DNA Code...Proof of a Divine Creator?

[truethat]

Ok this is going to be difficult for me to explain but here goes. The only reason it looks like a pattern or a code that requires divine intervention is because we can see the pattern in it and it looks to us like it was planned.

If you drop a glass of water on the ground you will see a pattern. If you drop a bag of marbles on the ground you will see a pattern if you look for one. Since we are "within" the pattern we recognize it as significant. It is simply our perspective and a form of (wow using this word twice in one day) pareidolia.

To US it is a clear pattern. Can we say from a divine perspective it holds the same clarity? I doubt it.

So all that is happening is an energy or happening is unfolding in the way it will naturally unfold or develop. Where we choose to pause the button to observe will show us a pattern. That doesn't mean someone created it.

 

[SweatyYeti]

That argument is a non-starter.

Order emerges from disorder all the time from known chemical and physical processes.

"All the time"??? I don't think so.


Does the amount of Order in Non-Living Systems increase at a rate comparable to the Order seen in Living Beings??

No, it doesn't.....it's not even close.


On the other hand, Order does occur...and tends to increase...all the time, with living beings.
Have you looked around your house lately...and noticed a high-degree of 'Order' inside it??

It got there....and is continually sustained...and occasionally increased, through the actions....and ONLY through the actions...of a Living Being.



Actually...Living Systems/Beings and Non-Living Systems operate in opposing ways, regarding the principle of 'Entropy'. (The 'loss of energy' within a closed system.)

A Non-Living System tends to increase it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level, and Order, decrease)....while a Living System tends to decrease it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level and Order increase.)



Here's a link to the Wikipedia page about 'Life and Entropy'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

Entropy has often been loosely associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system.

 

[Hokulele]

....while a Living System tends to decrease it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level and Order increase.)

Pff, just wait until you are over 50 years old. Entropy definitely increases.

 

[truethat]

"All the time"??? I don't think so.


Does the amount of Order in Non-Living Systems increase at a rate comparable to the Order seen in Living Beings??

No, it doesn't.....it's not even close.


On the other hand, Order does occur...and tends to increase...all the time, with living beings.
Have you looked around your house lately...and noticed a high-degree of 'Order' inside it??

It got there....and is continually sustained...and occasionally increased, through the actions....and ONLY through the actions...of a Living Being.



Actually...Living Systems/Beings and Non-Living Systems operate in opposing ways, regarding the principle of 'Entropy'. (The 'loss of energy' within a closed system.)

A Non-Living System tends to increase it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level, and Order, decrease)....while a Living System tends to decrease it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level and Order increase.)



Here's a link to the Wikipedia page about 'Life and Entropy'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

Not sure how to reply to this but, um, could it be that the fact that something is alive means it's got more going on in it than say a rock? And this "energy" is what contributes to the higher rate of order, cause.......ya know.....it's alive?

What's your point boy? Ya confusing me here.

 

[SweatyYeti]

This is a bad comparison. Organisms with DNA evolve. Posts on an internet forum do not.

Imagine an algorithm which takes in a post, creates mutated versions by adding characters, deleting characters, or changing one character to another, and then keeps only the post that is the most similar to the "precise Order...and Pattern" you gave above.

An algorithm like this would easily be capable of generating the 'Order' you requested, no creator with intention required.

While a computer program could be designed to replicate posts....and produce 'Ordered Patterns'....the computer program, the Algorithim itself.....requuires a Living Being to Create it.

You are in the same boat with Curly.......trying to stop the water from leaking from the pipe, by simply adding another piece of pipe. It doesn't solve your problem.

You can't attain the high degree of non-random Order on these pages, without involving an intelligent, living being....at some point, along the way.

Non-Living things can't accomplish such a feat.

 

[noreligion]

A Non-Living System tends to increase it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level, and Order, decrease)....while a Living System tends to decrease it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level and Order increase.)

Explain how a living being (or system) is closed?

 

[Hokulele]

Non-Living things can't accomplish such a feat.

Put a bunch of large rocks, small rocks, sand, and silt in a sealed jar. Shake vigorously. Let settle for a day or so. Observe order acheived by non-living things.

 

[truethat]

Non-Living things can't accomplish such a feat.

So what? I'm still missing how this relates to being "Divine." Living things are more complex than non living things.............AND?

 

[noreligion]

Put a bunch of large rocks, small rocks, sand, and silt in a sealed jar. Shake vigorously. Let settle for a day or so. Observe order acheived by non-living things.

Here is a natural process giving order (which is a decrease in entropy in a non-living system). An ocean wave picks up many pebbles and small stones as it goes through a shallow area , when it hits the shoreline it deposits the rocks first dropping the larger heavier stones and progressively dropping less heavy stones until the lightest are dropped last. We know have apparent order and a decrease in entropy - NO ID OR CREATOR REQUIRED.

 

[Hokulele]

Here is a natural process giving order (which is a decrease in entropy in a non-living system). An ocean wave picks up many pebbles and small stones as it goes through a shallow area , when it hits the shoreline it deposits the rocks first dropping the larger heavier stones and progressively dropping less heavy stones until the lightest are dropped last.

Yep, there really is a huge number of naturally occuring examples of local decreases in entropy. Stellar formation, crystallization, you name it. No deity required.

We now have apparent order and a decrease in entropy - NO ID OR CREATOR REQUIRED.

And a bitchin' surf session!

 

[marplots]

So, um...
I shake up my salad dressing and introduce enough disorder to get the oil and water to mix a bit. I added energy. Then, if I let it sit, the oil separates and the whole thing goes into two distinct layers. Layers that are more ordered.

Where does the 'life has to be around to create order' come in again?

I wish people that posted with multiple colors would take some time to read a little about entropy, order and such like. My guess is that because these things smell of science and an alien axiomatic base, dramatic-font-people sense they are allergic to the subjects and shy away.

The meta-take is that you can tell a lot about someone by listening to the arguments they feel are powerful -- not just the content, but the structure and the shallowness. Oh. And the font.

 

[Wowbagger]

The short answer is that DNA "is a code" is only a metaphor. (Though, the word "like" is often missing.)

It could be used to help explain how genes work, to the layman, but does not offer much in the realm of productivity to scientists, any more.

The slightly longer answer gets into how DNA, as we know it, emerged from self-replicating molecules. Any "code" we conceive is really just the result of differential survival of DNA fragments over time.

If DNA was really, truly a code, (in the common sense of the word, as you mean it), then the entire science of epigenetics would never have been developed. It focuses on the DNA molecule medium, and what factors influence its replication, outside of other DNA molecules. Thinking of DNA in terms of a code would be counter-productive to this endeavor.

Evolutionary biology researchers moved on from the "DNA is a code" analogy a long time ago. Creationists, it seems, have not.

 

[marplots]

Sweaty Yeti,

I'd like to take on your comparisons between the bird picture and the rock picture because I think it gets to the heart of the unstated argument you are making.

The reason the rock, which based on the number of molecules is just as complex as the bird, seems random and uninteresting is because we aren't surprised by the natural laws that led to its formation. We can describe it well almost to the molecular level and under the right conditions, perhaps even make a few rocks ourselves.

On the other hand, the bird might result from just the same sort of natural laws, but they aren't as well understood or expected. Biology and its daughter sciences are pushing the limits of those understandings and gradually peeling back the onion. As far as I know, so far it is all natural laws -- same as the rock.

But the hidden argument is a very old one. Elan vital. The idea is that life has some special property or 'force' that non-life does not have. I hope we outgrow this notion and abandon it. I understand it has a very powerful emotional hook to think the bird special and the rock not. But you are wrong there. They are much the same -- arrangements of molecules that are stable, with the bird less so and the rock rather more permanent.

When I said the subject of code and DNA wasn't simple, I meant it. There are too many simplistic generalizations that spring to mind that ignore real data and real understandings in the struggle to make some cartoon, low-cal version that appeals because it is digestible without years and years of chewing on textbooks.

I'll fall back on my original objection though. How can you tell if something on Mars is a huge sculpted face or a collection of rocks that just looks like one? Or, if you prefer, how can you tell if that pile of three stones happened to stack up like that when the snow melted or if hobos are signaling other hobos that you hire day laborers?

Your innate ability to see patterns simply isn't enough here.

 

[Wowbagger]

The reason the rock, which based on the number of molecules is just as complex as the bird, seems random and uninteresting is because we aren't surprised by the natural laws that led to its formation.

You can use the same code analysis Sweaty Yeti provided in the opening post, to data collected about rocks, in fact. AND, it would be just as meaningful!

(or, more accurately, just as meaningless. For all the verbiage posted in the opening post, it doesn't actually inform us, in any way, about the origins of DNA.)

 

[NewtonTrino]

The whole analogy is flawed because code doesn't need a designer. In fact one can use evolutionary techniques on computer code itself to show that.

 

[learner]

I almost wish I didnt have Sweaty on ignore ( the only one I have) I bet your'e all seeing a font splurge like no other. Wait until the Martians enter the fray. Lots of Green will ensue.

 

[phantomb]

While a computer program could be designed to replicate posts....and produce 'Ordered Patterns'....the computer program, the Algorithim itself.....requuires a Living Being to Create it.
.
.
.
You can't attain the high degree of non-random Order on these pages, without involving an intelligent, living being....at some point, along the way.

Non-Living things can't accomplish such a feat.

Um, why not. My computer program example was an analogy for how evolution works in the real world, albeit simplified. Every step of the computer program analogy has a completely natural counterpart in the real natural world. Instead of a programmer writing a computer program to take a result and mutate it, this occurs naturally as DNA can suffer from a number of mutations, transcription errors, etc. Instead of a programmer deciding which results to keep and which to throw away, DNA that represents animals that are well adapted to their environments will tend to survive to the next generation while DNA that represents animals that are not well adapted to their environments will not. All of this happens in the natural world without the involvement of an intelligent, living being at any point.

We don't know exactly how the first life capable of evolving originated or exactly what it looked like, but unless you can demonstrate that it would be impossible for such life to have a natural origin, your claim that such a thing requires a designer is unsubstantiated.

Please answer my questions from the first page:

Why do you think that all codes require designers?
What is "meaningful information", and how can DNA be said to transfer it?

 

[Sledge]

Even if DNA suggested it had been created by an intelligent being (it doesn't), what suggests that being is a god?

Or to put it another way:

How do we jump from "Codes need a creator." to "Codes need a DIVINE Creator."?

 

[Dancing David]

"All the time"??? I don't think so.


Does the amount of Order in Non-Living Systems increase at a rate comparable to the Order seen in Living Beings??

No, it doesn't.....it's not even close.


On the other hand, Order does occur...and tends to increase...all the time, with living beings.
Have you looked around your house lately...and noticed a high-degree of 'Order' inside it??

You do know that that small level of order is created by the dislution of order. Living beings by defintion have to take more ordered material and create disorder with it. It is called metabolism.

So in general your error is one of not understanding thermodynamics.

I reference your trash, garbage and waste streama s evidence taht life does not create order.

It creates disorder. A refrigerator works by moving the energy of heat to another space, it does not cerate over all cooling, it is very constrained. It creates heat in the process.

So too, life creates more disorder than it creates order.

So basically you are incorrect.

It got there....and is continually sustained...and occasionally increased, through the actions....and ONLY through the actions...of a Living Being.



Actually...Living Systems/Beings and Non-Living Systems operate in opposing ways, regarding the principle of 'Entropy'. (The 'loss of energy' within a closed system.)

Um, living being in a closed system will die from starvation and lack of nutrients, you do realize that don't you.

A Non-Living System tends to increase it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level, and Order, decrease)....while a Living System tends to decrease it's level of Entropy...(it's energy level and Order increase.)

Wrong, look at the waste stream, living beings must create more disorder than order to survive.

Here's a link to the Wikipedia page about 'Life and Entropy'...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

Yeah, well, if the earth was a closed system, all life would die, so guess what Gibbs and Schrödinger were wrong.

 

[Dancing David]

While a computer program could be designed to replicate posts....and produce 'Ordered Patterns'....the computer program, the Algorithim itself.....requuires a Living Being to Create it.

You are in the same boat with Curly.......trying to stop the water from leaking from the pipe, by simply adding another piece of pipe. It doesn't solve your problem.

You can't attain the high degree of non-random Order on these pages, without involving an intelligent, living being....at some point, along the way.

Non-Living things can't accomplish such a feat.

Um sweatyyeti, where does the energy for the internet comes from?

As a system it creates higher levels of entropy. Period, Full stop. END.