In bacteria, transcription goes straight to translation with no additional RNA processing. So we do have simpler versions of the process from genes to proteins. Eukaryotes have additional processing of the mRNA between transcribing it form the DNA and reading it by the ribosome. But claiming that it is the “most sophisticated machinery” is the logically invalid but popular “it’s amazing so it couldn’t evolve” argument. Unlike sophisticated and/or complex human-made machines, the complexities of biological chemistry are working with stuff that naturally occurs together. Proteins and RNA are chemicals that interact with each other. Although the system is impressive, it is one that could plausibly build up by a series of steps. One can argue what seems most likely, but that will be a matter of personal judgement rather than a scientifically justified conclusion.
Actually Darwin’s finches never were finches; they are tanagers. (North American tanagers aren’t tanagers, they are cardinals.) As tanagers, they are quite significantly different in form from standard tanagers, producing the mistaken thought that they were finches.
It apparently also works for those agnostics who are ID proponents?
Meyer’s book is more sophisticated than that, I’m afraid… rebutting his argument by claiming “but information can be generated by natural processes” is simply not addressing his argument… … no one would doubt that the “information” about the location of the atoms in the ocean, for instance, is changing and thus being generated every moment.
Or, put another way (and he addresses this concept carefully in his book as well), there is “new information” produced every time someone shuffles a deck of cards, or deals a properly shuffled deck of cards… and no one would infer purposeful agency or tampering for that alone.
Again, whether you agree or disagree, let us please be respectful enough to properly understand and represent an opponent’s argument.
Meyer is speaking and arguing from what he carefully delineates as “complex, specified information.” Not “information.”
Strange birds indeed.
That idea has been around for decades and has been thoroughly debunked with respect to evolution. You might read about it over at peacefulscience.org.
Hi Daniel,
Neither you nor Meyer have answered the foundational questions that need to be addressed before we can discuss whether a particular biological system such as DNA is an artifact of intelligent design.
The question which you have been asked multiple times but so far failed to answer is this:
Until you can present a theory of design that connects organically and by necessity to a prediction of specific outcomes, neither you, Stephen Meyer, nor I have the ability to scientifically answer the question of whether something (e.g., DNA) is intelligently designed.
Until you will commit to answering this foundational question, I will simply affirm as a matter of religious faith that God has designed DNA in the same sense that He has designed all of creation.
Best,
Chris
Hi Ani,
Sorry for the delayed response.
The flow of air is the result of a pressure gradient created by the random activity of gas molecules. A high pressure are is where there is greater overall random activity, and low pressure the opposite.
Because the molecules are randomly moving about, they tend to flow from areas of high pressure to low pressure. If they were in a different state where they were not moving about randomly, there would be no flow. So random motion of gas molecules is the key explanation for the flow of air.
Whether you “hoover” or run a vacuum cleaner, you are operating a machine that creates a pressure differential in order to take advantage of the random motion of air molecules. That pressure differential causes air to flow from the ground near the cleaner to the bag inside the cleaner, and the air carries light dirt particles.
In the same way that you harness random forces with your vacuum cleaner, is it possible that God could also act in the world by harnessing forces that scientists think of as random?
Best,
Chris
Ah, yes, successfully debunked to the satisfaction of all those who already agree…
Yes Meyer does argue for CSI but while he does show that DNA can be considered CSI he fails when he says new CSI requires an intelligent agent. Which is what I meant in my comment above. Sorry that I went with the shorthand “information”.
For some examples of biological systems that generate new CSI see
Randy Isaac “Information, Intelligence, and the Origins of Life” here.
Jonathan K. Watts “Biological Information, Molecular Structure, and the Origins Debate” here.
Craig M. Story “The God of Christianity and the G.O.D. of Immunology: Chance, Complexity, and God’s Action in Nature” here.
Danny Falk has written a review here.
I like this
Which would be another example of the generation of CSI without an intelligent agent.
Except, as Meyer pointed out in his book, the “evolved” RNA in question was intelligently designed.
I’ll review the other articles you noted as i have opportunity, but I will for now observe that the Falk article is a bit embarrassing, in that Meyer did address the very experiment that was claimed to have only been published while Meyer’s book was in print, not to mention not realizing how weak an argument that study was for their case. That seems rather careless in such a review article and makes me wonder how seriously they were to try to follow his arguments, or if they were simply trying to brush it aside. But for what it is worth, Meyer did at least address that claim, certainly to my satisfaction. from “Signature in the Cell”:
Polymerases do the work of copying a template by sequestering, aligning, and linking bases on a template strand. For a polymerase to function as a true replicase, it would likewise have to do the work of replicating a template, in this case the template provided by itself.
The RNA molecules that Lincoln and Joyce devise do not do this work. Instead, they simply joined together via a single bond two presynthesized, specifically sequenced RNA chains to form a longer chain. After the formation of a single phosphate bond, these linked chains resulted in a copy of the original RNA molecule, but only because Lincoln and Joyce first designed the original RNA molecule and then directed the synthesis of two specifically sequenced, complementary partial strands to match it. Thus, Lincoln and Joyce provided the information (did the sequencing work) required to make even this limited form of replication possible. Further, instead of demonstrating RNA-directed self-replication, they demonstrated investigator-directed replication.
And from Meyer’s specific response to this point in Falk’s article:
The second experiment that Falk cites to refute my book illustrates this problem even more acutely. This experiment is reported in a scientific paper by Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce ostensibly establishing the capacity of RNA to self-replicate, thereby rendering plausible one of the key steps in the RNA world hypothesis. Falk incorrectly intimates that I did not discuss this experiment in my book. In fact, I do on page 537. In any case, it is Falk who draws exactly the wrong conclusion from this paper. The central problem facing origin-of-life researchers is neither the synthesis of pre-biotic building blocks (which Sutherland’s work addresses) or even the synthesis of a self-replicating RNA molecule (the plausibility of which Joyce and Tracey’s work seeks to establish, albeit unsuccessfully: see below). Instead, the fundamental problem is getting the chemical building blocks to arrange themselves into the large information-bearing molecules (whether DNA or RNA). As I show in Signature in the Cell, even the extremely limited capacity for RNA self-replication that has been demonstrated depends critically on the specificity of the arrangement of nucleotide bases—that is, upon pre-existing sequence-specific information.
The Lincoln and Joyce experiment that Falk describes approvingly does not solve this problem, at least not apart from the intelligence of Lincoln and Joyce. In the first place, the “self-replicating” RNA molecules that they construct are not capable of copying a template of genetic information from free-standing chemical subunits as the polymerase machinery does in actual cells. Instead, in Lincoln and Joyce’s experiment, a pre-synthesized specifically sequenced RNA molecule merely catalyzes the formation of a single chemical bond, thus fusing two other pre-synthesized partial RNA chains. In other words, their version of “self-replication” amounts to nothing more than joining two sequence specific pre-made halves together. More significantly, Lincoln and Joyce themselves intelligently arranged the matching base sequences in these RNA chains. They did the work of replication. They generated the functionally specific information that made even this limited form of replication possible.
The Lincoln and Joyce experiment actually confirms three related claims that I make in Signature in the Cell. First, it demonstrates that even the capacity for modest partial self-replication in RNA itself depends upon sequence specific (i.e., information-rich) base sequences in these molecules. Second, it shows that even the capacity for partial replication of genetic information in RNA molecules results from the activity of chemists, that is, from the intelligence of the “ribozyme engineers” who design and select the features of these (partial) RNA replicators. Third, pre-biotic simulation experiments themselves confirm what we know from ordinary experience, namely, that intelligent design is the only known means by which functionally specified information arises.
Chris, I stated before i had given up on our conversation since i didn’t feel it constructive, given how often i felt you repeatedly misconstrued and misrepresented things I wrote . But since you seem insistent in this point, I will respond.
I know you think your formulation here is airtight, and logically valid, and that it somehow proves that…
I mean no disrespect, but i think this position is downright absurd, as is the dilemma you raise. trying to answer your question is like the “can God create a rock too big for him to move” type, where the logical contradiction is actually in the question.
I will simply ask your question back to you, and substitute a different designing agent, to test whether your assumption (that it is necessary to be able to predict specific outcomes in order to detect design) really makes sense.
EITHER
(1) You assert that we humans have the ability to identify a priori a human author’s design choices – with the logical consequence that you are able to assert that a human author’s design can be discerned by empiric methods;
OR
(2) You assert that we humans do NOT have the ability to identify a priori a human author’s design choices – with the logical consequence that it is impossible for any human to discern a human author’s design by empiric methods.
So, which is it? I would invite you to simply answer, is your position #1 or #2, without giving any clarification or qualification.
I do appreciate you sending the link, but As for the Watts article, I found it baffling to follow his argument. If you find his arguments persuasive, then so be it, but I’m afraid I can’t share your confidence.
Firstly, he states…
you may find The information in a book can be stored in multiple physical forms: a large-print hardcover edition, an electronic PDF version, or even Braille. When we read it with the appropriate media or tools, we obtain the same information. In contrast, biological information cannot be separated from its structure.
I don’t even know what he means by this, even re-reading the context. The fact that we have sequenced genomes means, by definition, that the information in DNA has been separated from its structure. This doesn’t inspire confidence in his reasoning, it makes me suspect more that his train of thought is more a confirmed destination desperately seeking some line of argumentation that will get there. But perhaps I misunderstand his point.
Secondly, he uses as a counterexample to Meyer’s claim, a situation where, if you run off enough random strings of nucleotides, eventually you’ll find a small one with some function, and thus he claims “complex specified information” did arise without a designer.
Um, OK… and if I run off enough random strings of letters in my computer, and keep cross checking it against a spell and grammar checker, I will eventually get a genuinely functional sentence… maybe something like, “I am me” or some such… this wouldn’t be inconceivable in some relatively short timeframe with enough computing power. So there we have it… a functional English sentence without an intelligent author.
But if someone used that fact to argue that, say, Conan Doyle’s “The Six Napoleons” or some similar work could equally be explained by said author-less process, you will forgive me for remaining skeptical, and maintaining my belief that an intelligent purposeful author is a better explanation. I imagine Meyer would make a similar recognition, considering how he qualifies his argument by specifying “significant amounts of specified information” or the like. He seems to acknowledge certain limited amounts of new such information can and does arise by natural means, but that there comes a point where such becomes unreasonable as the best explanation…
Air flow is simply the movement of air, which is made of atoms of course. The atoms will flow from hot to cold and high pressure to low pressure. Gas molecules normally move randomly but that is not the reason why we see them move from hot to cold and high to low pressure.
The air in a vacuum cleaner is forced to move in a particular direction due to a suction motor. If the air moved randomly most of it would not react the bag to collect the dust and rubbish.
There are scientists now saying that maybe we see it as random and it is not really random, but that has to do with the fact that they see things that can’t be random but they are not willing to give up their ideas of random mutations for instance. The reason is because they see the body as a meat robot and it supposedly runs on automatic. When the processes cease then the body is dead.
I don’t agree with this view and I am not alone. There are some scientists that have some views that differ from the mainstream. I believe that we are conscious beings and our consciousness affects our garment, the body. So when we react to some ideas that we believe is true or real, then we react and that reaction has a significant physiological effect. This is not accepted by most scientists.
Why would you call it intelligent design when they said in the paper
They didn’t design the RNA enzymes they let evolution design the enzymes. To call what they did “intelligent design” would be the same as dumping out a box of spaghetti and calling the resulting pile a sculpture that was designed.
A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
Once you show the first step is possible and there is nothing to prevent a second step before you know it you have gone 1,000 miles.
Indeed. Proof positive that humans can swim from California to Hawaii!!
I appreciate your consistency, at least, I must say. But when the basic principles that undergird evolutionary thought would seriously require me to believe that random letter generation is as good or better an explanation for English novellas than having been written by an author, then my skepticism is to that extent confirmed that there is something seriously wrong with the entire theory.
It’s very simple. We have a history of design choices and outcomes reliably connected to human activity, thus we can make reliable Bayesian inferences of human design based on that history.
I’ve done my part. Over to you.
The logical contradiction is baked into your assertion that a scientific methodology can, independently of faith, discern God’s thoughts. This contradiction emerges from the fact that the scientific methodology has placed faith methodologies outside the boundaries of science.
I believe there is a way for science and religion to collaborate, as long as the capabilities and limitations of each are understood.
Best,
Chris
Well I know know humans can walk from the east coast to the west if there is nothing to stop them. What do you propose that could stop a process that has taken millions of years?
Nobody has every said that but it is a strawman you like to pull out.
Just answer my question, What could stop the process?
Very well, I will interpret that to mean you are unwilling to simply give a “1” or “2” to the question as formulated without further clarification or qualification.