[PatrickHenry]

If I may, I suggest that the principle issue here is the word "information." To me, when a biologist uses it in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the molecules, which determines their function. That's all I see, just organic chemistry. The arrangement is the information.

I suspect that you are putting much more meaning into the word "information." If you define it so as to mean that DNA contains some kind of message from somewhere, then you have pre-determined (so to speak) your conclusion that something more than chemistry must be going on. But that conclusion is inherent in the way you define "information," and I really think your definition needs some work.

[balrog666]

Hey, look! I've weaned myself from using the word "dumbass"!

[balrog666]

Oops. Sometimes our fallible humanity just shines through.

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, if I may...

If I may, I suggest that the principle issue here is the word "information." To me, when a biologist uses it in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the molecules, which determines their function. That's all I see, just organic chemistry. The arrangement is the information.

I suspect that you are putting much more meaning into the word "information." If you define it so as to mean that DNA contains some kind of message from somewhere, then you have pre-determined (so to speak) your conclusion that something more than chemistry must be going on. But that conclusion is inherent in the way you define "information," and I really think your definition needs some work.

A dead organism retains its DNA for a very, very long time.

The information is not the DNA - the DNA is the symbolism, the coding, the complexity, the processor. Just like a computer does nothing until it is turned "on" - the DNA is not alive in itself. Life is in the information, the communication. The definition of information is "successful communication" (Shannon).

Once the cell quits communicating, it is dead.

[betty boop]

If you define it so as to mean that DNA contains some kind of message from somewhere....

But Patrick, I don't have to allege that the information is a "message" coming from "somewhere" when -- so to speak -- the "medium is the message."

I will repeat again: I don't have to put God on the stage here in order for the natural world to explain itself. If we would but listen.

Why is this point so elusive, so difficult for you?

[tallhappy]

To me, when a biologist uses it in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the molecules, which determines their function.

This is gibberish.

What "molecules" and what "arrangement" are you talking about?

Again, the sentence I quote above from you is gibberish and utterly meaningless.

I know you will not respond to clarify what you mean because you do understand that you do not know or understand what you are trying to talk about and think that by avoiding any elaboration or discussion that fact can be hidden.

I do know what you are trying, and fail utterly, to say. Yet you are more mistaken than correct in your point.

[longshadow]

wildly elliptical placemarker (back by popular demand)