I confess to being utterly unable to understand how you can conclude this. What you are “allowed,” of course, is to conclude that black is white and white black, or any other thing that suits your fancy. But this conclusion of yours is such an obvious non sequitur that one can hardly rebut; one can only gape in astonishment.
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“not required” =/= “not involved”
For somebody who has nothing but rhetoric, you sure have a very under-developed understanding of what words mean.
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You must remember that English is not Gilbert’s first language. Maybe more extensive tuition in English As Second Language (EASL) could help him.
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@theaz101 said the following:
My claim is that all functional digital information, which requires elements (dots/dashes, bits, nucleobases) of a coding system to be put into functional sequences, requires intelligence to do so.
To which @Puck_Mendelssohn replied the following:
As @Rumraket points out, of course, this is contrary to what we know to be true, so that’s a bit of a problem.
The word « this » in Puck response refers to theaz’s claim, right? So what on earth is wrong when I say that Puck has claimed that saying that systems such as the genetic code require an intelligence is contrary to what we know to be true? Just curious.
Appreciate
These two are not the same:
theas101 is talking about all functional digital information which requires elements of a coding system, such as bits or nucleobases, which by what those words mean can be any functional genetic sequence.
I point out that we have directly observed functional genetic sequences evolve, so as @Puck_Mendelssohn is right to point out, @theaz101’s claim is contrary to what we know to be true.
You then start talking about the translation system (the genetic code is the translation system, of course). Apparently taking that when Puck agrees with me then Puck is claiming—you seem to think—that we have somehow empirically proven that little magical hammers/wands/fingers of Thor, Hermione Granger, or Yahweh, aren’t invisibly pushing the molecules around against their physical tendensies when the translation system evolved.
Which makes me think you can’t read.
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Exactly. And the fact that it is contrary to what we know to be true is, outside of the realm of highly motivated reasoning, completely uncontroversial.
I don’t even begin to understand how this observation about things we empirically know somehow is meant to translate into a claim that an intelligence is known not to be involved in the origin of the genetic code. The origin of the code isn’t at all the same question as the origin of any “functional digital information,” and no assertion is made here in any sense about the former, only the latter. Nor does the knowledge that information DOES arise from non-intelligent sources in any way mean that it can’t arise from intelligent sources. The same can be said of the supernatural: the fact that information is only seen to arise from natural processes does not mean that supernatural processes capable of producing information do not exist.
@Giltil claimed that I had committed a “gross epistemological error” (and it is only fair to note that there are few here who have as much experience with gross epistemological errors as he does) by claiming “that we know that no intelligence was involved in the genetic code.” But I of course never said anything of the sort, or even anything similar. So far as I am aware, one can never make such a definitive statement – trying to figure out whether some supernatural cause existed at one time in the past, and the details of what that supernatural cause did or did not do, is a fool’s errand. All we can know is that there is not a shred of evidence that any such intelligence WAS involved, leaving this proposed intelligence as the merest wisp of purely philosophical possibility. My experience is that learned people who are interested in probing the real causes of things do not waste their time with such notions.
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That is just ID speak for projecting traits of recognizably manufactured artifacts onto personifications of nature.
The motivations which propel the manufacture of things are as varied as human experience, with their functions ranging over practical, artistic, whimsy, spiritual, cultural, and more. By common experience of normal upbringing, people learn to immediately distinguish artificial from natural, and by extension, design. Recognition is social and essentially subjective informed by life, outside of which there is no design inference, and certainly not any relative or quantifiable inference.
While ID likes to focus on complexity as a marker of design, simplicity and uniformity are ubiquitous traits of manufacture. A 2x4 is simpler than a tree. A silicon wafer is purer than sand. Reference weights are more uniform than rocks. No complex arrangement of parts involved for their function.
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