The predictions are the most important aspects. Note that @theaz101 initially asked whether this had been predicted; I noted that it had and offered documentation, which was ignored in favor of attacking a straw man.
Sure. So what?
Within our universe, the assertion Ā« a semiotic code requires a coder Ā» can be seen as a law. But the laws of nature cannot be demonstrated in the mathematical sense.
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We do see them being formed in nature. Theyāre found in meteorites. Every single DNA/RNA base, and at least 50 different amino acids, have been found in meteorites. Theyāre also found in deep-sea vents. Admittedly we canāt watch them being formed, because neither environment is conducive to observation, but they definitely exist abiotically.
Thereās also a difference between what we can do in the lab when weāre aiming for specific outcomes, and what happens in the lab when we just set up abiotic conditions and see what emerges. Nucleotides and amino-acids occur in the latter, not just the former.
So when you say āwe donāt seeā, itās more āyou havenāt lookedā.
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Iām going to ask you now this once to never again so confidently put your willful ignorance on such an embarassing display. For your own sake. I genuinly donāt understand what goes on in your skull when you write something like this, considering how there are many threads and posts on this forum alone where this evidence has been explained in detail. Some of the evidence for the RNA world hypothesis explained in this very thread is also evidence for the the genetic code and translation system being the product of evolution.
For example the evidence that the core functions of the ribosome are performed by RNA (that peptidyl transferase consisting of RNA was predicted on the basis of the RNA world hypothesis). Thereās a thread on this forum that shows that a key prediction of the hypothesis that the ribosomal core, due to itās A and P-site symmetry, was once itās very own ribozyme that could self-assemble into a dimer, and catalyze peptide bond formation, has been experimentally confirmed. This core molecule, a dimer of a single RNA, has siginficant structural and sequence similarity to ā¦ tRNA. Why would it have that if these two different, and functionally distinct components of the translation system (the peptidyl transferase center and tRNA) did not derive from the same ancetral RNA molecule? This is another piece of evidence that there was an RNA world, and that the translation system evolved in it.
The two families of enzymes that charge tRNA with amino acids, the Class I and Class II aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetases, were predicted by Rodin and Ohno, in 1995, on the basis of significant sequence similarity in the middle-base codon (@Nesslig20 should have made it clear to you why middle base codon is significant) in the genes encoding these enzymes, to have originally evolved from the opposite strands of a single ancestral gene. A subsequent analysis of the phylogenetic trees of both class I and class II enzymes shows that this sequence similarity increases as we go further back in time, when inferring ancestral nodes in each tree. If this hypothesis was correct, it should be possible to reconstruct these ancestral forms in the laboratory, show that they can be encoded by sense-antisense strands of the same gene, and that they are indeed functional. This has been experimentally confirmed. This is as good evidence as it is possible to get that a key component of the translation system (and therefore the genetic code) is the product of evolution. The enzyme most directly responsible for creating the chemical bonding association between RNA and amino acid, the charged tRNA molecule, today consisting of 64 distinct enzymes, was once encoded by one single gene, with the two opposite strands encoding the first common ancestor of each class. These ancestral forms are highly promiscuous enzymes, but each ancestor has a substantial preference for the amino acids charged by the members of each extant class.
Both the RNA and protein components of the ribosome testify to the gradual evolutionary history of the ribosomal exit-tunnels capacity to assist in protein folding. The proteins most close to the ribosomal core are unstructured, basically just disordered strings of amino acids that āstickā to their surrounding rRNA. As we go further out from the ribosomal core, the proteins gain more structure. Literally the ribosomeās own structure is informing us of itās gradual evolutionary history, with molecules deeper in itās core being from a time when it was basically just stringing together random peptides unable to fold autonomously, but as the exit tunnel grew larger, it also aided the folding of the evolving proteins it synthesized, so that these in turn could also assist in itās function.
These data points are much better explained by the hypothesis that the genetic code and translation system evolved in the RNA world, than on whatever non-existing hypothesis of supernatural instantaneous creation you might want to come up with at some point. You donāt really have a hypothesis of course, itās just some ad-hoc rationalization that whatever we see was once supernaturally created in an instant, with zero capacity to predict any particular data.
Thereās more but this should be enough already to utterly and completely debunk your assertion. You are the one engaging in wishful speculations, and worse, outright ignoring evidence.
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If they still exist on Earth, yes. But if they no longer exist, because conditions on Earth have changed, then we would have to recreate them.
Certain natural phenomena require special conditions to form. Volcanoes donāt form inside my living room, for example. They form out there in nature somewhere, but they donāt form all the time and they donāt form just anywhere and everywhere. They usually occur on fault lines where the tectonic plates meet.
Hurricanes donāt form on land, they form over water. Hurricanes donāt form on just any body of water. They usually only form when the ocean is warm (mostly close to the equator).
We could go on and on finding examples of increasingly rare natural phenomena that require increasingly special and sensitive conditions. Some phenomena happen almost everywhere, others are basically unique. And thereās everything in between.
The conditions that facilitated the origins of life could have been transient and highly sensitive to local conditions. One thing we know that is different between the Earth now and how it was in the most ancient past, is that Earth today has a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere and the oceans.
But we also know that oxygen is highly destructive to many of the chemical reactions hypothesized to have given rise to life. That means we canāt observe those chemical reations out there in the natural Earth environment anymore, because itās saturated in oxygen today.
So we have to recreate the conditions in the laboratory without oxygen, to simulate the Earth as we know it was a long time ago.
Itās reasons such as these that we canāt just assume that we should be able to observe life arising all the time everywhere around us. This shouldnāt be controversial to any thinking person.
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That premise is known to be wrong. We have directly observed random strings to have functions. In fact in one study, approximately 10% of random DNA sequences can function as transcriptional promoters. Approximately 60% of random sequences could evolve into a functional promoter with just one mutation. Let that sink in.
Random sequences. Not designed, random.
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Of course we do. All the time, in living organisms. This is happening in your body right now. I am sure you will agree this does not require your active participation as an intelligent being, correct?
In vivo, nucleotides can be synthesized de novo or recycled through salvage pathways.[1] The components used in de novo nucleotide synthesis are derived from biosynthetic precursors of carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism, and from ammonia and carbon dioxide. Recently it has been also demonstrated that cellular bicarbonate metabolism can be regulated by mTORC1 signaling.[6] The liver is the major organ of de novo synthesis of all four nucleotides. De novo synthesis of pyrimidines and purines follows two different pathways. Pyrimidines are synthesized first from aspartate and carbamoyl-phosphate in the cytoplasm to the common precursor ring structure orotic acid, onto which a phosphorylated ribosyl unit is covalently linked. Purines, however, are first synthesized from the sugar template onto which the ring synthesis occurs. For reference, the syntheses of the purine and pyrimidine nucleotides are carried out by several enzymes in the cytoplasm of the cell, not within a specific organelle.
ā¦or biochemical system that arose thru unguided natural processes like evolution. Itās very odd that you would deliberately omit that, since this is exactly what is being discussed here.
That would entail that no random mutation can produce a functional protein. Such an assertion is so obviously wrong I am shocked that you would make it.
Sure, but I did not claim you have said that. Surely you are not denying that " we have countless examples of phenomena that can be accounted for thru naturalism." As you seem to understand, this does not entail that naturalism is true, right?
Right. Sorry, was that meant to be a response to what I wrote? Because it only confirms what I said.
OK, so that only weakens your position further. But I also said you cannot characterize it, and you have yet to do so in a way that would exclude things we know to be produced thru non-intelligent natural processes. So that would leave you making entirely unfounded assertions. One might just as well say āNatural processes canāt produce Jiggywobbleā and then continue to make that claim without actually specifying what JIggywobbble is.
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FI (in the ID usage) is undefined and undefinable, taken to mean something profound, but is Jiggywobble ā¦ as @Faizal_Ali so aptly puts it. If it were really so important a concept, then there really ought to be a way to communicate this vital idea to others. Yet it seems this concept cannot be defined or conveyed to others in any form, making it Information which cannot be encoded.
@theaz101 Dembski failed at this definition too, so itās no knock on you that you canāt do it either.
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Itās possible to start evolutionary simulators such as Tierra with random genomes rather than designed ones, and guess what - sometimes those random strings produce viable āorganismsā.
So the premise is wrong there too.
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That assertion is false, unless your definition of ācoderā is āanything which causes a code to exist,ā whereupon the statement becomes essentially obvious and useless. I think that, as a general rule, things arenāt usually considered ālaws of natureā unless thereās some truth to them.
Laws of nature can, of course, be demonstrated empirically. So, provide a truly rigorous definition of āsemiotic code,ā a truly rigorous definition of ācoder,ā and get to work. This idea that youāre going to hatch these crazed bits of pseudo-rational nonsense and that everyone is going to assent to them isnāt working.
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The material and actual patterns for the Morse code or ASCII are irrelevant. What makes them codes is agreement between the sender and receiver. They get together, call themselves the American National Standards Institute, and say "When I send 01000011, that is a āCā, to which the receiver says āRoger thatā. It could have been any pattern; nothing physical whatsoever determines preference, and a different agreement would not violate any physical laws. The code is not the physical apparatus. The code is the document that comes out of the meeting, and clearly, that is not a matter of purely natural laws. It has no existence outside of agreement, no matter the physical layer of the protocol.
As has been broadly stated in this thread, and nicely detailed by @Nesslig20 and @Rumraket, the genetic code works nothing like that no matter what adjectives are employed. In terms of the OSI reference communication model, there is zero independence between layers. The mapping between DNA and protein is dependent on the biochemistry involved at every step.
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Hi Ron
I do appreciate @Nesslig20 discussion about the transcription translation process however I think the complex mapping he showed supports @Giltil point.
The maping involved in ASC11 code with letters requires the laws of physics at every step. The important discussion is about the origin of the mapping. Translation of voltages to letters or the translation of DNA to proteins.
We may not be far away from computers using biochemistry for their mapping solution.
Yes, there is mapping; but neither the complexity, nor that technology follows the laws of physics, are the issues. The chemistry is inherently determined. A given codon maps to a given amino acid like hydrogen and oxygen map to water; although there are more steps, there is no more degree of freedom. While Morse codes and ASCII could be completely reassigned without any change to the apparatus, changing the mapping of the genetic code would require new biology. That is an essential distinction, and so arguments about biochemistry must be based on their own merits and substance, and not metaphor and adjectives.
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Firstly, I will take a moment to recover from the shear overwhelming hubris of your presenting your intuitions as a universal ālawā of nature.
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Secondly, I would point out how unlikely it is that I, or most of the participants here, would accept such a grandious claim, unsubstantiated. This is particularly so as your focus in this forum is almost purely apologetic ā and apologists are focused on winning arguments, rather than on intensive study of nature or presenting facts as accurately as possible ā rendering them unreliable sources.
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As I have already pointed out, ācodeā covers a very wide range of divergent and heterogeneous phenomena ā rendering it more accurate to describe the assertion āa semiotic code requires a coderā a hasty generalisation than some universal ālawā of nature.
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Also as I have already pointed out, you have extended āinterpreterā and āmeaningā to purely mechanistic phenomena in order to define genetic code as a āsemiotic codeā. Given this, it is not unreasonable that, even if we allow your claim that āa semiotic code requires a coderā, we can stipulate that the ācoderā may likewise be a purely mechanistic phenomena ā such as evolution. This, as Puck points out, completely undercuts your intent.
Therefore it would seem reasonable to conclude:
Even to the extent that genetic code may require a coder, this claim is not inconsistent with genetic code having evolved.
This would seem somewhat of a non sequitor, as laws of nature are generally demonstrated by evidence, not purely by mathematics.
But even that isnāt entirely true, as some laws of nature, such as the Laws of Thermodynamics, and I suspect the Ideal Gas Law, can be demonstrated statistically, and thus mathematically.
Hi Ron
This is true but to make the change requires human intervention. Without it no change would happen. My laptop will follow the same mapping rules as long as I own it. If we got to the point of true synthetic biology then changing the genetic code could be possible.
Yes. Technological codes are entirely of human contrivance, and are only meaningful in terms of shared human understanding, for the transmitted letters and ultimately language itself. Of course, shared symbols are subject to human alteration at will. You can change your laptop with a software update, which is not equivalent to anything in biology and typical of why you cannot rigorously argue biology from technological metaphors. Argue biology from biology.
You cannot change the genetic code, synthetically or otherwise, without changing the molecular biology.
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Or alternatively, they happen all the time today but are easily outcompeted by modern life.
Thereās a third empirical prediction of @theaz101ās creation hypothesis falsified.
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In biology you can change gene output with the insertion of retroviruses.
Testing your argument could be to start from the assumption of creation and test if the evidence of the genetic code (as described by @Nesslig20) supports the inference that it is the product of creation. How would you argue that the genetic codes existence is not evidence for planned creation?
With evidence.