Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Please correct me if I'm wrong here. The logic appears to be:

1. I do not accept that there are any codes in nature that developed naturalistically.

2. There are codes designed by humans.

3. Therefore, all codes require intelligent design.

This is obvious question begging, so I must be incorrect. 

~~ Paul

I found this response in another discussion about semiotics in the genetic code.

Look, this is very simple. We don’t need to get into philosophical discussions about some panpsychism, who designed the designer, non-living designers, etc.

It is called an inference to the best explanation and it follows a very simple approach:

1. Semiotic systems are regularly seen to arise from intelligent agents. As a corollary, semiotic systems have never been known to arise from purely natural causes. Indeed, in every instance in which we see a semiotic system and know the provenance, it started with an intelligent agent.
2. There is a semiotic system in biology.
3. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that it came from an intelligent agent.

Is this deduction? Of course not. But it is a perfectly appropriate form of inductive reasoning and inferring to the best explanation.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here. The logic appears to be:

1. I do not accept that there are any codes in nature that developed naturalistically.

2. There are codes designed by humans.

3. Therefore, all codes require intelligent design.

This is obvious question begging, so I must be incorrect. 

~~ Paul

I think talk of semiotics etc just tends to cloud this discussion, which is really one of combinatorial explosion. The thing that makes it so hard to conceive of a code being created without intelligence being involved, is that you have to bring together so much mechanism before anything works at all - the ribosomes, the enzymes that replicate the DNA,  (maybe the intermediate code of RNA could be skipped in the first version), etc.

Now  I used to argue this point with Lone Shaman, and I think eventually he saw my point, that yes, there is some ludicrously improbable possibility of all that mechanism being create by chance. However, it really isn't worth discussing that. Darwinism only got of the ground by postulating that survival of the fittest could guide us through some reasonably smooth fittness-space. The problem - which I am sure Darwin would understand - is that there obviously isn't a smooth fittness-space!

I am talking about the dawn of life, so the ribosomes might not be made of proteins, but they still have to be pretty complex things. The code is very much like a computer program - useless until it runs without crashing for at least some range of inputs! Useless stuff can't be selected for.

If you found an exposition of calculus chipped on a stone, you would instantly accept that it had been created by some people that had discovered calculus. Once you could decipher the writing, you would be left in no doubt that an intelligence had been involved. You would not (I think) accept any suggestion that this thing might have formed by some complex process of wind erosion! Now think of a microbe - inside is an exposition of a tiny subset of all possible proteins that have useful chemical or structural properties. The code is just as explicit as the marks on the rock, but the quantity of information conveyed is vastly greater.

David

This is basically an argument by assertion. You want us to take your word for this. If you want to talk about proof, you have no proof that codes can evolve from chemicals, no proof that specification can evolve. Only some ingenious sketchy just-so stories. Only faith in an almost omnipotent capacity of nature to evolve anything small step by small step given enough time.  It just has to be accepted on faith, and the fact ignored that codes and specifications have only been observed to originate from intelligent agents. As I have mentioned, this concept is fundamentally in principle unfalsifiable and unscientific, because theoretically there could be an infinite number of logically possible (though vanishingly improbable) just-so stories, and falsifying them all would be impossible.

I don't understand why people think I need to provide a proof that a code can evolve, given enough time. Why not? What is the principle that prevents it? Why is a code special whereas apparently people believe that other mechanisms can evolve? In particular, if a proto-code* begins to evolve, is there some mechanism that stops it?

I also don't understand why people can say that the evolution of a code is a just-so story without doing a double take on the whole intelligent design thing.

~~ Paul

* Note that we haven't yet defined what a code is.

http://cosmicfingerprints.com/dna-atheis...ring-code/

"The formal definition of a code according to Perlwitz and Waterman (see below) is a set of symbols that uniquely map a point in space “A” to a point in space “B.” In other words there is special symbolic correspondence between a letter or word (idea) and a real physical entity. The word “coffee” represents a beverage made from cocoa beans, for example. Symbolic relationships of this kind are only created in the mental world; they by definition do not exist in the purely material world."

The first sentence says that a code maps a point in space A to a point in space B. The second sentence suddenly asserts that space A is a space of ideas. How do we resolve the apparent inconsistency between those two sentences?

If the second sentence is to be assumed, then the process of translation from RNA to DNA does not involve a code.

~~ Paul

I found this response in another discussion about semiotics in the genetic code.

"1. Semiotic systems are regularly seen to arise from intelligent agents. As a corollary, semiotic systems have never been known to arise from purely natural causes. Indeed, in every instance in which we see a semiotic system and know the provenance, it started with an intelligent agent.
2. There is a semiotic system in biology.
3. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that it came from an intelligent agent."

Point 1 begs the question. Not to mention that its second assertion is in no way a corollary of the first.

~~ Paul

Now  I used to argue this point with Lone Shaman, and I think eventually he saw my point, that yes, there is some ludicrously improbable possibility of all that mechanism being create by chance. However, it really isn't worth discussing that. Darwinism only got of the ground by postulating that survival of the fittest could guide us through some reasonably smooth fittness-space. The problem - which I am sure Darwin would understand - is that there obviously isn't a smooth fittness-space!

I am talking about the dawn of life, so the ribosomes might not be made of proteins, but they still have to be pretty complex things. The code is very much like a computer program - useless until it runs without crashing for at least some range of inputs! Useless stuff can't be selected for.

Why is this any sort of proof that the genetic code cannot evolve? You even state the possible solution, which involves starting with something simple and evolving it from there.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2926754/

~~ Paul

http://cosmicfingerprints.com/dna-atheis...ring-code/

I'm sorry. I don't understand this. It seems that we have been dropped in to the middle of an argument, and I don't know what points someone tried to make that this is supposed to be an argument against. It seems a bit nonsensical.

Regardless, none of it seems relevant as to why pheromones or polymorphic crystals aren't codes (and DNA is). 

Linda

I guess I am also wondering what it is that people see as different about DNA. As far as I can tell, the "code" in DNA represents a "frozen accident". We have a plethora of examples of other frozen accidents, both living and non-living. So what is special about this one which makes intelligence necessary?

Linda
 
P.S. I realize that it looks like there are also non-accidental contributions to the "code", but I don't expect anyone to complain about that, given that non-accidental contributions make it less code-like.

Regardless, none of it seems relevant as to why pheromones or polymorphic crystals aren't codes (and DNA is). 

Well, a pheromone is a code in that it transmits one bit of information - copulate, or don't copulate.

DNA obviously transmits vastly more information - 2 bits per base, of which there are hundreds per gene.

As you will see from my comment above, I don't think the real point is something special about codes except that they require a vast amount of machinery to be in place before they can function at all. You need some form of ribosomes to read the code, some enzymes to duplicate the code (even avoiding the issue of the DNA being copied to RNA prior to use), plus something like t-RNA to scavenge the amino acids.

Now if you think back to the dawn of time, you can probably imagine some simplifications to that scheme, but you still need a fair pile of machinery to be working before this process can role. Note that until this works, it is meaningless to talk about survival of the fittest, because you don't have any functioning genes, or any generations to pass them on to!

David