Intelligent design

[C1ay]

no one knows how it works or how it occurred, but it is observable and works quite well.

And that is the whole issue in a nutshell. We don't know how it works or how it occured but some want to conclude that it must have been designed. It is one thing to say, "maybe it was designed" and quite another to say, "it must have been designed".

[Buffy]

dna exists in all life. the information exists and can be readily observed by any one of any etnicity. no one knows how it works or how it occurred, but it is observable and works quite well. if you would call this process by another name, what would it be?

Please don't take this as a flippant response, but I do call it "evolution" and it has key elements to it that are facinating processes such as "convergence" "refinement" "randomness" "repeatability" and many other elements, many of which I've had the pleasure of working with myself: I love coding neural networks, and have a long-time home project that models freeway traffic based on it. You turn it on and let it run and it does amazing things! I don't need to teach these Sims how to drive! They figure it out on their own! All I have to do is give them fines and up their insurance and they drive slower and have fewer accidents. They even learned Newtonian physics on their own...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[pmaust]

Interesting discussion. I have a question though. Since we are genetically modifing plants and animals, how can we know that it hasn't happened before? How would we detect artificial genetic manifpulation in plants and animals that we ourselves did not modify? :)

 

Thanks

[Buffy]

Since we are genetically modifing plants and animals, how can we know that it hasn't happened before? How would we detect artificial genetic manifpulation in plants and animals that we ourselves did not modify? :)

We don't know! One of the big arguments in favor of genetic modification (a.k.a. creating "Frankenfoods"), is that its indistinguishable from the animal husbandry and manual cross-pollenation and grafting of plants thats been going on arguably since before recorded history!

 

Interesting issue....Might wanna take this one to the Biology forum though.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[questor]

Buffy, your discussion on information was directed to life and dna. we only know about life on earth. since there is order in the universe, wouldn't it also point to information as a controlling factor in this order? all particles seem to exhibit spin. there has to be an energy source for spin. planets orbit, and all orbits are not circular. does not the persistence of spin and orbits point to information? what about the universal forces without which the universe could not exist ? do these not point toward information ? a lack of information

should lead to chaos.

[TRoutMac]

There's a further distinction that it occurs to me that needs to be expressed here: Your arguments are very much tied to "meaning" however meaning requires context and agreement on what the meaning is. A simple one is language: In English "nova" means an exploding star while "no va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go". Depending on the *agreement* of the speakers, the exact same "information" has completely different meanings. Similarly you can say "no va" and I can say "doesn't go" and completely different information has the *same* meaning. Further "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" has no *meaning* whatsoever, although its catchy, memorable, and contains information.

 

Alright, Buffy… now we're gettin' somewhere. I agree with much of what you said above… and here's an example from American history; Paul Revere arranged with his friend to hang lanterns in the belfry arch of the North Church Tower as a way to communicate the approach of the British army. One (lantern) if by land, two if by sea. And Paul Revere would watch from across the harbor for the signal light (one or two) and then warn the citizens accordingly. If the two of them had not conspired and agreed on how many lanterns meant what, then the lanterns would have been meaningless.

 

So, what you mean by "information" (Shannon Information) has more to do with the lanterns themselves. Shannon Information isn't concerned with the actual message… it's more concerned with how that message--whatever it is--gets transmitted, and also whether that message be sent in a more efficient manner. You might say that according to Shannon, the lanterns carried very little "information". After all, both lanterns were identical (presumably, anyway). The letter sequence "ZRK" contains more information than the letter sequence "RRR", in other words.

 

However, if you consider the content of the "message" conveyed by lanterns, the "idea", the "concept", the "intellectual content" that those lanterns communicated from across the harbor (the "extrinsic" information) then you conclude that those lanterns, whether one or two, carried quite a bit of information. Right?

 

Humans assign meaning to things. DNA is a sequence, its ordered, it even defines and drives a mechanical process, but only *we* see meaning.

 

And here's where I think you're missing something. Yes, we have discovered "meaning" in DNA. And, you might say we are the only intelligence available that would be able to discover that meaning. The problem is, however, that as you alluded to, there is, within a cell, a whole information processing system which, while it does not possess intelligence, does "read" the base pair combinations and produce proteins accordingly. And you know what? There are many examples which parallel this from our experience with computers. CNC (computer numerical control) machining, for example. A set of instructions is sent to a device which cuts metal according to those instructions. The machine that executes the instructions is not intelligent. And the code the machine "reads", if you could see it in the form the machine reads, would look like randomly ordered 1s and 0s, just like DNA looks like randomly ordered AT, GC, CG and TA base pairs. But of course, it's not literally "random", is it? No, because every time you execute that set of instructions you get the same thing. In the case of CNC machining, you get a machined part of some sort… maybe a wheel. In the case of DNA, you might get a goose. But from that set of chromosomes, which contain all the DNA for that goose, when you execute those instructions a second time, you get another goose.

 

There's an "idea" or a "concept"… "intellectual content" behind the instructions that get sent to the CNC machine. In our example, that intellectual content is a wheel. Similarly, there is an idea or a concept behind the DNA, too… but that "idea" is a goose, not a wheel.

 

The question you have to answer is this: Does an "idea" or a "concept" or "intellectual content" require an intelligent source?

 

It might be fairly improbable, but of course it would not be perceived as even notable to someone who was only familiar with Chinese, because it would have no meaningful interpretation. It might not even appear odd to him at all!

 

Whoa! It might be fairly improbable for flowers to naturally grow in the shapes of the letters S, H, E, L and L and in that sequence in front of a gas station that happens to be a Shell gas station? It might be? Geez… I mean, I consider it a vast understatement to just say it's "improbable", but you only think it might be improbable, and only fairly improbable at that? Let's be more realistic, shall we? It's improbable to such a degree that it is effectively impossible.

 

Sure, someone who doesn't know the written English language won't be able to perceive the meaning in those flowers. But that really doesn't mean the meaning isn't there. After all, as I sit here in my studio, I cannot see the flowers at all. From my location I can't perceive that meaning, either. But someone is driving by there at any given minute, and they can see it.

 

…the confusion about the definition of the word "information" is indeed tied to the fact that much of what we colloquially ascribe to the term is tied to this sense of "meaning" which indeed is outside of what is meant by "information" in information theory. In fact, they are completely independent and uncorrellated!

 

If that's the case, and I agree that it is, then why do you and others on this forum trod out all this "Shannon Information" doublespeak when we get on to the topic of the information in living systems? Why would you assume that what I mean by "information" (which, as you say, is the popular "colloquial" usage) is instead what Claude Shannon was talking about? Look… it's not that I don't see value in what Claude Shannon figured out, and it's not that it doesn't have any relevance to DNA in general. But it has no relevance to the particular aspect of DNA that we're discussing; the meaning in DNA.

 

So, I think your challenge here is to try to describe how there is a strict correllation between "information" and "meaning"

 

If you mean "information" in the Shannon Information sense, then that is not my challenge, because Shannon's information theory places no particular value on the content ("meaning") of a message and it is the "meaning" of the information which I have been talking about.

 

If, on the other hand, you mean "information" in the sense that I have been using it (the "colloquial" usage, as you put it), then you have already met your own challenge, because you said that our colloquial use of the word "information" is indeed tied to "meaning".

[Buffy]

So, what you mean by "information" (Shannon Information) has more to do with the lanterns themselves. Shannon Information isn't concerned with the actual message… However, if you consider the content of the "message" conveyed by lanterns, the "idea", the "concept", the "intellectual content" that those lanterns communicated from across the harbor (the "extrinsic" information) then you conclude that those lanterns, whether one or two, carried quite a bit of information. Right?

But only to the people who communicated the code to one another! You have to get the code for it to have *meaning*! This is where you're really missing what I'm saying:

…the confusion about the definition of the word "information" is indeed tied to the fact that much of what we colloquially ascribe to the term is tied to this sense of "meaning" which indeed is outside of what is meant by "information" in information theory. In fact, they are completely independent and uncorrellated!

If that's the case, and I agree that it is, then why do you and others on this forum trod out all this "Shannon Information" doublespeak when we get on to the topic of the information in living systems? Why would you assume that what I mean by "information" (which, as you say, is the popular "colloquial" usage) is instead what Claude Shannon was talking about? Look…

You're not getting that last line in this excerpt from me: "information" and "meaning" are completely independent and uncorrellated! As I've said, without actually communicating with the creator, you *cannot* know the meaning, in fact you cannot perceieve it at all! All you *can* do is measure the Shannon content! Follow? You cannot show that anything contains meaning by measuring this content. They are not correllated as my earlier examples show. Sorry!

 

Sure, someone who doesn't know the written English language won't be able to perceive the meaning in those flowers. But that really doesn't mean the meaning isn't there.

Maybe not, but the thing that you're trying to do is show that it has meaning *without* knowing the code! If you only know Chinese, your "measurement of meaning" will be zero! The "Shannon" information will be measurable, but its *uncorrellated with "meaning"* so the Chinese speaker will measure no meaning but at the same time cannot be sure that it has no meaning, just like we can't measure any meaning in DNA! *All* we can measure is the "Shannon" content, which is why it keeps getting trotted out. Now if you know English, you can assign "meaning" to it, but only because by coincidence it happens to be in English too, and your brain recognizes a *familiar* pattern, but even then, you can only conclude "improbability" that it has another source without further evidence that this *particular* instance was "created." The *only* reason you can assign a higher "meaning" value to this pattern is that you *do indeed share a cultural link to the creator* because its a given in this example that it was created in the first place, so saying it demonstrates how to measure meaning from something that we *do not know the source of* is meaningless. With DNA, we can see what it does, but it does not demostrate any "meaning."

 

What this example does show is that the ability to perceive "meaning" is intrinsically tied to having a common culture and language. As a result, all of the analogies that you are showing that are known to be created by humans are not useful, because we recognize the meaning due to *culture.* And as with the Chinese speaker, even within the human race, there's enough difference in culture that no agreement can be found on perception of meaning!

And here's where I think you're missing something. Yes, we have discovered "meaning" in DNA. And, you might say we are the only intelligence available that would be able to discover that meaning.

No, we don't know the *meaning* of it. We can recognize that it embodies a process, we can see that it results in a life form that grows etc. But there *really* is no *meaning* conveyed, in fact its really no different than seeing the lantern without talking to Paul! Unless you can show some way to measure this "meaning" you can't draw any inferences!

There's an "idea" or a "concept"… "intellectual content" behind the instructions that get sent to the CNC machine. In our example, that intellectual content is a wheel. Similarly, there is an idea or a concept behind the DNA, too… but that "idea" is a goose, not a wheel. The question you have to answer is this: Does an "idea" or a "concept" or "intellectual content" require an intelligent source?

And how do we measure that content? "Ideas" may be a manifestation of intelligence, but they still depend upon communication between "intelligences" to recognize unless you can show how you can measure "ideas" objectively! Until you can answer that, we have no basis upon which to even approach your question. Really, another analogy to your CNC machine is simply the process of water cracking boulders which fall off and crack into rocks. Is the rock an "idea" simply because it was generated by a process and a simple rule (gravity)? Quartz crystals show perfect geometric patterns that when combined are highly elaborate and complex. They have a very high "Shannon" content measure. Do they have "meaning?" Why or why not? In many ways they are far more complex and "look" much more "man-made" than flowers shaped to spell "Shell" (at least to the Chinese). How do we measure?

 

Science is about measuring. Give us something to measure meaning with and we might be able to prove that things were designed. As far as we know though, we can measure the "Shannon" content, but not the "meaning", and that's why the "Shannon" content is relevant: its all that you're ever providing us in these examples. Its not that I ignore "meaning" its just that it is a function of communications between parties in the communication process. You might find the Wiki page on meaning a useful place to investigate it further, but I'll leave you with one of the key statements of W.V. Quine on the topic of meaning: the notion that "it is in principle not possible to be absolutely certain of the meaning that a speaker attaches to an utterance." Even when you're speaking to them! Meaning is a very ephemeral concept, based on knowledge of the culture and language behind any "message" or "information", and as I've shown cannot be perceived without a common understanding of those elements.

 

Chomskian,

Buffy

[Buffy]

Buffy, your discussion on information was directed to life and dna. we only know about life on earth. since there is order in the universe, wouldn't it also point to information as a controlling factor in this order?

I'm not really sure I understand your question here. The kinds of "information" you discuss below are fairly basic and relate to the most fundamental forces in nature. Their *behavior* and *interactions* are incredibly well understood, and science can make extremely accurate predictions based on the theories and data that have been discovered to date, simply based on mathematics and other scientific tools. Our understanding of *how* these forces work, while incomplete, is explained to date entirely with physical measurements and data. What *caused* various measures to be what they are (why is the force of gravity what it is? why are the ratios of elemental particles what they are?), is a topic of research, but the scientific *conclusion* is "unknown" and some would argue *not knowable.* Thus the "Why" question is what metaphysics and religion are for. Why are we here? Our belief systems tell us, but science *can't* know anything about that (until some mechanism/theory comes along and *make* it measurable).

 

As I like to say, "render unto Einstein, that which is Einstein's"...

all particles seem to exhibit spin. there has to be an energy source for spin.

Well, its kinda built in: its part of electromagnetism and the sub-atomic forces. Its definitely not depending on input of energy (we can measure this stuff and any chemistry professor will tell you, energy is always conserved). Note also that "spin" is a measurable quality of sub-atomic particles and doesn't mean "spin like a top" (there's also a quality called "color" that has nothing to do with what we think of color either).

planets orbit, and all orbits are not circular. does not the persistence of spin and orbits point to information?

Kepler then Newton then Einstein all worked out planetary motion. Planetary orbits are almost all ellipses and follow the exact paths of the same mathematical equations you learn in geometry--albeit subject to deflecting forces of gravity--and in this, the "information content" (the "Shannon" kind as Trout puts it) is moderate but not that high, however the important thing is that all these motions are easily explainable using existing scientific theories and we understand them well enough to be able to have a space probe hit a point on a Saturnian moon to an accuracy of a few feet starting from many billions of miles away. Neither of these is a "mystery", although again "why" although intriguing, is not in the realm of science.

what about the universal forces without which the universe could not exist ? do these not point toward information ? a lack of information should lead to chaos.

As mentioned above, the fundamental "parameters" are an interesting topic and there's lots of conjecture on what might make them what they are, but none have any convincing evidence. If you choose to say that the choice of these parameters is because a creator chose them, there's nothing wrong with that, but you have not shown any data to make that any better of a theory than Andre Linde's Multiple Universes theory; even then, his theory does posit a materialistic explanation, which makes it potentially amenable to some sort of physical test, and science would ask you for a similar physical test to show the existence of the creator that you theorize in order to provide evidence in support of your theory, if you say that by definition there cannot be any such test, then your theory will remain in the realm of metaphysics. Not wrong, just not science.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[questor]

Buffy, do not the sub-atomic forces you say are ''built in'',and other unknown forces and the conflict between GR and quantum physics indicate to you two possibilities:

1. there is the possibility of a unifying force not yet discovered that may be the final force?

2. this force could contain the information needed to keep the universe in equilibrium?

it could be the force for gravity, spin, orbits, dna information, thought,etc. ?

[Boerseun]

You're doing an admirable job, Buffy. I think B may be referring to the fact that you are actually intelligently and calmly discussing something that UA would just 'bah!' at. At least, I think that's what he means. But then again, I've been wrong before... :)

100%, Irish. And seconded on the admirable job, your Buffness.

 

I admire your patience, which UA is severly lacking - much to my joy and delight. I can crack myself up at UA, and I just thought this would have been a perfect opportunity for UA to flex his 'bah'-muscle.

 

No offence intended, of course.

[Buffy]

... do not the sub-atomic forces you say are ''built in'',and other unknown forces and the conflict between GR and quantum physics indicate to you two possibilities:

1. there is the possibility of a unifying force not yet discovered that may be the final force?

There sure could. It would have to be manifested in one of those other 7 dimensions that the string theorists say are "wound up" inside the others: in fact several string/brane theories of gravity talk about it mainly being manifested in one of these other dimensions.

 

Be careful about overstating the "conflict" between GR and quantum mechanics: The amazing thing is that there are *many* equations that are almost identical in both theories! The primary problems come up in the difference in scales and that various values that get substituted in the equations "go infinite" which does not signify any conflict or "disproof" but rather that there are probably a bunch of missing terms we don't understand. These forces have more in common than they differ, and the "breakthrough" when it comes is likely to appear mathematically to be more of a "refinement" although the insight that shows it will be revolutionary....

2. this force could contain the information needed to keep the universe in equilibrium? it could be the force for gravity, spin, orbits, dna information, thought,etc. ?

The universe does a pretty good job of staying in equilibrium with the stuff we already know about. Gravity pushes in and electoweak and "dark energy" push out. The "dark energy"/"dark matter" is the biggest physical question mark, but its proving to be easily measurable and consistent, so it appears to be pervasive in the universe and consistent with existing equations ("dark energy" in fact was postulated by Einstein, who withdrew it as a "mistake" but its now proving to be that he was right!). Its not so much that we have to wonder how it stays that way, its just that we *want* there to be a tie between GR and electroweak theory. There's actually no reason these forces *have* to be related at all! It would just be even easier to explain it all and it might provide more insights.

 

Again, its hard to respond to the part of your question about "information": there's lots of "information content" in all of what we see in terms of mathematical formulas and consistent data sets from experiments that match it. You might want to expand on this.

 

The important thing to realize is that science is a process of continuous discovery: we never know everything, and there is always one more question to answer!

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[TRoutMac]

But only to the people who communicated the code to one another!

 

Buffy, you can repeat that a thousand times if you like, but it's not true and I've already demonstrated as much. All I should have to do is say the word "software", and that should be the end of it. Software is "read" by an inanimate, unintelligent object: a computer. Now, obviously the computer must also be designed such that it is equipped to execute software instructions. (read only memory, in this case) And we see that inside a cell, there is a sort of "read only memory" (albeit in a different form) that enables the cell to do basically the same thing that a computer does… execute software instructions.

 

You're not getting that last line in this excerpt from me: "information" and "meaning" are completely independent and uncorrellated! As I've said, without actually communicating with the creator, you *cannot* know the meaning, in fact you cannot perceieve it at all! All you *can* do is measure the Shannon content! Follow?

 

Again, information and meaning are only independent and uncorrelated in the context of Shannon's theory. In your every day life, however, and to any normal person, they are one and the same. And yes, you most certainly can know the "meaning" in DNA, and it amazes me that anyone would think you cannot. The meaning in a goose's DNA can be summarized in this way: instructions for building and operating a goose. Said another way, it means "a goose". You know this because when the instructions are executed, you get a goose and not a two-toed sloth. To get a two-toed sloth, you need DNA which "means" a two-toed sloth. In other words, it has to be ordered according to the genetic code and has to have a certain number of base pairs so that when the instructions are executed, you get a sloth and not a goldfish.

 

A good illustration is a web page. A web designer (let's say that's you) writes a code that the end user (me, let's say) doesn't understand. Even though I'm intelligent, I am not familiar enough with html and java to understand much of anything from reading the source code. Oddly, however, my computer is not intelligent and yet it is able to read those instructions and display for me a web page that reflects the meaning of the code which you wrote. The web page I'm looking at reflects your idea and intent in terms of what the page looks like, its features, its function, etc. Now, granted… I may not be able to tell why you created the web page, but I do know that the web page reflects your idea, your intellectual conception of what you wanted the page to look like.

 

"Ideas" may be a manifestation of intelligence

 

There's no "may be" about it. Ideas are a manifestation of intelligence.

 

Really, another analogy to your CNC machine is simply the process of water cracking boulders which fall off and crack into rocks. Is the rock an "idea" simply because it was generated by a process and a simple rule (gravity)?

 

All you're doing now is arguing for Intelligent Design! If the part we were machining on the CNC machine was a wheel, then obviously there's no way you'll ever get a wheel by running water over rocks and waiting for them to crack and break apart. When rocks erode and crumble, they do so according to natural laws and there is no "idea" of what the broken rocks must look like. (that's why every rock you find will have a different shape, size, etc.) The only time you get rocks that reflect an "idea" is when a sculptor has been at work, and of course then you're back to Intelligent Design.

 

Quartz crystals show perfect geometric patterns that when combined are highly elaborate and complex. They have a very high "Shannon" content measure. Do they have "meaning?" Why or why not? In many ways they are far more complex and "look" much more "man-made" than flowers shaped to spell "Shell" (at least to the Chinese). How do we measure?

 

The fractal patterns in crystals are a function of natural laws which govern how the molecules in the rock are assembled. You're right… the patterns are complex, but they have no "meaning". Wanna infuse some "meaning" into a rock? Carve your initials into it or take an assortment of rocks and arrange them into letterforms or something. But there's no meaning in rock, rocks don't have DNA.

 

As far as we know though, we can measure the "Shannon" content, but not the "meaning", and that's why the "Shannon" content is relevant: its all that you're ever providing us in these examples.

 

All of this talk about Shannon's theory is completely irrelevant. Basically, the introduction of Shannon's theory into this discussion is really just a gigantic dodge; an evasion. It has effectively no application to the topic at hand. When I say "information", I use it in the "colloquial" sense, not some obscure technical definition that most people are probably unfamiliar with. To most people, "information" is the same as "meaning." Just look at some of the synonyms for "information":

 

advice, counsel, data, dossier, enlightenment, instruction, intelligence, knowledge, learning, message, news, notification, report, wisdom

 

It is this same "type" of information which is present in DNA, and this "type" of information requires an intelligence because it reflects an idea, and ideas, as you said, are a manifestation of intelligence. DNA may indeed contain Shannon information to some extent, but whether it does or doesn't is not relevant because regardless, DNA carries a message.

 

You can distract yourselves all you want with talk of Shannon information, but to do so is to bark up the wrong tree. Perhaps you like that tree because in your mind it's not likely to lead to a creator and so, I dunno… maybe you feel comfortable with that. And you know what? That's fine… I'm totally okay with that 'cuz that's your business, not mine. However, it's not science.

 

Science follows the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads to a conclusion you may not be comfortable with personally. To steer it away from a conclusion because it's a conclusion you're uncomfortable with is really just "cooking the books" scientifically.

[TRoutMac]

Allow me to illustrate why Shannon information is irrelevant to this topic, lest I be accused of breaking the "It's true because I say so" rule of this forum:

 

Below are four examples of letters in a sequence:

 

A) Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon and I'll give you one million dollars.

 

Example A is just plain English. Shannon's theory would assign this string of characters a certain value for information content… let's call that value 'x'. But that value has nothing to do with the message, or "meaning" contained in the sentence. The "meaning" is that you'll be a million dollars richer if you meet me at the time place I specify. (Keep in mind, this is a HYPOTHETICAL! I'm not REALLY going give anyone a million dollars!!)

 

:eek: Oggv og cv vjg Ugxgp-Gngxgp qp vjg eqtpgt qh Htcpmnkp cpf Vjktf Uvtggv cv qpg q'enqem vqoqttqy chvgtpqqp cpf I'nn ikxg aqw qpg oknnkqp fqnnctu.

 

Example B appears to be gibberish. However, on closer inspection you'll notice that it actually carries the same intellectual content as Example A, except that it uses a different system of symbols. I've shifted each letter in the English alphabet over two letters so that what used to be an 'A' now looks like a 'C' and what used to be a 'W' now looks like a 'Y'. Again, Shannon's theory would assign this string of characters a certain value for information content. That value should equal 'x' from Example A, because of how I altered the alphabet… the character count is the same, etc. And again, the real "meaning", or message, or intellectual content is identical to Example A.

 

C) Rojw df ew lkj qwder-cxdask oi hjk youkjp tr Glkdhfjw xcv Dlkpy Qouegl cs jng k'wefmn uneokcdq dkjfoleoc asd E'vn dbno dew kov qlakdoi wjivrod.

 

Example C also appears to be gibberish. And, it is gibberish. All characters were chosen at random and even though Shannon may have assigned a certain value to this string of characters, it does not carry any meaning as the first two examples carry. It means nothing, it's garbage. Since there is not rhyme or reason to the characters used, the Shannon information value assigned to this string would be 'y'. (not the same as Examples A and B even though the character count is the same)

 

I'm sure you all will recognize that Example D is Morse Code. Certainly, Shannon's theory would assign a certain value to this string of characters as well. And this value would be different than Examples A and B and it would also be different than Example C.

 

D) -- . . - -- . .- - - .... . ... . ...- . -. -....- . .-.. . ...- . -. --- -. - .... . -.-. --- .-. -. . .-. --- ..-. ..-. .-. .- -. -.- .-.. .. -. .- -. -.. - .... .. .-. -.. ... - .-. . . - .- - --- -. . --- .----. -.-. .-.. --- -.-. -.- - --- -- --- .-. .-. --- .-- .- ..-. - . .-. -. --- --- -. .- -. -.. .. .----. .-.. .-.. --. .. ...- . -.-- --- ..- --- -. . -- .. .-.. .-.. .. --- -. -.. --- .-.. .-.. .- .-. ... .-.-.-

 

Now, ask yourselves this:

 

What do Examples A, B and D all have in common despite the fact that Shannon would not give them the same value for information content?

 

The answer is that A, B and D all convey a common instruction… to meet me at a specific time and place and receive lots of money. This "message", this "intellectual content" can be encoded into any language or code system, whether it be English, French, Morse Code or whatever. If we arranged it, I could use two lanterns hung from a church tower or smoke signals to communicate that same message.

 

In other words, even though Shannon would have placed a different "information content" value on the various vehicles used, (U.S. English, Morse Code, lanterns, smoke signals, whatever) the message (intellectual content, idea) actually conveyed by the vehicle remains the same!

 

What this means is that you can safely discard your Shannon Information arguments. They are Dead On Arrival; they do not apply. DNA contains "information" and "information" of the sort found in DNA requires intelligence.

[Boerseun]

Trout - how about this:

 

There's a couple of organisms. Their DNA says the following:

 

1. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven
   
2. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street
   
3. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon
   
4. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon and I'll give you one million dollars.
   

...and let's say that you're a predator killing off all organisms that does not present you with a million dollars one o'clock in the afternoon on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at the Seven-Eleven. Which one will survive, and pass its genes off to the next generation? And, in every generation, there's a truckload of individuals, each one with slightly modified DNA due to mutations, and eventually you end up with the whole sequence as above.

[TRoutMac]

Trout - how about this:

 

There's a couple of organisms. Their DNA says the following:

 

1. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven
   
2. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street
   
3. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon
   
4. Meet me at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon and I'll give you one million dollars.
   

...and let's say that you're a predator killing off all organisms that does not present you with a million dollars one o'clock in the afternoon on the corner of Franklin and Third Street at the Seven-Eleven. Which one will survive, and pass its genes off to the next generation? And, in every generation, there's a truckload of individuals, each one with slightly modified DNA due to mutations, and eventually you end up with the whole sequence as above.

 

First of all, you haven't acknowledged the point made… that Shannon information is not relevant to this discussion and shouldn't be used as an argument against the existence of "information" in DNA.

 

Second of all, Intelligent Design proponents do not have a quarrel with natural selection and micro-evolution. In fact, you might even say it is evolutionists, particularly those which subscribe to macro-evolution, who have a quarrel with natural selection, because natural selection actually limits evolution to the "micro" level. That is, natural selection prevents macro-evolution and so if you insist that macro-evolution is reality, then you are, in effect, denying natural selection.

 

In light of this, I don't understand what point you're making and what relevance it has to points I've made. Does natural selection occur? Yes. Do species undergo certain changes in their genetic information over periods of time? Yes. We don't have a problem with that. If you think we do, then you don't understand Intelligent Design's criticisms of Darwinist macro-evolution.

[goku]

:confused: :xx: :frown: :confused: :edizzy: :confused:

any one of these posts are longer than any report i ever writen in school

[Boerseun]

...then you don't understand Intelligent Design's criticisms of Darwinist macro-evolution.

Actually, you're right. I don't.

 

But then I don't think you quite understand how what you'd call 'macro-evolution' is just a concatenation of all changes achieved by 'micro-evolution'.

 

'Intelligent Design' is the Trojan Horse of Creationism. End of story. There's nothing scientific to it. It appeals to the emotional side of people who don't want to go to the effort of understanding how stuff works - seeing as it might entail giving up the hope and/or belief that we were put here for a reason.