Is there really information being conveyed within a cell?

[Faizal_Ali]

@colewd

@RonSewell

You cannot change the genetic code, synthetically or otherwise, without changing the molecular biology.

In biology you can change gene output with the insertion of retroviruses.

This is one of my regular reminders that Bill does not actually understand words and how they work. Although it is probably superfluous, since Bill provides regular reminders all by himself.

@colewd

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?

Why are you asking others to do that work for you? You are quite right, for once, that one way to test this hypothesis is to 1) start from the premise that “creation” is true, 2) determine what observations could be made that would falsify that premise and finally 3) determine whether those observations are actually made.

If you can’t even get to step 2, then you really have no argument, at least in a scientific sense.

What do you have for step 2?

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

So, does this particular non sequitur (“something in biology is information and/or a code, therefore it has to have been put there by an intelligent agent”) ever die? And do those who raise it realize that it has, and can have, no traction, ever?

The thing gets reworded, and reworded, and reworded. It is as though those who propose it somehow think that if they can just find the right particular set of words to describe it, this will somehow seal the deal.

I sort of miss the days before ID Creationism. Back then, there was a certain innocent charm to the “wellll, lookitallthestuff! How c’n there be all this stuff and babies and sunsets and crap, and no god?” line of argument. Yes, the “everything is too complicated to be anything but the product of design” argument dated back to the Paley-O-Lithic, but it was usually regarded as just one arrow in the vast quiver of creationist non sequiturs, one more weapon in the “baffle 'em with bullshit” arsenal. At least the “lookit all the stuff” creationist didn’t pretend to have some sort of intellectual involvement in the thing, and just sort of shoved the personal incredulity element out, front and center, in a cute “I dare you to force me to believe things I don’t wanna” play. At no point was novelty or intellectual worthwhileness pretended to. Dull, yes, repetitious, yes; but it had a kind of earnestness which might have lent it dignity if it were ever so slightly less absurd.

But after ID arrived, and a sufficient number of people smoked or otherwise ingested a Stephen Meyer book or two, for some reason the pattern changed.
Now they keep building the giant Trojan rabbit and pushing it to the door again, and again, and again. Where Bedevere’s suggestion of a giant wooden badger failed to persuade his comrades, in this case it’s rewording after rewording. Didn’t like the argumentum ex leporis? How about the argumentum ex sciurus? And so the same bloody non sequitur just keeps rolling up to the gate, very thinly disguised in new clothes, and is apparently meant to be taken seriously each and every last time.

At some point, I think it may be necessary to just go “fetchez la vache,” and have it over with.

[Argon]

@RonSewell

You cannot change the genetic code, synthetically or otherwise, without changing the molecular biology.

And this has happened in nature. Search non-canonical genetic codes and translation. See also suppressor mutations (e.g. ‘ochre’ & ‘amber’). Who or what was the ‘coder’ behind those changes?

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

So, does this particular non sequitur (“something in biology is information and/or a code, therefore it has to have been put there by an intelligent agent”) ever die?

Let’s be more precise here. « Something in biology exhibits high functional information or is a semiotic code, therefore it has to have been put there by an intelligent agent ». I don’t think this more precise formulation is a non sequitur for it is based on our current understanding of the cause and effect relationship in our universe.

Now, when I asked you at 278 about the reasoning that leads you to believe that the genetic code has arisen naturally, your answer at 281 was the following : the best answer to your question is that we literally know of nothing at all, anywhere, at any time which has arisen from non-natural causes. IOW, your reasoning is as follow: We know of nothing which has arisen from non-natural causes, therefore non natural causes don’t exist, hence the genetic code has arisen naturalistically. Isn’t this a non sequitur ?

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@Giltil

@Puck_Mendelssohn

And do those who raise it realize that it has, and can have, no traction, ever?

This is wishful thinking, as the examples of Gunther Bechly and Anthony Flew show.

I should clarify that by “traction” I meant actual traction, not mud being splattered everywhere as the vehicle grinds its way deeper and deeper into the mire.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

I should clarify that by “traction” I meant actual traction, not mud being splattered everywhere as the vehicle grinds its way deeper and deeper into the mire.

Don’t know what you mean here?

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@Giltil

Let’s be more precise here. « Something in biology exhibits high functional information or is a semiotic code, therefore it has to have been put there by an intelligent agent ». I don’t think this more precise formulation is a non sequitur for it is based on our current understanding of the cause and effect relationship in our universe.

No, that’s a non sequitur if there ever was one. It is absolutely NOT based upon any understanding of cause and effect relationships.

@Giltil

IOW, your reasoning is as follow: We know of nothing which has arisen from non-natural causes, therefore non natural causes don’t exist, hence the genetic code has arisen naturalistically. Isn’t this a non sequitur ?

You’ve misunderstood. We do not know of any non-natural causes. The conclusion is not that the genetic code has arisen naturally (not “naturalistically”) but that there is no evidence that non-natural forces are the cause of it.

The question whether any non-natural causes exist is, surely, like any question of existence, an empirical one. One can’t say definitively that non-natural causes don’t exist; all we can say is that to date there is no evidence that they do.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@Giltil

Don’t know what you mean here?

Well, I meant “traction” in the sense of actually doing useful work – improving our understanding of the world.

As @Rumraket points out, the idea can and does have “traction” in the looser sense: it can persuade people whose judgment is very, very poor, due to prejudices, motivated reasoning and/or ignorance. But that isn’t what I meant by traction; to me, persuading the gullible and producing literature that has absolutely no scientific value is spinning one’s wheels as one sinks deeper in the mud. No work is done, but some harm is.

[Tim]

@Giltil

Let’s be more precise here. « Something in biology exhibits high functional information or is a semiotic code, therefore it has to have been put there by an intelligent agent ».

But that’s not precise in the least!

1. You imprecisely fail to specify a lower limit to what counts as “high” functional information.

2. From memory, “functional information” has not been calculated for “something in biology” beyond the most trivial examples. So we don’t know whether most things in biology have high functional information – you are just assuming they do.

3. You have provided no evidence that high functional information, even if it exists in biology, requires an intelligent agent.

4. In order to get to the claim that genetic code is a “semiotic code” you employed a number of loose/metaphorical (i.e. imprecise) definitions.

5. Moreover, as to get to this claim you had to allow mechanistic processes to fulfill roles such as “interpreter” and “meaning” – making it not unreasonable to conclude that another mechanistic process, evolution, can fulfill the role of “coder” – rendering your “intelligent agent” utterly superfluous.

@Giltil

I don’t think this more precise formulation is a non sequitur for it is based on our current understanding of the cause and effect relationship in our universe.

This imprecise formulation is a non sequitor, because you have established no evidentiary basis for it.

[theaz101]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

… the question here is not what one believes or why, but how, in terms of reason itself, one takes the view that certain observations lead to a particular inference. I am as baffled as he is as to how anyone could think that those observations would support such an inference, and this is one of those strange “black box” things where religious believers frequently look at something and say, “a-yup, there it is” when there’s nothing to say a-yup about.

Coming from the other side, I’m baffled that anyone who understands (even at a layman’s level) the processes of transcription/translation/replication of DNA can say “a-yup, it’s just chemistry”.

@Puck_Mendelssohn

I assume we are just dealing with the usual misconception that “information” is somehow an essence, with an existence independent of things, which constitutes the new elan vital. This misconception simply misses the fact that “information” is not a res itself, but merely a concept we use to characterize certain kinds of activity in the world. But if that’s not what’s happening here, and some explanation can be had as to how these facts are thought to support this inference, I’d be glad to hear it.

Digital information isn’t just a concept. We use it all the time to perform functions. We can design things like the internet and this forum which lets us communicate with each other. And digital information is what’s being used in living organisms to produce the machinery that life is based on, no matter how much denialism that you throw at it. The misconception is on your part.

[theaz101]

@Dan_Eastwood

And of course this gets us no closer to knowing the form of the original biological replicator, but it does suggest the idea of naturalistic OoL isn’t that far fetched.

I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that I think the idea of naturalistic OOL is incredibly far-fetched. And I think that the more we learn about how the cell works, the idea get even more far-fetched.

[theaz101]

@RonSewell

OK, but that is not the same as pressing some present and essential distinction between sequence as primary and biochemistry as secondary. Rather, it appears pretty well established that these attributes are warp and weft.

The distinction is that the sequence for a protein (even if there are multiple sequences) has to come first, because the sequence is used to produce the protein. Of course, chemistry is used when processing the sequence, and the protein works by chemical means, but the sequence comes first.

@RonSewell

I am more interested in the grand scheme that we live in a universe formulated so that life is possible, which to me is the awe inspiring arc.

I am equally in awe of not only the universe and life as you are, but also of the one who created it.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@theaz101

I am equally in awe of not only the universe and life as you are, but also of the one who created it.

Why just one? I think there is a strong argument to be made that it was designed by a committee.

[theaz101]

@Patrick

I think that both premises are true. The coder in premise 1 was the iterating coding process done by evolution over 4 billion years of life on Earth.

How do you account for the iterative coding process without the Genetic code?

[theaz101]

@Dan_Eastwood

Much earlier in this discussion - and apparently forgotten - are natural codes such are tree rings, varves, and Fraunhofer lines. Codes can be natural, and if these things are not deserving of the label “code” then neither is the genetic code.

The problem, as with most arguments for ID, is the lack of specificity. It’s a hasty generalization from the specific example of designed code to the universal claim that all codes are designed. As we see in every discussion of Information and Coding (like this one), the argument for Design evaporates when careful definitions are applied.

More generally, making material arguments for the supernatural is just begging for someone to come along and poke holes in that argument. It happens every time.

There is no code in tree rings, varves or spectral lines. You can’t code a message or instructions in any of them.

The Genetic code, on the other hand, is digital and of the same type as Morse code or computer code.

You are equivocating between “1a” information (knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction) and “1b” information ( the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something (such as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects).

This is what happens every time.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@theaz101

There is no code in tree rings, varves or spectral lines. You can’t code a message or instructions in any of them.

If tree rings, varves, and spectral lines are not examples of naturally occurring codes, then neither is DNA any sort of “code”.

Human can and do interpret the information encoded in all of these.

@theaz101

The Genetic code, on the other hand, is digital and of the same type as Morse code or computer code.

This is a common misconception embedded in ID arguments. There is nothing magical about a code being digital. If humans had twelve fingers and toes rather than ten, then we would count in base 12. Likewise there is nothing magical about encoding in binary. Any information can be encoded in binary - or any other base. It just happens to be convenient to build computers using the binary quality of on On/Off state.

The equivocation is within ID, and the pareidolia that the genetic code is somehow intended to communicate information from a creator to humans. It is not.

I covered this much earlier in the thread: Human created codes require intent to transfer information (even if that information is meaningless). There is no intent in tree rings spectral lines, or the genetic code.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@theaz101

because the sequence is used to produce the protein.

Is the implication that proteins are not used to produce the sequence?

@theaz101

The Genetic code, on the other hand, is digital and of the same type as Morse code or computer code.

Ii this the core element of a cherished apologetic? Several posts in this thread discuss the limits of this metaphor.