRNA precursors, which are edited to form the control tape. Separately, tRNA is created with the implicit anticodon, again stored in the master tape, DNA. Properly folded tRNAs are loaded with the appropriate AA or a precursor that is modified to be correct.

    These are then brought into the ribosome under proper manufacturing control and peptide chains are built for further formation into proteins used in cellular processes including this one.

    Chicken-egg loops abound, pointing to FSCO/I and islands of function requiring initial manufacture to a design, on pain of fruitlessly, aimlessly wandering in seas of non function and exhausting the blind search capability of the observed cosmos.

    At this stage, it is manifest why a design inference on protein synthesis is robust and empirically grounded. As for means:

    clever designer[s] + molecular nanotech lab –> clever FSCO/I rich design

    Of course, one is free to reject such, but in all responsible fairness needs to provide a cogent, empirically warranted explanation.

    KF

  30. 30
    kairosfocus says:

    LM, 11:

    You left off the real fun part!

    What is “A”?

    Likewise, what is the alphabet? As in Alpha-Beta, and — back in the Sinai Desert, riffing off Egyptian hieroglyphics [at a site associated with a semiprecious stone mine with some suspiciously familiar Hebraic names from the OT] — ALEPH-BETH.

    As in, OX + HOUSE. Where BETH + LEHEM is House of Bread.

    After 3500+ years, the ox-head is still visible, though upside down for upper case A: triangular head plus horns.

    Lower case A, a, is similar but the head has been rounded and the horns are off to the side. In the curly form with one horn looped back, I guess it is a twisted horn.

    Such stylisation is familiar from Hieroglyphics, Cuneiform and Chinese characters. That is we have graphical abstractions from little sketches. Yes, we are back to river valley civilisations and the fertile crescent.

    With the alphabet, associated with various sounds, strung together in a time-domain aural string that our hearing becomes tuned to, to make out words. Then, we do the same spatially using string data structures on paper or screen. Turning eyes into ears. Indeed, hearing in the mind often accompanies reading and writing. IIRC, there is actually some engagement of the ear and a sensitive mike can pick it up.

    Oh yes, hearing works on a physically implemented fast fourier transform effected in the cochlea which transfers from frequency to resonant position along a membrane. That then becomes pulse repetition rate signals sent into the brain’s hearing centres. Vision is similar save it uses a spatial array of sensors for light and colour.

    The mind is absolutely central in creating our sense of world awareness.

    Which opens up even more fun stuff.

    KF

  31. 31
    ET says:

    seversky:

    That’s right. And the honest answer is that no one knows how it happened. Not anyone. Not yet.

    All we do know is that nature couldn’t have done it.

    Of course, that we don’t have an answer now doesn’t mean we won’t have one a couple of hundred years from now.

    In a couple hundred years from now we will still know that nature could not have done it.

    Maybe we’ll come up with a purely materialistic explanation,

    Not one that is testable. Not one that fits the evidence.

  32. 32
    kairosfocus says:

    ET, notice, resort to intellectual IOU’s? Telling, and not the impression given to hoi polloi in textbooks, schools, museums and alleged educational media. KF

  33. 33
    kairosfocus says:

    CM 12: great stuff, you just saved me some vid searching. KF

  34. 34
    kairosfocus says:

    BBA77, some great stuff too esp Davies. KF

  35. 35

    Hey Dave, glad if I could help. That’s a perfect example you cite below of assignation with Unicode

    Thanks for the commendation BA77 🙂
    I saw no one else had replied to Dave’s question yet, so I gave it a try.

    I see Kairosfocus @29 going into way more depth than I could!
    Thanks KF, I looked a bit too, there’s nothing like a good molecular biology CGI video =D
    That’s amazing how the h. pylori gets by without each specific tRNA synthetase.
    The part about ribosome specifics is way over my head!

    This is about as complex as I can get when looking at the ribosome… from a distance!
    https://youtu.be/k2A9H0d90Ms

  36. 36
    Seversky says:

    Kairosfocus @ 32

    ET, notice, resort to intellectual IOU’s? Telling, and not the impression given to hoi polloi in textbooks, schools, museums and alleged educational media. KF

    Do you have any examples of “textbooks, schools, museums and alleged educational media” which claim there is a well-established theory of origins?

    As for “intellectual IOU’s”, shall we list what we know now through science that was not known back in the year 1920 or the year 1020? Are you saying that science stops now, that people in the years 2120 or 3020 – a mere blink of the eye in geological time – will not know any more than we do now?

    I prefer to believe that there is a naturalistic/materialistic/physicalist explanation of origins but I accept that we don’t have one yet. I have no problem with the possibility that some extraterrestrial intelligence may have ‘seeded’ life on Earth although that would not necessarily explain the ultimate origins of life itself. But I don’t know and neither do you or anyone else.

  37. 37
    BobRyan says:

    Seversky @ 36

    Science is based on what is known, which means every hypothesis and theory is subject to change. For there to be a theory, the must be something observed and the results replicated. Without observation and replication, it remains a hypothesis. That is how the scientific method works.

    Has macro-evolution ever been witnessed? Have the results been replicated? The answer to both is no. Despite all the attempts to wish it into theory, it remains a hypothesis by definition.

    We know life started on Earth at some point in the past. This is clearly observational and testable. We also know you cannot get something from nothing, which has also been observed and tested. You cannot get life from no life.

    You state that you have, “no problem with the possibility that some extraterrestrial intelligence may have ‘seeded’ life on Earth although that would not necessarily explain the ultimate origins of life itself.”

    If you believe some intelligence might be responsible, what stops you from going to the next step? Is it possible that this intelligence is beyond any human understanding? Is it possible that this intelligence not only created life, but the universe as a whole? Is it possible that this intelligence placed the laws of physics in place at the beginning of the universe and created mathematics to be discovered?

    If the above is possible, not dealing with likelihoods, but possibilities, then you must believe in the possibility of ID.

  38. 38
    kairosfocus says:

    Seversky, start with how the Miller-Urey exercise has often been presented to the public, for decades. Continue with RNA world hypotheses and more. The pretence that over-claiming has not been going on for decades is itself revealing. KF

    PS: For intellectual IOU’s try the sort of impositions Crick and Monod made, using their prestige as Nobel Prize winners. At a lower level, mix in Lewontin’s cat out of the bag remarks and some of the more breezy passages in Dawkins’ writings. For decades there has been an air of oh we have it well in hand and how dare you suggest that scientific progress will not solve the sort of questions you are raising. That attitude has often cropped up here at UD in former years.

  39. 39
    kairosfocus says:

    BR, on the empirical evidence in hand as regards cell based life on earth [note the specific focus], evidence of design does not imply identity of designer. In principle a sufficiently advanced molecular nanotech lab could do it, even as it is likely that we will be able to in 100 years, building on Venter et al. Where things get interesting is when we switch to the fine tuning of the cosmos in ways that starting from the first four most abundant elements [H, He, C, O with N close by], set the stage for life built into laws and parameters of the observed cosmos. KF

  40. 40
    JVL says:

    BobRyan: If you believe some intelligence might be responsible, what stops you from going to the next step? Is it possible that this intelligence is beyond any human understanding?

    Not having any experience or knowledge or evidence of that kind of intelligence why would someone go there?

    Is it possible that this intelligence not only created life, but the universe as a whole? Is it possible that this intelligence placed the laws of physics in place at the beginning of the universe and created mathematics to be discovered?

    How was all that accomplished? Where did this intelligence come from? How do they sustain their activities? Where do they get their energy to perform all these things? If they are alive and since all living things excrete then where are their toilets?

    If the above is possible, not dealing with likelihoods, but possibilities, then you must believe in the possibility of ID.

    THIS IS JUST A PERSONAL OPINION! You can suppose some kind of undefined and unexperienced super-being but that just bring up a lot more questions. For me anyway.

    And if the designer(s) were just alien beings then we still have the question: where did they come from?

  41. 41
    JVL says:

    ET: All we do know is that nature couldn’t have done it.

    No, you can’t be sure of a negative.

  42. 42
    daveS says:

    KF,

    If I were trying to make a argument for ID based on this stuff, I would probably also list a bunch of cool DNA fact’s and ask the interlocutor to reflect on its origins. Just like if I wanted to argue that this was a product of design. You just examine it carefully, and it becomes obvious.

    The “semiotic” approach is a little different, I guess. Perhaps it’s more rigorous in a way. But Eddy Lunchbucket and Sally Housecoat are most likely not going to know what “discontinous association” and “semantic closure” mean, so it’s less accessible.

  43. 43
    Ed George says:

    JVL@40, I find the argument that the designer is beyond our ability to comprehend is fallacious. We have a very narrow range of wavelengths that we can see, yet we were able to comprehend and design instrument to detect and measure wavelengths well beyond this range. What is stopping us from being able to comprehend the mechanisms used by the designer and design instruments to detect their signatures?

  44. 44

    .

    What is stopping us from being able to comprehend the mechanisms used

    Nothing. We already know the mechanism – physical analysis exclusively indicates that language was used, which is a bullseye, because that was what it was predicted to be.

  45. 45
    JVL says:

    EdGeorge: I find the argument that the designer is beyond our ability to comprehend is fallacious. We have a very narrow range of wavelengths that we can see, yet we were able to comprehend and design instrument to detect and measure wavelengths well beyond this range. What is stopping us from being able to comprehend the mechanisms used by the designer and design instruments to detect their signatures?

    Well, that’s up to people other than ourselves. Making an argument like that I mean. I like to think that any and all questions are fair game and potentially part of science.

  46. 46

    .
    JVL — out of one side of her mouth:

    any and all questions are fair game and potentially part of science

    JVL — when confronted with unambiguous evidence of design in the literature:

    That isn’t a question I want to deal with

  47. 47
    kairosfocus says:

    DS, Mr Lunchbucket et al would already recognise design once such learn that the idea on the table is that language, code, algorithms and execution machinery assembled themselves out of lucky noise in some Darwin’s pond or the like. There would be a your’e kidding reaction, but once it is clear what is claimed, it would fall of its own weight. KF

  48. 48
    kairosfocus says:

    EGb& JVL, please see Crick in OP. It has been clear enough for nearly 70 years. BTW, could you tell us, precisely, the mechanisms that went into composing comments? The problem is that ideology is blinding to agency as a valid explanatory category. KF

  49. 49

    .
    #47
    Exactly.

    The worst thing for materialists, indeed the whole reason for the incessant smear campaign on design, is if it were ever allowed to truly register with the general public that encoded language animates the living cell.. You’ll never see materialist lead their sales pitch to Eddy and Sally with any passages such as this:

    “Now we believe that the D.N.A. is a code. That is, the order of the bases (the letters) makes one gene different from another gene (just as one page of print is different than another).”

  50. 50
    kairosfocus says:

    UB, I have seen newspapers refuse to touch it. KF

  51. 51
    Ed George says:

    UB

    The worst thing for materialists, indeed the whole reason for the incessant smear campaign on design,…

    ID does not need us to discredit their own “science”. They are doing quite well on their own.

    You and KF have jumped all over the fact that Crick and others refer to the information contained within DNA as the genetic “code”, as if the sloppy use of the English language by scientists is proof of design. All that can be said at this time is that neither ID nor naturalism have been able to demonstrate how life arose. But at least there are people actually working hard trying to do this, and it is not the ID scientists.

    KF and others often accuse people like me of being irrationally driven by our ideologies. I guess the best gauge to judge which side is more ideologically driven is to ask a simple question. Who’s way of life would be more greatly affected if they were shown to be wrong? Personally, I would have no problem if it were proven that a designer (AKA God) existed and was responsible for the universe and all life within it. It certainly would not affect the way I live my life or the way I treat others, and I would be very happy knowing that my soul will live forever. However, if ID is proven wrong, do you want to be the one to tell KF that homosexuality is not a sin, that miracles do not exists, that he will not see his passed loved ones when he dies?

  52. 52
    Barry Arrington says:

    Ed

    Personally, I would have no problem if it were proven that a designer [] existed.

    That is easy for Ed to say, because short of finding the proverbial “made by YHWH” written in the cell, there is no evidence that would be sufficient to “prove” the existence of a designer to him. We know this, because the fact that a semiotic code exists in every single living cell doesn’t make the slightest impression.

  53. 53
    kairosfocus says:

    EG, clever barbed quips are at best appeals to ill-founded prejudice. It is noteworthy that algorithmic, alphanumeric code — a linguistic phenomenon — remains stubbornly as only the product of intelligence. Indeed, there is good reason to see that blind search of large configuration spaces are a maximally implausible source for same; save when Lewontin-style ideological question-begging tilts the balances. More generally, complex, functionally specific organisation is also information rich and is again a reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration as key cause. Ideological closed mindedness, sneering dismissals and selective hyperskepticism are not about to change that balance on the merits. KF

    PS: In answer to your ad hominem, I simply challenge you to provide empirical observation that FCSO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits reliably comes about by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity: ______ I predict, on years of attempts, you cannot. I simply note how yet again you push your obsession with perversities into a discussion where it has no relevance. Beyond a certain point, that goes to motivation and is revealing.

  54. 54
    kairosfocus says:

    BA, the recent exchanges over the pandemic confirm the patterns of ideologically driven fallacies we face. It seems clear that the substitution of hyperskepticism for prudence has been an intellectual disaster of first magnitude. At this point, we simply point to the selective hyperskepticism and ideological domination acknowledged by several key figures. KF

  55. 55
    kairosfocus says:

    PS: Here is Monod, inadvertently laying out the ideological imposition, in a 1971 TV interview:

    [T]he scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product—predictable if not indispensable—of the evolution of the universe.— Jacques Monod [Quoted in John C. Hess, ‘French Nobel Biologist Says World Based On Chance’, New York Times (15 Mar 1971), p. 6. Cited in Herbert Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt (1972), p. 66.]

  56. 56
    bornagain77 says:

    Mr. Arrington you said that,,,

    short of finding the proverbial “made by YHWH” written in the cell, there is no evidence that would be sufficient to “prove” the existence of a designer to (Ed George).

    I have to disagree with you Mr Arrington. I firmly believe that even that would not be sufficient for Ed George.

    Issac Newton once said, “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

    “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”
    – Newton – Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002).

    And indeed, it does not take being a genius of Newton’s caliber to see evidence for God all around us.

    For example, one ‘scientific’ atheist was driven to belief in God, not by any scientific evidence, but simply by seeing her newborn baby,

    What caused Jennifer Fulwiler to question her atheism to begin with? It was the birth of her first child. She says that when she looked at her child, the only way her atheist mind could explain the love that she had for him was to assume it was the result of nothing more than chemical reactions in her brain. However, in following, she says:
    “And I looked down at him, and I realized that’s not true.”
    – Jennifer Fulwiler: Scientific Atheism to Christ – video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMbUvlOcXNA

    Thus I firmly hold that it is not the scientific evidence that is lacking for Ed George and most of the other militant atheists on UD. It is something far deeper on the emotional level that prevents them, via their ability to reason, from acknowledging the existence of God.

    As Leonard Euler noted centuries ago, “we should not be surprised that the best refutations count for nothing and that the weakest and most ridiculous reasoning, which has so often been shown to be baseless, is continuously repeated. If these people (atheists) maintained the slightest rigor, the slightest taste for the truth, it would be quite easy to steer them away from their errors; but their tendency towards stubbornness makes this completely impossible.”

    A DEFENSE OF THE (Divine) REVELATION AGAINST THE OBJECTIONS OF FREETHINKERS, BY MR. (Leonard) EULER
    Excerpt: “The freethinkers (atheists) have yet to produce any objections that have not long been refuted most thoroughly. But since they are not motivated by the love of truth, and since they have an entirely different point of view, we should not be surprised that the best refutations count for nothing and that the weakest and most ridiculous reasoning, which has so often been shown to be baseless, is continuously repeated. If these people maintained the slightest rigor, the slightest taste for the truth, it would be quite easy to steer them away from their errors; but their tendency towards stubbornness makes this completely impossible.”
    http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/.....2trans.pdf

    Indeed, if only reason would work on atheists,

    “One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.”
    —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason)

    The Argument From Reason – resource page
    http://www.reasonsforgod.org/t.....om-reason/

    John 1:1
    “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

    of note: ‘the Word’ in John1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic
    http://etymonline.com/?term=logic

    What is the Logos?
    Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,,
    In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.”
    https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html

  57. 57
    Ed George says:

    KF

    It is noteworthy that algorithmic, alphanumeric code — a linguistic phenomenon — remains stubbornly as only the product of intelligence.

    In fact, to the best of our knowledge, it remains stubbornly as only the product of human intelligence.

  58. 58
    Ed George says:

    Ten yards for piling on. 🙂

  59. 59
    kairosfocus says:

    EG, you know full well that no one takes seriously the notion that we exhaust possibilities for intelligent beings. Looking to linked logic of being, we exemplify intelligence but in no way that implies exhausting it. Therefore the rhetorical gambit to try to suggest that cases of human intelligence forbid us from inferring characteristics of intelligence that could go beyond humans, is nonsense. That this has been used as a common atheistical talking point despite cogent correction only underscores the weakness of the atheistical case. Especially, when the issue on the table is linguistic, algorithmic, alphanumerical code not only antecedent to human life but constitutive of cell based life. BA77 has a solid point, including his note from one of the all time great Mathematicians, Euler. KF

  60. 60
    JVL says:

    KF: EG, you know full well that no one takes seriously the notion that we exhaust possibilities for intelligent beings.

    But the only intelligent beings we know of that are even close to accomplishing highly sophisticated feats of engineering are human beings. We’ve got no living quarters, no spacecraft, no midden piles, no processing plants, pretty much nothing.

    I’m perfectly happy to guess that there are other intelligent beings in the universe but, so far, we have zero evidence they exist. And we certainly have no evidence they have visited Earth.

  61. 61
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, we are contingent, intelligent, responsible and rational. We exemplify what is possible, we do not exhaust it. So, as you know or should know, it is an abuse of inductive reasoning to infer from our case or to suggest from our case that we exhaust possibilities for such beings. This becomes all the more blatantly fallacious and even desperate when it is used as a rhetorical gambit to try to blunt the evidence that in the heart of the living cell is alphanumeric, algorithmic, linguistic code. And that evidence alone — the evidence of the whole world of cell based life — is striking and has been striking since March 19, 1953. This is not an “isolated”readily dismissed case, we are talking about a central, keystone aspect of cell based life. The rhetorical resort is utterly telling on the force of the evidence and on the ruinous nature of selective hyperskepticism and resulting refusal to entertain the force of evidence. Precisely, what we have now seen live with the “gold standard” fallacy in the face of a pandemic and mounting evidence. So, this is not merely an academic oddity, it is a ruinous error we are dealing with. KF

  62. 62
    JVL says:

    Kairosfocus: So, as you know or should know, it is an abuse of inductive reasoning to infer from our case or to suggest from our case that we exhaust possibilities for such beings.

    I’m not, I’m just saying that we have no evidence of such beings except for humans.

    The rhetorical resort is utterly telling on the force of the evidence and on the ruinous nature of selective hyperskepticism and resulting refusal to entertain the force of evidence.

    Yes but you haven’t been completely successful getting most scientists to agree with your evidence. In the world common forum we’d have to call that disputed at best.

  63. 63
  64. 64

    .
    #51
    Ed, sometimes you just try too hard. It’s a bad look.

    Allow me to remind you of something that you seem to forget with incredible regularity. We are all human beings here, Ed. On average we were all pushed and prodded in our youth to develop a lifelong sense of judgement and to make proper distinctions between things like right and wrong, truth and fiction, vice and virtue, and so on, and so forth. It is one of the things that is most common between us, regardless of our cultures, and with any luck, by the time we reach maturity, we end up with a healthy guiding experience of being part of, and watching, human relationships. Among those many common experiences is the experience of someone who simply will not answer a valid question. This is an inevitable experience where not answering the question actually becomes their answer. We understand this predicament and we recognize what it looks like in our human brothers and sisters – with all the denials and the (often flagrant) excuses and the deflections of this and that and the other. What I am getting at here Ed, is that we all know what cookie crumbs in a little boy’s bed actually means, as a very simple example which any parent would understand.

    Now Ed, you have been told that a physicist can practice their craft and measure the physical system that enables the use of language. A physicist can measure that system by its necessary physical entailments (and their relationships to one another). A physicist can therefore exclusively identify the use of language among other physical systems, and the gene system has been thus identified. This has been done. Furthermore, you’ve told that the physicists measurement and identification is a confirmation of a previous prediction – a prediction that the gene system would necessarily function by way of encoded language, which is itself an additional confirmation on the very nature of such systems. In other words, Ed, the conclusion that the gene system uses a code (for crying out loud) is a conclusion that comes through science without even a hair out of place.

    Having to stoop to “Francis Crick was sloppy” as your next maneuver (to avoid the physics) is therefore quite a sight to see. It makes you look weak, poorly motivated, and as common as you can humanly be — just as non-answers often do.

    You should probably stop using that excuse.

  65. 65
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, the “no evidence” gambit is a signature selectively hyperskeptical fallacy. The evidence has been on the table, taught in every school, for coming on two full generations. As Crick noted from the outset, in the form of a belief: ” . . . the D.N.A. IS a code” and that belief was then drawn out in multiple Nobel Prize winning work over the next 20 years. The evidence you are trying to dismiss is the molecular nanotech, prong height [ . . . similar to von Neumann’s kinematic self replicator . . . ] 4-state per symbol code used algorithmically to build proteins, and requiring chicken and egg causal loop molecular nanomachines constituting a von Neuman kinematic self replicator. That is, despite denials and dismissals, LANGUAGE is at the heart of the design for cell based life. That has to be faced as we contemplate the protein synthesis machine code and its dozens of dialects. The repeated attempt to dismiss simply inadvertently underscores the force of the point and how telling it is. KF

  66. 66

    .
    #60

    But the only intelligent beings we know of …

    So, as a matter of having scientific integrity, you believe SETI is fatally flawed and should be dismantled?

  67. 67
    JVL says:

    Upright Biped: So, as a matter of having scientific integrity, you believe SETI is fatally flawed and should be dismantled?

    There’s no harm in looking! But they haven’t found any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. I don’t think it should be dismantled, it’s not harming anyone and, who knows, they might hear something!! That would be exciting!!

  68. 68

    .
    JVL,

    So, you then think SETI is fatally flawed, but since its not harming anything, it should be continued anyway?

    Really?

    Allow me to present a text. Given your reasoning above, will you please tell me what in this text is inaccurate:

    The validity of any test proposing to identify the action of an unknown intelligence is explicitly tied to the methodology being used to conduct the test. The only methodology currently accepted by the wider scientific community regarding an unknown intelligence is the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) which was initiated in the early 1960s. Regardless of any questions one might have about the ultimate goal of the SETI project, the simple fact remains that the science itself is empirically sound. It is made valid by their treatment of the concept of “intelligence”.

    Intelligence is a difficult concept to define because of its many variable aspects. When science is challenged by ambiguous concepts (such as intelligence), researchers will often develop an operational definition of the concept in order produce valid results. Creating an operational definition allows researchers to isolate and measure a specific aspect of a phenomenon which is uniquely associated with that phenomenon. Lori Marino PhD (SETI/NASA Virtual Resource Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Intelligent Life) explains SETI’s approach to the concept of intelligence:

    “There is no consensus on a strict definition of intelligence, and there likely never will be because intelligence is what is known as a fuzzy concept; it lacks well-defined boundaries and contains multiple components.? However, the study of intelligence lies firmly in the domain of empirical science because its features can be operationally defined and its correlates can be quantified and measured.”

    In the SETI project, intelligence is operationally defined by a specific physical capacity. That physical capacity is “the capacity to transmit a narrow-band radio signal detectable from earth”. This operational definition is derived from our universal experience as scientific observers. It is our universal experience that narrow-band radio signals are not produced by natural causes, but are the unambiguous product of intelligence. A clear distinction is therefore made between those things that can be explained by natural unguided causes and those things that are a measurable consequence of intelligent action. SETI explains:

    “Narrow-band signals – perhaps only a few Hertz wide or less – are the mark of a purposely built transmitter. Natural cosmic noisemakers, such as pulsars, quasars, and the turbulent, thin interstellar gas of our own Milky Way, do not make radio signals that are this narrow”.

    Upon receiving a narrow-band signal, SETI will initiate a procedure to establish that the signal is not mistakenly of terrestrial origin. After verifying that the signal is indeed extra-terrestrial, the SETI Institute will rightly consider the reception of this signal as authentic evidence of an intelligent source in the cosmos, and “the discovery will be announced as quickly and as widely as possible”. The conclusions of the scientists at SETI will be made solely on the basis of their operational definition (without any additional knowledge of the source of the intelligence) and will be subject to falsification only if an unguided natural (non-intelligent) source is shown to be capable of producing the type of signal in question.

  69. 69
    JVL says:

    Kairosfocus: the “no evidence” gambit is a signature selectively hyperskeptical fallacy.

    How about: no widely accepted evidence? And I was talking about aliens; are you saying the machinations of DNA and its design are evidence of aliens?

    the D.N.A. IS a code

    The code is the table showing the correspondences. How it arose is the question.

    The evidence you are trying to dismiss . . .

    I’m not dismissing the facts; but it’s clear most working scientists disagree with your design inference based on the facts.

    The repeated attempt to dismiss simply inadvertently underscores the force of the point and how telling it is.

    Look, I’m sorry that most working scientists and a lot of other people disagree with you over your design inference. I don’t think you’re going to win over any more converts by only insisting you are correct. I think at this stage it would be good to come up with some more data and evidence. That’s why I was discussing the lack of evidence for non-human intelligences ASIDE FROM DNA and its functioning.

    Also, if there are extraterrestrials that have been in the vicinity and started life on earth then we would have a chance to find some non-living physical evidence of their existence. Seems like something worth thinking about at least.

  70. 70
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: So, you then think SETI is fatally flawed, but since its not harming anything, it should be continued anyway?

    I didn’t say it was fatally flawed! I said they haven’t found anything yet. And I also said they might find something one day. If I had the resources I’d be looking. Why not?

    When you ‘look’ you have to use the capabilities you have and right now that is limited to detecting electromagnetic signals and anomalies. If something is detected that can’t be clearly attributed to natural causes then further exploration would happen. It happened after pulsars were detected for the first time.

  71. 71

    .
    #70

    But the only intelligent beings we know of that are even close to accomplishing highly sophisticated feats of engineering are human beings. We’ve got no living quarters, no spacecraft, no midden piles, no processing plants, pretty much nothing.

    You just got through very clearly objecting to the design inference from the predicted and confirmed use of encoded language in DNA because we have no evidence of an intelligence outside the use of encoded language in DNA. That would make SETI’s methodology flawed as well because they would be faced with the exact same situation. So in the interest of integrity, are you now saying that the design inference is invalid and so is SETI, or are you saying that the SETI is valid and so is the design inference?

    Which is it JVL? Will you have to rationalize a difference where there is none? Will you be putting a smilie face and a couple of cheery exclamation points next to that rationalization?

  72. 72
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, DNA and the Genetic Code are not widely accepted empirically grounded facts? That in DNA there is algorithmic code that initiates, elongates and terminates peptide chains, towards creating proteins? That proteins are the workhorses of the cell? That, a stepwise finite scale coded procedure that solves a problem and/or halts is an algorithm? That an algorithm is thus inherently linguistic and purposeful? That such algorithms, associated data structures and coded symbolic information are translated down to machine code that works at physical machine level? That, there is a standard, widely recognised communication system architecture? That it is possible to map the protein synthesis process to that system? That, Yockey did so, publishing his result? I suggest that what is rejected is the cumulative force of the evidence, as it cuts across an entrenched ideology and points to a paradigm shift. KF

  73. 73
    bornagain77 says:

    JVL states,

    “If something is detected that can’t be clearly attributed to natural causes,,,”

    Not attributable to ‘natural’ causes’? Really??? And please pray tell, as a Darwinist, what exactly is there in your worldview other than ‘natural causes’? You’ve exhausted all of your possible options with your appeal to ‘natural causes’.

    As Paul Nelson stated, “some feature of “intelligence” must be irreducible to physics, (i.e. ‘natural causes), because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for.”

    Excerpt: Assessing the Damage MN Does to Freedom of Inquiry
    Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds.
    MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact.
    “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer?
    Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,,
    You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent.,,,
    ,,,, some feature of “intelligence” must be irreducible to physics, (i.e. ‘natural causes), because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for.
    https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/

    You see JVL, since agent causality, and/or intelligent causality, necessarily entails free will, and free will is explicitly denied under the premises of Atheistic Materialism, then you simply have no place for agent causality , and/or intelligent causality, within your Darwinian worldview. i.e. As an atheist, all you have got to work with is ‘natural causes’.

    The intractable problem for you, and all other atheists, is that we see agent causality all around us.

    In fact, since methodological naturalism rules agent causality, (i.e. free will and consciousness), out of ‘scientific’ bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, then demonstrating a miracle becomes as easy as falling off a log.

    Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,

    The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?f…..qlE#t=746s

    JVL, perhaps you would like to explain, by purely ‘natural causes’, exactly how Dr. Hazen was able to raise his arm if it was not he himself who chose. via his free will. to raise his arm?

    I’m sure a Nobel prize awaits you if you can solve that irresolvable dilemma for atheists.

    Supplemental notes:

    “You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today”
    Jerry Coyne – No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat (Science Uprising 02) – video
    https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20

    The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014
    Excerpt: then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant:,,) Read more here:
    http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.c.....oyne/?_r=0

  74. 74
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: You just got through very clearly objecting to the design inference from the predicted and confirmed use of encoded language in DNA because we have no evidence of an intelligence outside of the use of encoded language in DNA.

    Well, I mostly talking about not having evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences.

    That would make SETI’s methodology flawed as well because they would be faced with the exact same situation.

    I would say that the techniques used by the SETI institute varied widely from others. So I do not think it’s consistent to label all such attempts as valid or invalid without first considering how the determination is made.

    So in the interest of integrity, are you now saying that the design inference is invalid and so is SETI, or are you saying that the SETI is valid and so is the design inference?

    I would say it depends on how you go about it.

  75. 75
    JVL says:

    Kairosfocus: DNA and the Genetic Code are not widely accepted empirically grounded facts?

    As I said, no one is disputing the facts, it’s an interpretation of those facts that’s in dispute.

    You look at the complicating workings of DNA and come to the conclusion that it must have been designed via various evaluative techniques. (I’m not saying you just decided!) Others disagree with how you come to that interpretation. That’s it.

  76. 76

    .
    #74

    Well, I mostly talking about not having evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences.

    Stop dissembling. You were objecting to the design inference.

    I would say that the techniques used by the SETI institute varied widely from others. So I do not think it’s consistent to label all such attempts as valid or invalid without first considering how the determination is made.

    Stop dissembling

    I would say it depends on how you go about it.

    Well, we are using proper science to detect narrow-band radio signals coming from space in one instance, and we are using proper science to detect the exclusive physical signature of encoded language in the other?

    So “how we do it” isn’t the question JVL. Let me repeat the question for you again:

    So in the interest of integrity, are you now saying that the design inference is invalid and so is SETI, or are you saying that SETI is valid and so is the design inference?

    You can’t have it both ways JVL.

  77. 77
    JVL says:

    Bornagain77: Not attributable to ‘natural’ causes’? Really??? And please pray tell, as a Darwinist, what exactly is there in your worldview other than ‘natural causes’? You’ve exhausted all of your possible options with your appeal to ‘natural causes’.

    Okay, okay; I should have said UNGUIDED natural causes or non-intelligent causes. I think you know what I meant.

    You see JVL, since agent causality, and/or intelligent causality, necessarily entails free will, and free will is explicitly denied under the premises of Atheistic Materialism, then you simply have no place for agent causality , and/or intelligent causality, within your Darwinian worldview. i.e. As an atheist, all you have got to work with is ‘natural causes’.

    You’re starting to wander away from the discussion. And yes, I am aware that many materialists have stated, quite clearly and vociferously, that free will doesn’t exist. I, personally, find that hard to swallow, but I admit that a purely materialistic point of view would dictate that we are ‘meat robots’. I just don’t want to believe that. I’ve been chastised for not wanting to get too involved in a discussion of free will and that’s because i am personally conflicted over the matter and don’t find my own opinions or arguments clear at all. Because of that I try and stay out of the issue. BUT, I do admit, that a strict materialistic view does entail no free will. I just don’t want to accept that.

    Perhaps I’m not a materialist deep down. I don’t know. I just know that denying I have free will would feel like giving up any kind of point to existence I believed in.

    I don’t know how you’ll take this admission on my part. I think it’s a separate issue from the origin of life and species. You may disagree on that but I do not feel any cognitive dissonance in that regard.

    Anyway, I’m trying to be honest with you.

  78. 78
    JVL says:

    Upright Biped: Stop dissembling. You were objecting to the design inference.

    No, and I’ve just clarified my belief.

    Well, we are using proper science to detect narrow-band radio signals coming from space in one instance, and we are using proper science to detect the exclusive physical signature of encoded language in the other?

    SETI is trying to detect anomalous signals using detection equipment. IF they think they’ve found one they will work hard to first see if they can find some non-intelligent source OR if the signal actually originated on earth.

    What I disagree with with the ID design inference is the interpretation of the workings of DNA and other biological functions as necessarily having been created by some unstated form of ‘higher’ intelligence. I think that part is not based on widely accepted and tested science.

    I do not agree that the methods by ID proponents used to detect design are sound. They have not been accepted by a vast majority of working scientists. They have not been adequately tested to see what the rates of false positives and negatives are. There is no robust and well used mathematical technique.

    Design detection is widely used in lots of field as ET is fond of pointing out although it is not called that. And I have no problem with the general concept. It’s how it’s done that the issue.

    I hope that’s clearer. I’m sure you’ll follow up if it’s not.

  79. 79
    ET says:

    JVL:

    I’m just saying that we have no evidence of such beings except for humans.

    Yes, we do. You just don’t know how to assess the evidence.

    What I disagree with with the ID design inference is the interpretation of the workings of DNA and other biological functions as necessarily having been created by some unstated form of ‘higher’ intelligence.

    As I said- you don’t know how to assess the evidence. And you sure as hell don’t have anything to explain DNA and other biological functions.

    I think that part is not based on widely accepted and tested science.

    The Design inference is based on our knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. Science 101

    I do not agree that the methods used to detect design are sound.

    They are as sound as anything science has.

    They have not been accepted by a vast majority of working scientists.

    1- You don’t know that and 2- those who disagree with ID don’t have anything to explain what we observe. They don’t even have a testable methodology.

    There is no robust and well used mathematical technique.

    Compared to what your alleged vast majority of scientists have, ID is light years ahead.

    All the anti-ID mob has are promissory notes that they may find an answer in a thousand years or more. So we should wait. The problem is we will never find the answer they are seeking because it never happened. It is impossible for nature to produce coded information systems. Impossible. You have to be so desperate that it blinds you to reality to think that nature is capable of such a feat.

  80. 80
    JVL says:

    ET: Yes, we do. You just don’t know how to assess the evidence.

    We disagree on that for sure.

    The Design inference is based on our knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. Science 101

    Perhaps, in general, but I don’t think the particular implementations are well founded.

    1- You don’t know that

    It is true that the techniques used in ID design inference testing are NOT accepted as valid by a vast majority of working scientists.

    2- those who disagree with ID don’t have anything to explain what we observe. They don’t even have a testable methodology.

    Not ones you accept that is.

    All the anti-ID mob has are promissory notes that they may find an answer in a thousand years or more.

    I think unguided evolutionary theory does not depend on promissory notes. I think the evidence is sufficient to make the call already. That being said, if you found other strong physical evidence of a class of designers (to avoid the issue of knowing a particular designer) capable of such feats that was around at the time then I would have to consider things again.

    The problem is we will never find the answer they are seeking because it never happened. It is impossible for nature to produce coded information systems. Impossible. You have to be so desperate that it blinds you to reality to think that nature is capable of such a feat.

    So, you would stop looking? It’s all just a fool’s errand? What kind of research would you be in favour of then? Considering the large amounts of money being spent researching unguided evolution how would you reallocate all those funds?

  81. 81
    ET says:

    Ed George:

    All that can be said at this time is that neither ID nor naturalism have been able to demonstrate how life arose.

    YOURS is the mechanistic position, Ed. ID doesn’t have to say anything about how life arose. Your position does. And you and yours have FAILED miserably.

    Ed’s side has nothing but liars and bluffing losers. They don’t have any science. They don’t even have a methodology to test their claims. All they have are promissory notes and the ability to deny reality.

  82. 82
    ET says:

    JVL:

    Perhaps, in general, but I don’t think the particular implementations are well founded.

    You don’t know much of anything.

    It is true that the techniques used in ID design inference testing are NOT accepted as valid by a vast majority of working scientists.

    You don’t know that.

    Not ones you accept that is.

    Piss off. You’re just upset because your side has nothing.

    I think unguided evolutionary theory does not depend on promissory notes.

    There isn’t any such theory. You lose. And clearly unguided evolution depends on promissory notes. It doesn’t have anything else.

    So, you would stop looking? It’s all just a fool’s errand? What kind of research would you be in favour of then? Considering the large amounts of money being spent researching unguided evolution how would you reallocate all those funds?

    Yes, looking into impossible things is a fool’s errand. If people want to do it they should use their own money.

    ID research should take its place. Research into what else there is besides chemical reactions in biology.

  83. 83
    JVL says:

    ET: ID doesn’t have to say anything about how life arose.

    How can it be a better explanation then? I’ve never quite got that bit. Because ID doesn’t specify any details how can it explain why life is the way it is and not some other way? ‘Cause there surely would have been lots and lots and lots of possible designs . . . why did we get what we’ve got?

  84. 84
    ET says:

    Why is that the BEST evidence for macro-evolution does NOT include a mechanism? I say it’s because unguided evolution is an untestable piece of BS. The only things unguided evolution has for support are genetic diseases and deformities. No one knows how to test the claim that unguided processes produced the genetic code. No one knows how to test the claim that unguided processes produced any bacterial flagellum. All promissory notes. That goes for any multi-protein structure. That also goes for proteins.

    Lenski’s LTEE is showing us how impotent evolutionary processes are with respect to universal common descent.

  85. 85
    ET says:

    JVL:

    How can it be a better explanation then?

    We don’t know how Stonehenge was made and yet saying it is an artifact is a better explanation than saying nature did it.

    Look, you clearly don’t know anything about science nor investigating.

  86. 86
    JVL says:

    ET: You don’t know that.

    I think I do. There’s no evidence against it anyway.

    ID research should take its place. Research into what else there is besides chemical reactions in biology.

    Like what? You’ve got literally millions and millions of dollars you can reallocate so what research topics would you spend it on? Think of it this way: you’ve got thousands and thousands of scientists applying for research grants how do you decide who gets funded?

  87. 87
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, it is not “interpretation” but implications and empirical warrant. Behind “interpretation” lies smuggled in relativism and/or subjectivism. KF

  88. 88

    .
    #78

    I’ve just clarified my belief

    No you weren’t, you were objecting to the design inference from the predicted and confirmed use of encoded language in DNA based on the reasoning that we have no evidence of an intelligence outside the use of encoded language in DNA. Your objection reads: “The design inference is invalid because we don’t have any confirmed evidence except for the confirmed evidence we have”.

    It’s ridiculous.

    SETI is trying to detect anomalous signals using detection equipment. IF they think they’ve found one they will work hard to first see if they can find some non-intelligent source OR if the signal actually originated on earth.

    1) You are dissembling
    2) You are factually incorrect. If SETI receives a confirmed narrow-band radio signal from space they will announce their discovery of an intelligence beyond earth. Not a single scientist at SETI is going to stand in front of a radio transmitter, with head in hand, and ponder “golly” how to get that signal any other way.

    What I disagree with the ID design inference is the interpretation of the workings of DNA and other biological functions as necessarily having been created by some unstated form of ‘higher’ intelligence.

    1) You are dissembling.
    2) You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science is not what it is, and telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation. Those are two very different things.

    (you will dissemble in your answer to #2 in both instances)

  89. 89
    JVL says:

    ET: Why is that the BEST evidence for macro-evolution does NOT include a mechanism?

    Well, not one you accept anyway.

    No one knows how to test the claim that unguided processes produced the genetic code.

    When you think you’ve got a small piece of that big puzzle figured out you see if you can reproduce it at will. You let your colleagues and others in the field take a look at the work. You try and get it published so people all over the planet can see what you’ve done. If no one can shoot it down then it stands. Then you work on another small piece. And you start putting small pieces together.

    We don’t know how Stonehenge was made and yet saying it is an artifact is a better explanation than saying nature did it.

    We’ve got some plausible ideas of how it was constructed. And, absent a time machine (and maybe a bit more luck) that might be the best we can do. But we know there were beings around at the time capable of the proposed construction techniques; we’ve found some of their tools, their home, what they ate, etc.

  90. 90
    kairosfocus says:

    H”mm:

    ET, 85: >>We don’t know how Stonehenge was made and yet saying it is an artifact is a better explanation than saying nature did it.>>

    Because it exhibits FSCo/I which is best explained on design.

    D/RNA shows linguistic, alphanumeric code in a molecular nanotech string technology. But there is a refusal to recognise what that points to.

    KF

  91. 91
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: No you weren’t, you were objecting to the design inference from the predicted and confirmed use of encoded language in DNA because we have no evidence of an intelligence outside the use of encoded language in DNA.

    Well we don’t have that evidence. No designer means no design. In addition I think the techniques utilised by ID proponents are not trustworthy. Not yet anyway.

    You are factually incorrect. If SETI receives a confirmed narrow-band radio signal from space they will announce their discovery of an intelligence beyond earth. Not a single scientist at SETI is going to stand in front of a radio transmitter, with head in hand, and ponder “golly” how to get that signal any other way.

    I don’t think that’s true at all. I’ve heard members of the staff at SETI interviewed and heard them described how they would approach such an event and their responses are mirrored the material you copy-and-pasted above.

    You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science is not what it is, and telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation. Those are two very different things.

    I agree that the workings inside a cell are as stated in the mainstream literature. I do not agree that those processes are indicative of design. Not only is there no defined designer candidate but the methods used to detect design are not robust or accepted by a vast, vast majority of scientists working in the field. I have looked at the ways design has been claimed to have been detected; I have read a lot of material in support of such claims (including on this site) and I have read a lot of material not in support of such claims. I have come to the conclusion that I do not believe that it can be soundly claimed that design has been detected in biological structures and processes. I have not come to that decision based on ideological considerations such as a commitment to materialism (which I do not have). I have considered the arguments and made up my own mind.

  92. 92
    ET says:

    JVL:

    Well, not one you accept anyway.

    No, it doesn’t mention one at all.

    When you think you’ve got a small piece of that big puzzle figured out you see if you can reproduce it at will. You let your colleagues and others in the field take a look at the work. You try and get it published so people all over the planet can see what you’ve done. If no one can shoot it down then it stands. Then you work on another small piece. And you start putting small pieces together.

    Your word salad doesn’t help. No one knows how to test the claims of unguided evolution.

    We’ve got some plausible ideas of how it was constructed. And, absent a time machine (and maybe a bit more luck) that might be the best we can do. But we know there were beings around at the time capable of the proposed construction techniques; we’ve found some of their tools, their home, what they ate, etc.

    Everything we know came from centuries of research and study. And we don’t know if the tools and homes found were of the original designers.

    But thank you for proving my point.

  93. 93
    JVL says:

    Kairosfocus: it is not “interpretation” but implications and empirical warrant. Behind “interpretation” lies smuggled in relativism and/or subjectivism.

    I’m doing my best to consider the scientific results and arguments.

    D/RNA shows linguistic, alphanumeric code in a molecular nanotech string technology. But there is a refusal to recognise what that points to.

    As I stated: I do not agree that the claims made that design has been detected are sound. I have read lots of material in support and against such claims. I have tried hard to understand the arguments made on both sides. And I have come to the conclusion (of my own free will? hmmmmm) that the design inference has not been established.

    I have not just ‘refused’ to accept what you think the data points to. I have considered the arguments and come to my own conclusion.

  94. 94
    ET says:

    JVL:

    In addition I think the techniques utilised by ID proponents are not trustworthy.

    And yet they are used and verified every day. And it remains what ID has is light years ahead of what your side has,

    I do not agree that those processes are indicative of design.

    That’s because you have a bias issue.

    Not one scientist on this planet can refute the design inference. And all they have to do to refute ID is step up and demonstrate that unguided processes can produce what ID says what intelligently designed. They have all the power and yet remain powerless. That alone says it all, really.

  95. 95
    ET says:

    JVL:

    As I stated: I do not agree that the claims made that design has been detected are sound.

    Your side has absolutely NOTHING. If the design inference wasn’t sound then someone should be able to refute it. And yet no one can.

  96. 96
    JVL says:

    ET: Your word salad doesn’t help. No one knows how to test the claims of unguided evolution.

    We’ll just have to disagree on that I guess.

    Everything we know came from centuries of research and study. And we don’t know if the tools and homes found were of the original designers.

    Yeah, you can date them. And you can date the fill around the base of the stones that contains organic material that was put there when the stones were erected. You can also date the precursor Aubry holes around the site. (Stonehenge was clearly built in stages based on the evidence gleaned from excavations.) It’s all pretty straightforward. But you might not get all the supporting details from reading a coffee table book on standing stone circles. Sometimes you have to delve into the academic publications. Or talk to people who know the research.

  97. 97
    ET says:

    Research into what else there is besides chemical reactions in biology.

    Like what?

    Like immaterial information. According to ID there is more to life than physics and chemistry.

  98. 98
    Ed George says:

    Oh my God! Don’t you guys ever sleep? After my throw-away comment about their only being one intelligence known to create language, you guys have typed almost 35,000 words arguing this point, and Barry has dedicated a new OP to it. OK, if you exclude BA77’s comment, it may only be 10,000 words. None of these dispute the fact that humans are the only confirmed source of language.

  99. 99
    ET says:

    JVL:

    We’ll just have to disagree on that I guess.

    Disagree all you want. You cannot refute the claim.
    And with Stonehenge we don’t know who the people were that were found there. We don’t k ow if they were maintaining a structure of building it. We don’t know. But all that is moot because Stonehenge remains as an example that refutes your nonsense.

  100. 100
    ET says:

    Yes, Eddie, we already know that you don’t understand how science works. Your throw-away comment just proves that point.

  101. 101
    ET says:

    Not one scientist on this planet can refute the design inference. And all they have to do to refute ID is step up and demonstrate that unguided processes can produce what ID says what intelligently designed. They have all the power and yet remain powerless. That alone says it all, really.

  102. 102
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, I have not started from design as a premise, save as a possibility in possible worlds. You are reacting to a reasonable summary of what DNA bis, because of its onward implications. Very well, there is a string of alphanumeric characters associated with JVL. They are functional as English sentences. However, I have no separate direct observation of JVL, not even the contents of his garbage cans. Therefore there is no evidence that the strings come from any intelligent source. There is therefore good reason to infer that noise working with the Internet adequately explains. This is a better interpretation. Do you see what has gone wrong? KF

  103. 103
    JVL says:

    ET: And yet they are used and verified every day. And it remains what ID has is light years ahead of what your side has,

    I disagree. I haven’t seen a publication laying out the various methods of design detection and showing the rate of false positives and false negatives. I haven’t seen any publication of said design techniques being applied in the wild as it were. There isn’t a journal of design detection (there are lots of journals specifically geared towards other techniques and procedures). The only research I am aware of (being done by the Biologic Institute) seems more focused on trying to show unguided processes are up to the job instead of support the techniques and methods of design detection.

    Not one scientist on this planet can refute the design inference.

    As I said. I read lots of arguments on both sides and came to a conclusion.

    And all they have to do to refute ID is step up and demonstrate that unguided processes can produce what ID says what intelligently designed. They have all the power and yet remain powerless. That alone says it all, really.

    I think they have shown that some biological structures could have come about through unguided processes.

    Your side has absolutely NOTHING. If the design inference wasn’t sound then someone should be able to refute it. And yet no one can.

    After having read arguments on both sides I think the design inference, as it exists, is not sound. If more work is done and/or solid, physical evidence is found of designer(s) around at the pertinent time with the necessary technical skill then I shall reconsider the issue. I just don’t think, based on what I’ve read and been told, that the claims of design being detected are solid at this time.

  104. 104

    .
    #98

    After my throw-away comment

    Suddenly its a “throw away comment”, and then comes back at the end of his post and repeats it yet again, like it will be more forceful and washed of its incoherence a second time..

    You can’t make this stuff up.

  105. 105

    .

    2) You are factually incorrect. If SETI receives a confirmed narrow-band radio signal from space they will announce their discovery of an intelligence beyond earth. Not a single scientist at SETI is going to stand in front of a radio transmitter, with head in hand, and ponder “golly” how to get that signal any other way.

    2) You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science is not what it is, and telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation. Those are two very different things.

    (you will dissemble in your answer to #2 in both instances)

    Yup

  106. 106
    Ed George says:

    I find it amusing that the two issues that have garnered the most passionate disagreement from IDists here in the last couple days (aside from COVID-19) were the reaction to two incontestably factual statements that I made.

    1) That DNA works through chemical reactions, and,
    2) That humans are the only known source of language.

    As KF would say, this speaks volumes, and not in ID’s favour.

  107. 107
    kairosfocus says:

    EG,

    again, you set up and knocked over a strawman.

    Kindly go to either of the two threads I have put up in the past few days and ponder what layer-cake architectures are about. The physical layer is only one aspect of such a system, codes and protocols are pivotal and in fact set the framework for the physical layer.

    Further to this, it is not even true that humans are the sole users of language; honey bees may have a thing or two to show you.

    But, more directly, we EXEMPLIFY language-using intelligence, demonstrating its possibility. As contingent creatures we cannot exhaust possibilities, as was specifically pointed out. But was of course also ignored in hate to set up and knock over a false representation.

    In the case of the D/RNA protein code, we have alphanumeric, algorithmic symbolic information in strings which patently antedates humanity or even cell based life on Earth.

    The fact that ID thinkers have long explained how complex linguistically meaningful strings beyond 500 – 1,000 bits — per search challenge on Sol system or observed cosmos gamut — are not plausibly the result of blind search due to inability to explore more than a negligibly tiny fraction of the configuration space should be recognised and cogently addressed. That it isn’t tells us volumes about your disregard for responsibilities of reason.

    The balance on merits is clear, and if someone is struggling to figure it out, your irresponsible rhetorical stunts are a huge clue.

    KF

  108. 108
    kairosfocus says:

    JVL, there you go again, dismissing empirically observable informational, string data structure — thus, physical! — evidence that shows language at work in the heart of the cell. You demand separate direct evidence when there is evidence that cannot be shown to arise by blind chance and/or necessity but on trillions of cases (including your own comments) readily comes about by intelligently directed configuration aka design. Where, our existence demonstrates that designers are possible while giving utterly no reason to doubt that other designers may also be possible. This is a capital example of disregarding cogent but inconvenient evidence in hand by demanding that it be dismissed, while pretending to be open to evidence that you would be just as inclined to dismiss were it put on the table. Kindly, think again. KF

  109. 109
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: Yup

    I don’t know what you want from me. When I’m honest you accuse me of being dishonest and manipulative.

    If I disagree with you how am I suppose to response so that you won’t dismiss my responses? Do I have to agree with you to avoid your derision?

  110. 110
    JVL says:

    Kairosfocus: there you go again, dismissing empirically observable informational, string data structure — thus, physical! — evidence that shows language at work in the heart of the cell.,

    Anytime someone disagrees with you you say they are dismissing evidence. Is it possible for someone to disagree with you without being criticised?

    I am NOT denying factual evidence; I am disagreeing with your design inference.

    You demand separate direct evidence when there is evidence that cannot be shown to arise by blind chance and/or necessity but on trillions of cases (including your own comments) readily comes about by intelligently directed configuration aka design.

    I am not demanding anything. I’ve been trying really hard to honestly explain my stance to you. And, again, I disagree with you about your design inference. I guess I can’t do that without you labelling me as a denialist.

    Where, our existence demonstrates that designers are possible while giving utterly no reason to doubt that other designers may also be possible. This is a capital example of disregarding cogent but inconvenient evidence in hand by demanding that it be dismissed, while pretending to be open to evidence that you would be just as inclined to dismiss were it put on the table. Kindly, think again.

    Again, I have tried to be honest and clear explaining my views and stance. But all I get from you is that I’m clearly in denial.

    Is there any point in my trying to answer your queries anymore? You seem determined to not give me the benefit of any doubt.

  111. 111
    ET says:

    Ed George:

    1) That DNA works through chemical reactions, and,

    What does that even mean? The question pertained to the genetic code and not just DNA. What chemical reaction initiated the process? What chemical reaction initiated proof-reading and error-correction? What do chemical reactions even have to do with proof-reading and error-correction?

    One of Eddie’s issues is he claims victory while ignoring everything that calls his conclusions into question.

    2) That humans are the only known source of language.

    That depends on how one defines “language”. Other organisms can definitely communicate.

    And if it couldn’t have been humans nor any other organism on Earth, then the inference is it was some other intelligent agency. Nature remains eliminated as a possible cause.

  112. 112
    ET says:

    JVL:

    I haven’t seen a publication laying out the various methods of design detection and showing the rate of false positives and false negatives.

    And yet both forensic science and archaeology remain successful at doing so.

    I think they have shown that some biological structures could have come about through unguided processes.

    Present it, then. I know that they haven’t. Dr. Behe has made a living off of that fact.

    After having read arguments on both sides I think the design inference, as it exists, is not sound.

    And I doubt that you have done that. I doubt that you have the capability to do it.

    There isn’t any argument for unguided processes ability to produce anything beyond genetic diseases and deformities. Even the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” demonstrates the futility of your position. Not only do you need the right mutations to occur, you need them to get by the error-correction and proof-reading mechanisms.

    As I keep telling you, luck can only get you so far. And all you have is sheer, dumb luck.

  113. 113
    ET says:

    JVL:

    Anytime someone disagrees with you you say they are dismissing evidence.

    You do dismiss the evidence. Or rather you are incapable of assessing it.

  114. 114
    JVL says:

    ET: And yet both forensic science and archaeology remain successful at doing so.

    I meant ID design detection. Please try and read more than just the particular posts directed at you.

    Present it, then. I know that they haven’t. Dr. Behe has made a living off of that fact.

    Read any good university level evolution text book. Assuming you’ve already done that then there’s not much point in continuing the conversation: we disagree on the interpretation of the evidence and there’s not much more to say.

    Dr Behe has a tenured position at a good university; he does NOT make a living on his ID position.

    And I doubt that you have done that. I doubt that you have the capability to do it.

    How come you get to be rude to other participants but if I do the same I get banned?

    There isn’t any argument for unguided processes ability to produce anything beyond genetic diseases and deformities. Even the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” demonstrates the futility of your position. Not only do you need the right mutations to occur, you need them to get by the error-correction and proof-reading mechanisms.

    What if Dr Behe was incorrect in his evaluation of the data in his paper? It has been roundly dismissed by working scientists. So, if you want to consider all the data, why do you disregard the criticisms of Dr Behe’s work? You accuse me of being biased and making prejudgements . . . how do you know you’re not doing that?

    As I keep telling you, luck can only get you so far. And all you have is sheer, dumb luck.

    When you say things that clearly do not reflect the state of unguided evolutionary research then I wonder if you really understand it.

    You do dismiss the evidence. Or rather you are incapable of assessing it.

    Like Kairosfocus and Bornagain77 and Upright Biped you seem to feel that anyone who disagrees with you is defective or evil in some way. So, please explain if it’s possible to disagree with you on these issues and not be trashed by you? If it’s not possible then explain why I should bother trying to engage in a conversation any more?

  115. 115

    .
    Good grief, JVL

    I don’t know what you want from me. When I’m honest you accuse me of being dishonest and manipulative.

    This is just more dissembling. I’m not responsible for the inconsistencies in your actions and statements, nor the fact that you show up to act them out in public.

    As I have already noted: You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science (clearly documented in the literature and not even in question) is not what it is, and then telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation.

    As I said, those are two very different things. Your response is to dissemble further (surprise surprise) in part, by suggesting that you are now a poor victim who is not allowed to disagree.

    Give it a rest cowgirl.

  116. 116
    Seversky says:

    Upright BiPed @ 115

    As I have already noted: You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science (clearly documented in the literature and not even in question) is not what it is, and then telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation.

    Good grief, UB

    Nothing in science is beyond question. That is clearly documented in the literature. If that were the case then Newtonian mechanics would still be gospel in physics.

    The genetic code resembles human languages and codes in some ways. Our languages and codes are useful metaphors when trying to explain what happens in the genome but that does not necessarily entail that the genome was the creation of an extraterrestrial intelligence. We cannot rule that out as a possibility but neither can you rule out the possibility that it evolved through natural causes. You want certainty where there is none to be had.

  117. 117
    JVL says:

    Upright Biped: This is just more dissembling. I’m not responsible for the inconsistencies in your actions and statements, nor the fact that you show up to act them out in public.

    I am a human being and sometimes we are inconsistent. I have tried to be honest and admitted when my views are not coherent. I guess that makes me inferior.

    As I have already noted: You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science (clearly documented in the literature and not even in question) is not what it is, and then telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation.

    Yes, because the facts are the same. But you interpret them in a way which I do not find supported. And I’ve come to that conclusion after spending a lot of time considering all the arguments on both sides. Because I disagree with you you choose to cast that as me denying the science, but that is your interpretation. And it is not universally held as well you know.

    As I said, those are two very different things. Your response is to dissemble further (surprise surprise) in part, by suggesting that you are now a poor victim who is not allowed to disagree.

    You tell me what position I can take that disagrees with your interpretation and yet would still get you to consider me an intelligent human being.

    Time and time again I have tried to engage in a discussion, tried to be honest and straight and yet I am always told that I am lying or dissembling or ignorant or just plain stupid. From my perspective there seems to be no way to come to a contrary conclusion from yours without being labelled as inferior in some way. If I completely agreed with your view of what a materialist should think then I’m damned because I’m nothing better than a meat machine that cannot think. If I attempt to find a middle ground somewhere then I am deluded and inconsistent. If I agree with you then I guess I’m good.

    Can you point to a stance that anyone could take in opposition to yours that would still have you consider the person to be sane and intelligent? If you can’t think of one then why should anyone who disagrees with you bother trying to have a dialogue? And, importantly, are you really interested in a dialogue?

    Give it a rest cowgirl.

    Offensive and misogynistic. Well done.

  118. 118

    .
    #116

    The genetic code resembles human languages and codes in some ways.

    If you are going to make a case against the physics Sev, then make it.

  119. 119

    .
    #117

    I guess that makes me inferior.

    Your not inferior, you are dissembling.

  120. 120
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: If you are going to make a case against the physics Sev, then make it.

    Seversky is NOT trying to make a case against the physics. He’s arguing against your interpretation of the physics.

  121. 121
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: Your not inferior, you are dissembling.

    So, do you think I am an intelligent human being? Am I a ‘cowgirl’ that you can just dismiss because I disagree with you? Is my view just so wrong that you can just assume I haven’t really thought about it or that I am just some sheeple following the god of Darwin?

    I’m dissembling so I’m a liar? Is that it?

  122. 122

    .
    # 120

    Seversky is NOT trying to make a case against the physics. He’s arguing against your interpretation of the physics

    My comments about the system are based on the observations documented in the literature and in history of science. If he has a objection to those observations, then he can make it.

  123. 123

    .
    #121

    You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science (clearly documented in the literature and not even in question) is not what it is, and then telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation.

    You can agree with the physical analysis of the system — that the gene system is multi-referent symbol system using a set of interpretive constraints — anytime you wish. That is what is documented in the literature, and the observations behind it are not even in question. You can either agree, or disagree with reason, or abandon the argument. That is your choice..

  124. 124
    JVL says:

    Upright BiPed: You can agree with the physical analysis of the system — that the gene system is multi-referent symbol system using a set of interpretive constraints — anytime you wish. That is what is documented in the literature, and the observations behind it are not even in question.

    I don’t see what this response has to do with the questions I asked in post 121.

    And, as I said, I’m not disputing the basic science, I am disputing the interpretation of that data that implies it must have been intelligently designed.

    Are you not even going to apologise for the ‘cowgirl’ reference?

  125. 125
    Ed George says:

    The only thing missing from this thread is TruthFreedom and his condescension. Has he been banned?

  126. 126

    .
    #124

    If you find it easier, we can start at the top and roll through the observations one at a time if you like.

    Did John Von Neumann successfully predict the organizational requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator, based on the use of symbols and constraints to encode quiescent descriptions in memory?

  127. 127
    JVL says:

    Upright Biped: If you find it easier, we can start at the top and roll through the observations one at a time if you like.

    Since you don’t seem to have even the basic decency to acknowledge my questions then I don’t think I’ll play your game and jump through your hoops.

    You play with people. You don’t seem to really care about them. Funny that a presumed atheist has to remind you of the Golden Rule. But I guess you didn’t promise to be consistent between your beliefs and your actions.

  128. 128

    .
    More dissembling.

    I have answered your question about “disagreeing with me” repeatedly. It is my answer that you won’t engage with. Here it is again:

    You are not merely disagreeing with the interpretation, you are avoiding acknowledgement of the science and history behind the interpretation. You are saying the science (clearly documented in the literature and is not even in question) is not what it is, and then telling yourself that you are merely disagreeing with the interpretation.

    Did John Von Neumann successfully predict the organizational requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator, based on the use of symbols and constraints to encode quiescent descriptions in memory?

    Truly, I expect no answer.

  129. 129
    Barry Arrington says:

    JVL

    I have admitted when my views are not coherent. I guess that makes me inferior.

    Well yes, it does. You are not inferior as a person. But if your views are not coherent (and they are not) then your reasoning skills are inferior to those who have coherent views. Surely you understand that.

  130. 130
    Barry Arrington says:

    JVL

    Funny that a presumed atheist has to remind you of the Golden Rule.

    When a person encounters someone wallowing in error, the most loving thing they can do is try to correct them. When their attempts at correction are met with dissembling, obfuscation, and dismissal, the most loving thing they can do is attempt to shock them from their complacency. UB has done the loving thing.

  131. 131

    ET @84
    “Lenski’s LTEE is showing us how impotent evolutionary processes are with respect to universal common descent”

    Couldn’t help noticing, but LTEE in French is short for ‘limitëe’
    Or ‘limited’
    Interesting coincidence i thought 🙂
    N’est-ce pas?

  132. 132

    Seversky @116
    “You want certainty where there is none to be had.”

    One thing is for sure, let me quote someone you might respect:

    “…we know that genes themselves, within their minute internal structure, are long strings of pure digital information
    What is more, they are truly digital, in the full and strong sense of computers and compact disks, not in the weak sense of the nervous system. The genetic code is not a binary code as in computers, nor an eight-level code as in some telephone systems, but a quaternary code, with four symbols
    The machine code of the genes is uncannily computerlike. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular-biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer-engineering journal. . . .

    Our genetic system, which is the universal system of all life on the planet, is digital to the core
    With word-for-word accuracy, you could encode the whole of the New Testament in those parts of the human genome that are at present filled with “junk” DNA – that is, DNA not used, at least in the ordinary way, by the body. Every cell in your body contains the equivalent of forty-six immense data tapes, reeling off digital characters via numerous reading heads working simultaneously. In every cell, these tapes – the chromosomes – contain the same information, but the reading heads in different kinds of cells seek out different parts of the database for their own specialist purposes. . . .

    Genes are pure information – information that can be encoded, recoded and decoded, without any degradation or change of meaning. Pure information can be copied and, since it is digital information, the fidelity of the copying can be immense. DNA characters are copied with an accuracy that rivals anything modern engineers can do.”

    Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, 16-19

  133. 133
    jawa says:

    Solemn Existence @131:

    That’s an interesting observation indeed.

    Is French your first language?

  134. 134
    jawa says:

    Solemn Existence @132:

    I wouid like to see the response to your comment. 😉

  135. 135
    kairosfocus says:

    SE, solid citation. KF

  136. 136
    ET says:

    seversky:

    The genetic code resembles human languages and codes in some ways.

    The genetic code is a real code in the same sense as Morse code: Larry Moran on the real genetic code

  137. 137
    ET says:

    ID’s design detection can be refuted if someone, anyone, can just step up and demonstrate that nature is up to the task of producing whatever we are investigating. The fact that no one can do so is very telling.

    There isn’t anything in any college biology or evolutionary textbook that supports unguided evolution. Nothing. The peer-reviewed paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” proves that color vision, for example, is well beyond the reach of unguided evolution. So forget about macroevolution.

    There isn’t anything in any college biology textbook that says how to test the claim that any bacterial flagellum evolved via unguided evolutionary processes. The same goes for vision systems, ATP synthase, the genetic code, tRNA’s- the list is virtually endless.

    After 160 years there still isn’t a scientific theory for unguided evolution. No one uses it to guide their research. The concept is useless.

  138. 138

    .
    SE,
    Thanks for the reminder, I had completely forgotten about that passage. I wonder of JVL thinks digital coding of the gene requires a rate-independent symbol system, interpretive constraints, spatial orientation, and a language structure (code). If it does, I wonder if he/she thinks it has to successfully describe itself in order to persist over time. If it does, I wonder at what point in time he/she thinks it had to start successfully describing itself.

  139. 139

    .
    From a paper cited on another thread:

    Marshall Nirenberg, the Nobel Laurate who began the process of breaking the gene code:

    “The genetic language now is known, and it seems clear that most, if not all, forms of life on this planet use the same language, with minor variations.”

    Wait ’til Ed hears about this. Very sloppy.

  140. 140
    Ed George says:

    UB

    Wait ’til Ed hears about this [genetic language]. Very sloppy.

    Definitions of language:

    Webster’s: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community.

    Britannica: a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.

    Cambridge: a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar, or the system of communication used by people in a particular country or type of work.

    Collins: A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing.

    I will keep looking but I can’t find a definition of language that would apply to DNA and how it works. So, my tentative conclusion at this time is that this is sloppy use of language.

  141. 141

    .
    Here’s one for you Ed, from Webster’s (you must have just missed it)

    : a system of symbols and rules for writing programs or algorithms

  142. 142

    .
    And here’s one from Collins (must have missed this one too)

    : a special set of symbols, letters, numerals, rules, etc used for the transmission of information.

  143. 143
    Ed George says:

    UB, yes, I saw that one. But I still didn’t see genetic language described as an accepted definition of language. However, I admit that I have not conducted an exhaustive search and that it might be possible to find one.

    But before you waste your time, I suggest that you read the definitions of analogy and metaphor.

    On a tangent, when looking up definitions for language and genetic language, I came across this paper. Very interesting.
    https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W16-1208.pdf

  144. 144

    .
    Howard Pattee wrote about the physics and material conditions of symbol systems for 5 decades before retiring. Along the way, he was sort-of grafted into the semiotic research community. When he spoke with linguists and semioticians, he found their terms and language to be too imprecise and confusing to be of any use to him as a physicist, and so continued to use the terms of physics to conduct his research. I take my cues from his judgement on the matter. The use of language can be identified by the physical system required to support it.

  145. 145
    Barry Arrington says:

    EG

    UB, yes, I saw that one. But I still didn’t see genetic language described as an accepted definition of language.

    Except Marshall Nirenberg, the Nobel Laurate who began the process of breaking the gene code:

    “The genetic language now is known, and it seems clear that most, if not all, forms of life on this planet use the same language, with minor variations.”

    Ed must not have seen that one either.

  146. 146
    Barry Arrington says:

    Ed’s antics demonstrate once again something I have seen frequently over the years. No matter how much logic and evidence is adduced, the materialist response is always: “not enough.”
    Yes, Ed, we know it is not enough for you. Because if you were willing to follow the evidence and logic to where it leads, you would have to reexamine your metaphysical prejudices. And you will pay any cost in cognitive dissonance to avoid that.

  147. 147
    Ed George says:

    BA

    Ed’s antics demonstrate once again something I have seen frequently over the years.

    What is that? Deliberately misinterpreting the metaphoric use of a word by a scientist as its literal definition? Like when scientists compare DNA to a language, or a code and others use their use of those metaphors (analogies) to argue that DNA must be designed because human languages and codes are designed? Yes, I have seen this quite frequently as well. I wasn’t sure that you had noticed.

  148. 148
    Ed George says:

    BA

    ”The genetic language now is known, and it seems clear that most, if not all, forms of life on this planet use the same language, with minor variations.”

    Ed must not have seen that one either.

    You obviously didn’t check out my link@143. This paper looked at the similarity between human languages using various techniques on bible translations (I thought you would appreciate that last bit). They then performed similar language comparison techniques on the “genetic languages” of several animal and plant species. And, surprisingly, their results contradict Nirenberg’s claim that “[all life on earth]…. use the same language, with minor variations.”

    In addition to the natural language data-set, we performed language comparison of n-grams in cod ing regions of the genome in 12 different species (4 plants, 6 animals, and two human subjects). Our language comparison method confirmed that evolutionarily closer species are closer in terms of genetic language models. Interestingly, as we increase the number of n-grams the distinction between genetic language in animals/human versus plants increases. This can be regarded as indicative of a high-level diversity between the genetic languages in plants versus animals.

    The irony here is that when people seriously examine DNA as if it were a literal language akin to human languages, the conclusions further support evolution.

  149. 149

    .

    Ed: Deliberately misinterpreting the metaphoric use of a word by a scientist as its literal definition

    Misrepresented Scientist: All sciences have epistemic assumptions, a language for expressing their theories or models, and symbols that reference observables that can be measured. In most sciences the languages in which their models are expressed are not the focus of their attention, although the choice of language is often crucial for the model. On the contrary, biosemiotics, by definition, cannot escape focusing on the symbol-matter relationship. Symbol systems first controlled material construction at the origin of life. At this molecular level it is only in the context of open-ended evolvability that symbol-matter systems and their functions can be objectively defined. Symbols are energy-degenerate structures not determined by laws that act locally as special boundary conditions or constraints on law-based energy-dependent matter in living systems.

  150. 150

    .

    Nuremberg’s claim that “[all life on earth]…. use the same language, with minor variations.”

    Getting the name wrong is excusable, Getting the context wrong is deliberate and deceptive.

  151. 151
    Ed George says:

    UB

    Getting the name wrong is excusable,

    Damn spell check. Thanks. I have corrected it.

    Getting the context wrong is deliberate and deceptive.

    That was my point exactly. Claiming that Crick and others intended their use of the words “code” and “language” in the same way as we use them to describe human designed codes and languages is deliberate and deceptive.

  152. 152

    .
    No need to worry about that Ed, I already posted upthread Crick’s written text to Michael. People can decide for themselves if he intended to express symbols or dynamics.

    “Now we believe that the D.N.A. is a code. That is, the order of the bases (the letters) makes one gene different from another gene (just as one page of print is different than another).”

  153. 153
    Ed George says:

    UB

    No need to worry about that Ed, I already posted upthread Crick’s written text to Michael. People can decide for themselves if he intended to express symbols or dynamics.

    Yup, they certainly can decide whether Crick believed that DNA was a designed code, as everyone here implies his use of this word requires, or not. But given how often people here cite this one quote, I find it strange that they don’t want to mention any of his other quotes.

    I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous. If we could get rid of them we could more easily get down to the serious problem of trying to find out what the world is all about.

    Or

    Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.

    Or that he was an advocate for establishing Darwin Day as a national holiday.

    I tell you what, I will meet you half way and concede that DNA is a language and a code if you concede that when you are claiming this, you are not claiming that this means they are designed. Because the scientists who have used these words certainly weren’t implying this link.

  154. 154

    .

    I tell you what, I will meet you half way and concede that DNA is a language and a code if you concede that when you are claiming this, you are not claiming that this means they are designed.

    The fact that the gene system uses a symbolic code is a data point that stands on it own.

    So concede away.

  155. 155
    Barry Arrington says:

    Ed

    I tell you what, I will meet you half way and concede that DNA is a language and a code if you concede that when you are claiming this, you are not claiming that this means they are designed.

    Fascinating. What makes you think anyone cares whether you concede the obvious. In fact, I kinda hope you don’t. Every post in which you grit your teeth, stamp your feet, and continue to defend the indefensible, advances the ID cause just a little bit more by showing how unreasonable our opponents are. So, by all means Ed, deny the science to your heart’s content.

    UPDATE: I see UB beat me to it while I was composing this.

  156. 156

    .
    After your concession , Ed, you’ll be comforted to know that the issue had already been comprehensively resolved by fact that language use (and the symbols systems require of it) are objectively describable in the language of physics – a rate independent medium, a set of non-integrable constraints, and all that. You also likely feel a weight off your shoulders not having to defend your position against physics with the religious views of Francis Crick.

  157. 157
    Ed George says:

    BA

    Fascinating. What makes you think anyone cares whether you concede the obvious.

    You and others seem to expend a lot of time and energy trying to get me to concede. That speaks volumes. That is very telling.

  158. 158
    ET says:

    That you won’t concede, in the face of the evidence, speaks volumes. THAT is very telling.

  159. 159
    Barry Arrington says:

    Ed at 157.
    Oh dear. You really have misperceived what has been going on not just on this thread but generally when you engage. You see, your role is to insert materialist shiboliths into the combox. This gives UB and others the opportunity to demolish them, which, as the readers will no doubt attest, they do with gleeful abandon. I really mean it when I say that folks like you and Sev and JVL and Ortho are important assets in the ID cause. Your niche is providing errors to be corrected. You do that very well. Thank you.

  160. 160
    ET says:

    Ed George:

    Because the scientists who have used these words certainly weren’t implying this link.

    Those same scientists who haven’t a clue as to how nature could have done it? The same scientists who don’t know how to test the claim that nature did it? The scientists who were/ are so biased tghey have to remind themselves that it wasn’t designed, rather it evolved (as if the two are mutually exclusive)?

    Those scientists? Why should we listen to them on anything but what they have demonstrated, when they haven’t got a clue beyond that?

  161. 161
    bornagain77 says:

    Ed George at 157, I think you may estimate yourself a little too highly.

    If you concede what is obvious or not is between you and God. I’m sure that Mr. Arrington, (like myself and many others on UD), would like for you to be sane in your reasoning, but that he, like many of the rest of us on UD, has long ago given up any hope that militant atheists will ever be reasonable.

    But all is not lost, you can still serve as a bad example. As Mr. Arrington made clear, “Every post in which you grit your teeth, stamp your feet, and continue to defend the indefensible, advances the ID cause just a little bit more by showing how unreasonable our opponents are (to unbiased readers). So, by all means Ed, deny the science to your heart’s content.”

    So even your stubborn refusal to be reasonable works out for our good in the end!

    Romans 8:28
    And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

  162. 162

    Jawa
    @133
    I was like, the abbreviation only works like that in French. But how serendipitous if you’re bilingual to see it’s used for an experiment that is observably showing the limits, the ‘edge’ of evolution

    Yes, actually. I learned French at home before going to school in English. Quebec, eh 🙂

    @134
    I always like the quotes taken from that passage by Dawkins, like interchanging the pages of a molecular biology journal with those of computer engineering. I thought it was pretty relevant for this discussion

    KF
    @135
    Solid UD 🙂
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dawkins-dna-is-encoded-digital-information-in-the-strong-sense/

    Upright
    @138
    No problem, it could possibly be the best thing Dawkins ever wrote!
    @141, 142
    Nice definition.
    Those are definitely 4K

    Ed G
    @153
    “the scientists who have used these words certainly weren’t implying this link”

    Crick believed in panspermia, he definitely attributed the code to intelligent beings.

    Barry @155 “deny[ing] the science”

    For me it’s even deeper, as a denial of reality. If you ask me I’d say, never mind one’s scientific persuasions, it takes a very strong commitment a priori to even superficially look at the intricacies of DNA encoding/decoding and insist it is all just the product of blind ‘watchmaking’

    But then again, I can’t really understand or truly sympathize anymore, no longer being an atheist. I can only speculate as to what my teenaged reaction would have been, had I ever been properly exposed to these informational realities of biology

    Ed G @157
    “You and others seem to expend a lot of time and energy trying to get me to concede. That speaks volumes. That is very telling.”

    I know that can be taken in more than one way, but all debating aside, it can be telling of genuine care.
    That is the main reason I would spend any effort trying to convince you or anyone else of these things.

  163. 163
    ET says:

    Even Larry Moran says the genetic code is a real code. Crick called it a code because it fit the definition of a code. And it fits the definition because it is a code.

    Only the weak-minded think it’s a metaphor. But that is moot as it doesn’t matter what we call it. What is obvious is no one has any idea how nature could have produced it from the bottom up. It goes against everything we know about nature.

  164. 164
    Ed George says:

    EG

    You and others seem to expend a lot of time and energy trying to get me to concede. That speaks volumes. That is very telling.

    Followed by a thousand words by people explaining that they don’t care what I think. Frankly, when I don’t care what someone has to say (eg, ET) I don’t waste time responding to them.

  165. 165
    kairosfocus says:

    Folks,

    codes and alphanumerical digital symbol strings are linguistic, as are Chinese Character-like strings of stylised conventionalised, abstracted drawings, which go back to Cuneiform also.

    Observe, here, that the different versions of Chinese — e.g. Mandarin vs Cantonese — pronounce the symbols differently but they carry the same meaning, even as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 have common meanings but are pronounced differently in various languages. Where, place value notation then shifts the sense of 2 significantly in the different cases in say 2,222,222.222. The first, in context, is two millions of units, the last, 2 thousandths of the unit, 1. And, the forms vary, e.g. I remember Indian profs still using the tiny form of the 0 that comes from the home of the decimal numeral system, India.

    Even alphabetic and partly alphabetic systems are representing sounds in temporal succession with strings of symbols in space *-*-*-*- . . . -* [many of which were originally stylised drawings as we see with “A” tracing to aleph, the ox . . . triangle head with horns].

    Similarly in mathematics, conventional symbols represent concepts, e.g. the elongated form S– used up to C18 — for sum being used to represent integration and DELTA the symbol for change. Where the Greek capital SIGMA is also used for sum in a different but related sense. That is, language is an integral part of Mathematics, also. Think of plus, minus, equal sign etc also or e, i, pi, h as a conventional infinitesimal, x, y, z as often space-linked variables, sine, cos, exponential functions, gamma function and many other special functions etc. Add here, Periodic table symbols for elements, their electronic configurations, typical state, etc then for molecules then how GCAT becomes a system for the Genetic Code — note that word! — and how it works in the cell based on prong height, comparable to a Yale lock.

    Ability to represent symbolically [and often to pronounce said symbols] is a key part of the structure and power of language-using intelligence that helps us to trace out lines of logical or creative thought.

    Something is deeply, conceptually wrong in several objections above; they have a far too cramped view of what language phenomena are and are about.

    KF

  166. 166
    kairosfocus says:

    PS: On how a dictionary can be used to set up and knock over a strawman:

    language noun

    lan·?guage | \ ?la?-gwij
    , -wij \
    Definition of language

    1a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community studied the French language
    b(1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs
    (2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings the language of mathematics
    (3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings language in their very gesture— William Shakespeare
    (4) : the means by which animals communicate the language of birds
    (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (such as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions
    (6) : machine language sense 1
    [–> the protein code is an aspect of the GCAT machine language, which also has various regulatory functions]
    2a : form or manner of verbal expression specifically : style the beauty of Shakespeare’s language
    b : the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge the language of diplomacy medical language
    c : profanity shouldn’t of blamed the fellers if they’d cut loose with some language— Ring Lardner
    3 : the study of language especially as a school subject earned a grade of B in language
    4 : specific words especially in a law or regulation The police were diligent in enforcing the language of the law.

  167. 167
    kairosfocus says:

    PPS: That humble source, Wikipedia:

    A language is a structured system of communication. Language, in a broader sense, is the method of communication that involves the use of – particularly human – languages.[1][2][3]

    The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.

    Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on the arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) between languages and dialect.[4] Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in writing, whistling, signing, or braille. This is because human language is modality-independent. Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, “language” may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.

  168. 168
    kairosfocus says:

    EG, it is manifest that part of your problem is that you are locking out key, cogent correction. For example, it is highly likely that you will refuse to acknowledge the correction of the strawman sense of language you attempted to set up above. KF

  169. 169
    ET says:

    I guess if I was so easily refuted I wouldn’t care what people say either, Ed. But everyone knows why you don’t respond to the people who expose you as the poseur that you are.

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