I’ll reply to the rest of comments in the weekend. Have a great day😊
I also know that analogue data (including both DNA and human voice) can be represented in a digital fashion that can then be used to generate an analogue copy of the original. That does not make DNA and human voices digital.
It doesn’t affect it much, as long as you change your premise 2.
I will note that design tends more towards items that are single-function or non-overlapping. Evolutionary simulations and algorithms, on the other hand, tend towards producing much less clearly delineated results.
You refer to “the initial formation of the sequence” as if there was a single initial sequence generated once, rather than millions of sequences generated independently which were then winnowed through natural selection. Why would the first organisms that used DNA only generate one DNA sequence, as opposed to generating lots of different ones, especially if the first DNA was based on preceding RNA sequences?
(This may be another case of you using a singular form instead of a plural one, in which case this point can be abandoned, although it’s also possible you’re thinking that a designer might produce only one sequence.)
That can be substantiated by pointing to the complete lack of evidence of non-evolutionary processes being involved in the history of life. No IDer/creationist has ever produced any evidence of a design process. You yourself are trying to support your ideas with arguments and analogies, which you wouldn’t need to do if you had any evidence of a non-evolutionary process having taken place.
I don’t think I misread them. You said that demonstrating that design was not necessary to generate complex features would still be consistent with ID. That ID was still an option even if natural process could produce the same result. That applies just as much to the generation of a modern-type cell as it does to flagella or penguins.
Yes, “would have had”. Both correct and grammatical, unlike your response.
Your ‘modern-type cell’ uses DNA and has built-in mechanisms. There is no reason at all why the various built-in mechanisms would arise over precisely the same period as the switch to using DNA as an inheritance mechanism. It is far, far more likely that (a different set of) built-in mechanisms existed for and with RNA reproduction, before DNA was adopted - not least because many of the core molecules involved in those mechanisms are RNA, not proteins or DNA.
What? No, it doesn’t. You just re-stated the syllogism with zero substantive corrections. Your conclusion still does not follow from your premises.
Is it?
You really think that our knowledge of how radio signals are generated - and extensive experience in analysing natural transmissions from space would play no role? Or that the likelihood of a technological civilisation existing somewhere in space over - say - the last million years is somewhat higher than the existence of some unspecified - and otherwise unevidenced “designer” on Earth billions of years ago?
No, these considerations would certainly play a part in the conclusion - indeed they would be more important than the reasoning you suggest. And I cannot understand why you would think otherwise.
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When Midhun says that evolution cannot create [FDI] in the absence of any built-in mechanisms, does Midhun take that to mean that evolution cannot increase the amount of FDI by mechanisms such as natural selection? Or is it just a statement about the first FDI?
Probably the latter, as Midhun then goes off to discuss the first cell. And Midhun also says that “organisms are designed to evolve”.
When there are multiple sequences in a population, and they have varying degrees of function, it is pretty darn obvious that they can have diffrerent fitnesses and that natural selection can then increase the proportion of the population’s sequences that have higher FDI, thus increasing the amount of FDI.
So Midhun does not, I suppose, feel that this general principle prevents increase of FDI by natural selection. Right?
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So you assert – but an assertion is neither a definition, nor a compelling argument.
The first link appears to offer no definition of “digital data”, “digital information” or “digital” *simpliciter. As such, it supports my earlier assumption:
The second link defines “digital data” as “information represented as a string of discrete symbols, each of which can take on one of only a finite number of values from some alphabet, such as letters or digits.” The problem being that DNA is not comprised of abstract symbols, but of chemicals – purines or pyrimidines. That, after millions of years, humans decided to assign letters to them, in order to simplify analysis, does not change this. Their function is the same as all biochemistry, to interact with other chemicals within living organisms, not to be “read” in any non-metaphorical sense.
This leaves DNA as “digital data” as a metaphor or extrapolation, i.e. its use in a very loose sense, that is unable to support any rigorous conclusion.
Let’s not go down that rabbit-hole. The DNA = language analogy is a very poor one. DNA and human languages behave differently, and serve different functions, in a myriad of ways.
This means that, while your ‘imagining’ may be rhetorically impressive to the uninitiated, it is, analytically, “not properly filled out or developed” – i.e. vacuous, in that it does not account for these differences.
This flaw seems to be a ubiquitous problem with all ID argumentation.
Premise 1: No evidence of non-human intelligence exists.
Premise 2: There is evidence that evolutionary mechanism can produce, and has produced, new biological information.
Conclusion: The postulated existence of a non-human intelligence to produce that information is both implausible and redundant.
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It is not as well defined as you imagine.
Computers work with digital data. But, if you examine a computer, you won’t find any digital data there. You will only find electrical and magnetic signals, which will look analog.
Computer technology uses many protocols. A protocol is, in effect, a set of rules which tells the system how to interpret parts of the signal as digits.
When the IBM XT came out, somewhere around 1980, it had a hard drive with 10 Megabytes of capacity. Today you can buy disks with 18 Terabytes of capacity. And what changed is the protocol. But you could not implement today’s protocols with the technology of 1980. In terms of physical detail, digital information today looks very different from the way it looked in 1980.
In simple terms, digital data does not exist as a physical thing. It is an abstraction, and depends on how we interpret physical signals.
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Yes, that’s exactly why I don’t count DNA/RNA ‘information’ as digital data. It’s physical, not symbolic. Our conversion of the ‘information’ to symbolic strings of ACGTUs produces digital data, but that’s not the original.
This is analogous to converting non-digital audio - which @Midhun agrees is non-digital - into digital recordings.[1]
Insert pedantry about early recordings being non-digital here. ↩︎
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Likewise to the converting of human vocalisations into written script.
Your global claim, your responsibility. You just confirmed my hypothesis that your claim was a fabrication.
What is the point of helping you given that behavior and your claim to understand the basics of biology better than I do?
Why not ask questions before making so many unfounded assertions?
None are applicable to your global claim, and some are irrelevant. They do confirm that you haven’t looked at the evidence before your claimed deduction.
Do you not realize that the evidence tends to be in the figures and tables, not in the text?
Then that citation and quote was irrelevant.
I think that those aren’t the most important characteristics, but then I’m a biologist/geneticist/biochemist who has extensively studied how mutations change function.
So what? Your stipulation is uninformed by massive amounts of available evidence.
Isn’t it then profoundly silly for you to present an all-rhetoric, no-evidence essay, given that reality?
The graphs and tables in papers do not require proficiency in English, yet you ignore them in favor of copy/paste, while making sweeping claims about evidence you haven’t examined. Why?
Insert joke about pedants with torches and pitchforks storming the castle here.
I’m sorry for not being able to respond last weekend.
Right. Glad to see someone who truly comprehends and accurately represents my argument.
I agree
What if the individual discrete components comprising digital data are physical in nature?
Okay, so this is not about evolution. It’s about the origin of life. If we already have life, you agree the process of evolution can create new information, new structures, systems etc.?
Rather, you think the problem is the origin of the system capable of evolving in the first place?
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You didn’t provide a reason.
This is what i said in my original comment.
The references I provided to substantiate my statement👇
Now explain why you think that the above references do not back up my statement.
I’m still waiting for that elusive list of evidence you boasted about in your initial comments👇
Who disputes this? Digital data can be converted to analog and vice-versa. What is the implication of this fact that you are suggesting?
To back my statement that genetic information is encoded in the digital format (primarly; not exclusively), I gave references from the peer-reviewed literature. However, you have not presented references to any literature that contradicts this concept.
What kinds of evidence do you expect if a designing intelligence has been involved in the origin of the systems mentioned in my initial comment? This will allow us to evaluate whether these pieces of evidence have been lacking in the history of life.
So is auditory information. The fact that a digital format exists wherein information can be stored does not make a non-digital format that can store that same information digital.
That’s backwards. If someone makes a claim out of the blue, it is not on the rest of the field to waste their time trying to specify what would convince them of it. The design proponents ought to be the ones to specify exactly what predictions their model makes and how one would go about testing them, and what negative results look like. That’s the way it works with every other scientific idea and in every other field of science. The question is what, if anything, you can show in evidence of your idea, not what it would take to sway a sceptic.
Science is not about changing minds, or winning arguments. It’s about finding out how nature works, so we can use it to navigate life successfully.
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When a designing intelligence proficient in English arranges letters in order to produce a specific outcome, that arrangement is not random with respect to the outcome. The probability is 1 since the number of favorable outcomes equals the possible number of outcomes.
In order to consider it as FDI, we have to ensure that the collection of all sequences encoding x represents only a minute fraction of the entire combinatorial sequence space (in this example, we should interpret x as the polypeptide’s capability to facilitate the adsorption of phage to the host cell).
Furthermore, you are comparing a controlled evolutionary experiment (where random mutagenesis is confined only to a particular sequence of interest) with natural evolution (assume built-in mechanisms are absent).
This response has confirmed my doubt that you did not understand my 3rd criterion which I described in my original comment & also my reply to @misterme987 . I am putting it again. Please go through it again and try to understand what I really meant👇
Biological evolution and the origin of a modern-type cell are not mutually exclusive. Even if a self-replicating system originated on primitive Earth, as proposed by various OOL models, this model requires biological evolution to produce the FDI necessary for a modern-type cell’s origin. Consequently, the primary challenge in biological evolution is to establish a modern-type cell. This is why I refer to this issue as the evolutionary kick-off conundrum.