For the past 15 years I’ve been teaching genetics online. When the “genetic code” is mentioned, I often get blasted by fellow atheists mad at me for using the term. This slowed the past few years so I assumed the debate was over, but yesterday it happened again.
I made the following video about it and I’m curious to hear what the crew here thinks, I know people were split on this here in the past: https://youtu.be/1dqvxP6DoU0?si=7jMdl_CbD5EPaRDu&t=446
If you already understand what codons are, what’s meant by a “nonoverlapping triplet code”, how morse code, ASCII and how protein synthesis works; you can skip ahead to 7:26
In the video I ignore many details, such as tRNA, which might make some people frown but you get the idea.
I argue that the genetic code certainly does function as a code under the standard definitions of code found in many dictionaries (I cite the Oxford English dictionary specifically). I show how the genetic code functions as code but then I talk about why, even though it does function as a code, people are free to study it under different paradigms. It’s fine, for example, to just think of it as a chemical system for the same reason it’s fine to think of a person as a colony of cells.
Hi Jon!
I might need to review that last discussion, but my position on this is that genetics are chemistry; nothing about it requires it to be a code. Humans need codes to assign meaning to message, so when we look at a strand of codons and call it a code we are assigning a meaning - and our usage makes it a code.
Shorter: It is not a code in itself, but our description of it is.
Earlier this year @sfmatheson posted an article about a new discovery regarding the order in which amino acids were recruited to the genetic code …
In short, this is evidence that genetic encoding has evolved. Information is being encoded in new ways that were not an original properties of the coding. That is not something that is allowed in any human defined coding scheme, where a sender and receiver must have prior agreement on the encoding to be used. It’s hard to clearly define the notion of what “sender and receiver” means in this context, much less to how they might “agree” to change the encoding.
I don’t know any scientist, regardless of their feelings toward gods or fairies, who has any objection to the phrase “genetic code.” This might mean that I don’t join the kinds of conversations where people are that foolishly pedantic, or it might mean that the objections are tiresome goofy philosophical dances around whatever one means by “a real code.” I won’t watch the video (it’s not you, it’s me) but would you be willing to write a few sentences about the “debate” and what it’s about? I can maybe start us off: is this about whether the code is a code, or is it about whether scientists thought of it as a code from day one? Or something else?
AND
The semantics of language pretty much require we call it a code, but we should keep in mind that semantics is not chemistry. There are other example of “natural” codes, like Fraunhofer lines that derive from the properties of matter, and no one (that I am aware) takes this to be evidence of “design”. Human semantics make this a code too, but these were not created to be any sort of code as humans define it; they just are.
This all springs out of the creation-evolution debate. I kid you not, this is literally like the “all paintings must have a painter”-argument.
So basically, it seems to me there are two possible responses.
Possible response A) Some paintings don’t require a painter.
Possible response B) It’s not a painting.
A-proponents make B-proponents throw a fit by agreeing with creationists it’s a code, which put B-proponents in the unenviable position of having to argue against over half a century of use of the word in the molecular biology literature.
This doesn’t fase them and they insist it’s just a metaphor or an analogy or something to that effect.
So yes, it’s a sematic argument at bottom. What should we include into the set of things we call a code? I’m fine with including the genetic code.
It’s a metaphor, so citing a dictionary is silly.
The primary characteristic of a code is abstraction. There are no abstractions in protein translation. Everything is chemical.
Cite something else that is a code, and I’ll point out the abstraction involved. You can’t do that with the genetic code.
Biology is full of metaphors. They are a field day for dishonest and/or ignorant creationists.-