This paper by H. H. Pattee (2007) is illuminating. I think it provides much of the missing context that appsandorgs has been unwilling or unable to provide.
ABSTRACT
Biosemiotics distinguishes life from inanimate matter by its dependence on material construction controlled by coded symbolic information. This irreducible primitive distinction between matter and symbol is necessary for open-ended evolvability and the origin of life as we know it. This type of subject/object distinction is reestablished at many levels throughout all of evolution. In physics this becomes the distinction between material laws and symbolic measurements and models; in philosophy this is the distinction between brain and mind. These are all emergent epistemic distinctions, not ontological dualisms. The origin of life requires understanding the origin of this symbolic control and how inanimate molecules become functional messages. I discuss the necessary physical conditions that would allow such evolvable symbolic control of matter to arise.
There is a lot of discussion of symbols and code, and eventually DNA as a code. To my reading Pattee’s interpretation of “DNA as code” does not conflict with DNA as chemistry.
Pattee disagrees. From the top of page 10:
The discovery of enzymatic RNA made it possible to imagine a much simpler translation process in which RNA can function both as a constructing enzyme and as a symbolic description of an enzyme. By description I mean a passive structure that can be copied by template inspection, and by construction I mean a dynamic catalytic process that joins molecules by strong, covalent bonds. The main point is that this double function is only possible by virtue of the two configurations of RNA, the passive one-dimensional sequence memory and the folded three-dimensional active ribozyme.
“Intelligent Design” gets a mention on page 12, and is answered in the three paragraphs following.