To better understand why this is not correct, let’s allow a larger context. Suppose that this is an instruction from Hamlet to Ophelia in Act 1. The typo occurred when miss Random was transcribing Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” for your daughter’s high school play. So who is the author of the play? Is it miss Random or is it William Shakespeare? [quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
Note also that in your case, the introduced information isn’t functional, while in the real case it is
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Actually, it is: “Meet me by the wall” is a perfectly logical, coherent sentence; one which could conceivably prove functional. [quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
If your concept of functional, prescriptive information means anything at all, then my memory B cells contain functional, prescriptive information that arose from a well-understood biochemical process with no detectable intelligent agent present
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Ahh, but the intelligent agent is indeed discernable! As you concede multiple times in your reply to me, your “DNA has prescriptive information for carrying out a specific function”. Now, recall the exact wording of my claim:
“every single time we trace functional prescriptive information to its source, that source is always an intelligent agent, and never natural processes,”
I think the word you need to consider here is “source.” Your memory B cells do indeed perform a biological function; a function that was programmed into them from the beginning (more on this in a moment), bearing witness to an intelligent agent at its source. To the point currently under consideration, a copying error to original text cannot possibly occur absent the existence of the original text. Therefore, the original text is the source and the copying error is simply that: a copying error. Can a copying error result in a different coherent message? Sometimes. And I grant that this truth opens up an entirely different discussion when it comes to biological systems (which I will be happy to have). However, it remains true that the original message is the source.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
Are you seriously saying that information doesn’t count as information if it arises as a modification of previous information? If so, then all human language also doesn’t count as information, since we generate language by modifying the language we learned as kids. What doea “information” mean, if that’s the case?
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I’m afraid this is nothing more than a red herring. First, it is silly to say that all original information generated by humans is nothing more than the alteration of existing information. Nor do I claim that a modified message is not information. I do claim that a modified message is not the original source of the information. Trace a modified message to its original source - the original message - and you will discover an intelligent agent behind it, regardless of how it was modified. That is what I am saying.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
Further, that would also mean that any amount of evolution (say, fish to humans) could occur without the creation of any new information or the involvement of an intelligent agent – because everything in our DNA is just a modification of earlier DNA. Is that the tack you want to take?
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Clearly not! I hope that you and I can both agree that for a fish to evolve into a human, a tremendous amount of novel information would be required. Should we believe, as we are taught in school, that the mutation/ selection mechanism alone can account for such evolution? That is a conversation worth having and one I frankly relish, but it is a different conversation than this one.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
Let’s see if I have this right. I started life with N bits of functional information in my germline DNA that coded for antibodies
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functional information which, as I understand it, is capable of identifying some ten billion different pathogens, to include many the system has yet to encounter.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
After 50+ years of life and numerous encounters with pathogens, I have a much larger amount of functional information in my DNA, coding for pathogen-specific antibodies.
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Due to the incredibly coordinated response system that includes both your innate immune system and your adaptive immune system; a dynamic system designed to facilitate detection and destruction of foreign pathogens; a system designed to grow in both recognition and response; a system which relies on the execution of well coordinated, precise protocols, all of which are designed to protect you. The “information” that built your immune system, allowing it to be both dynamic and deadly effective was already in place, designed to recognize and respond to a host of foreign invaders. Indeed, as you say, you started life with this information.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
At present, there is zero evidence that organisms are programmed to produce specific beneficial mutations, and abundant evidence that they produce random mutations.
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Nobody denies the reality of random mutations. But are all mutations “random”? The folks over at http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/ would take issue with this claim. So would Lee Spetner, who has authored two books defending his “Non-Random Evolutionary Hypothesis.” Our brother Chris Falter rejects dr. Spetner out of hand on the basis of nothing more than his literal reading of Genesis, but neither he, nor you, nor anyone can deny that both of Spetner’s books are chock full of empirical examples in support of his hypothesis.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1021, topic:4944”]
Random mutations are perfectly adequate to explain the origin of the functional information in question her
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Nope. Random mutations are adequate to explain the mutation of original functional information. The question of whether any series of random mutations alone is capable of accounting for the origin of novel body plans remains a fascinating and open question. But the question of the origin of mutated genetic information is clearly settled. The origin is the original message. Or said yet another way, the mutated information is the mutated information and the original information is the original information.
Finally, I want to point out that in this exchange, you and I have both taken genetic information as axiomatic. Of course to talk about functional genetic information at all is to implicitly consent to the existence of a genetic information system, and when we talk about the source, this is where the rubber really meets the road. What cause is adequate to account for the existence of genetic information in the first place? Surely an appeal to an exhaustive regress of mutations will still bring us to the genetic information system itself. As we have seen, the mutation is not the source. As we have seen, the source is always intelligent agency.
The reality that a genetic information system lies at the base of all life, then, constitutes strong evidence that life requires a Creator.
(I have one or 2 additional more recent responses that I’ll be trying to get to today as well).