I guess that would be the famous mathematician, Alfred E. Newman
Posted on 05/06/2005 7:36:09 PM PDT by DouglasKC
Two great achievements occurred in 1953, more than half a century ago.
The first was the successful ascent of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Sir Edmund Hillary and his guide, Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit that year, an accomplishment that's still considered the ultimate feat for mountain climbers. Since then, more than a thousand mountaineers have made it to the top, and each year hundreds more attempt it.
Yet the second great achievement of 1953 has had a greater impact on the world. Each year, many thousands join the ranks of those participating in this accomplishment, hoping to ascend to fame and fortune.
It was in 1953 that James Watson and Francis Crick achieved what appeared impossible—discovering the genetic structure deep inside the nucleus of our cells. We call this genetic material DNA, an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid.
The discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule opened the floodgates for scientists to examine the code embedded within it. Now, more than half a century after the initial discovery, the DNA code has been deciphered—although many of its elements are still not well understood.
What has been found has profound implications regarding Darwinian evolution, the theory taught in schools all over the world that all living beings have evolved by natural processes through mutation and natural selection.
Amazing revelations about DNA
As scientists began to decode the human DNA molecule, they found something quite unexpected—an exquisite 'language' composed of some 3 billion genetic letters. "One of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century," says Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., "was that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code" (quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, p. 224).
It is hard to fathom, but the amount of information in human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica—an incredible 384 volumes" worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves!
Yet in their actual size—which is only two millionths of a millimeter thick—a teaspoon of DNA, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, could contain all the information needed to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived on the earth, and "there would still be enough room left for all the information in every book ever written" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1996, p. 334).
Who or what could miniaturize such information and place this enormous number of 'letters' in their proper sequence as a genetic instruction manual? Could evolution have gradually come up with a system like this?
DNA contains a genetic language
Let's first consider some of the characteristics of this genetic 'language.' For it to be rightly called a language, it must contain the following elements: an alphabet or coding system, correct spelling, grammar (a proper arrangement of the words), meaning (semantics) and an intended purpose.
Scientists have found the genetic code has all of these key elements. "The coding regions of DNA," explains Dr. Stephen Meyer, "have exactly the same relevant properties as a computer code or language" (quoted by Strobel, p. 237, emphasis in original).
The only other codes found to be true languages are all of human origin. Although we do find that dogs bark when they perceive danger, bees dance to point other bees to a source and whales emit sounds, to name a few examples of other species" communication, none of these have the composition of a language. They are only considered low-level communication signals.
The only types of communication considered high-level are human languages, artificial languages such as computer and Morse codes and the genetic code. No other communication system has been found to contain the basic characteristics of a language.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, commented that "DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised."
Can you imagine something more intricate than the most complex program running on a supercomputer being devised by accident through evolution—no matter how much time, how many mutations and how much natural selection are taken into account?
DNA language not the same as DNA molecule
Recent studies in information theory have come up with some astounding conclusions—namely, that information cannot be considered in the same category as matter and energy. It's true that matter or energy can carry information, but they are not the same as information itself.
For instance, a book such as Homer's Iliad contains information, but is the physical book itself information? No, the materials of the book—the paper, ink and glue contain the contents, but they are only a means of transporting it.
If the information in the book was spoken aloud, written in chalk or electronically reproduced in a computer, the information does not suffer qualitatively from the means of transporting it. "In fact the content of the message," says professor Phillip Johnson, "is independent of the physical makeup of the medium" (Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, p. 71).
The same principle is found in the genetic code. The DNA molecule carries the genetic language, but the language itself is independent of its carrier. The same genetic information can be written in a book, stored in a compact disk or sent over the Internet, and yet the quality or content of the message has not changed by changing the means of conveying it.
As George Williams puts it: "The gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, it's not the message" (quoted by Johnson, p. 70).
Information from an intelligent source
In addition, this type of high-level information has been found to originate only from an intelligent source.
As Lee Strobel explains: "The data at the core of life is not disorganized, it's not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it's complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task—the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities" (p. 244).
For instance, the precision of this genetic language is such that the average mistake that is not caught turns out to be one error per 10 billion letters. If a mistake occurs in one of the most significant parts of the code, which is in the genes, it can cause a disease such as sickle-cell anemia. Yet even the best and most intelligent typist in the world couldn't come close to making only one mistake per 10 billion letters—far from it.
So to believe that the genetic code gradually evolved in Darwinian style would break all the known rules of how matter, energy and the laws of nature work. In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program.
Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, explains that genetic information is primarily an instruction manual and gives some examples.
He writes: "Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, "Take a 1/4-inch nut," a mutation might say, "Take a 3/8-inch nut." Or instead of "Place the round peg in the round hole," we might get "Place the round peg in the square hole" . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, p. 41).
We therefore have in the genetic code an immensely complex instruction manual that has been majestically designed by a more intelligent source than human beings.
Even one of the discoverers of the genetic code, the agnostic and recently deceased Francis Crick, after decades of work on deciphering it, admitted that "an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going" (Life Itself, 1981, p. 88, emphasis added).
Evolution fails to provide answers
It is good to remember that, in spite of all the efforts of all the scientific laboratories around the world working over many decades, they have not been able to produce so much as a single human hair. How much more difficult is it to produce an entire body consisting of some 100 trillion cells!
Up to now, Darwinian evolutionists could try to counter their detractors with some possible explanations for the complexity of life. But now they have to face the information dilemma: How can meaningful, precise information be created by accident—by mutation and natural selection? None of these contain the mechanism of intelligence, a requirement for creating complex information such as that found in the genetic code.
Darwinian evolution is still taught in most schools as though it were fact. But it is increasingly being found wanting by a growing number of scientists. "As recently as twenty-five years ago," says former atheist Patrick Glynn, "a reasonable person weighing the purely scientific evidence on the issue would likely have come down on the side of skepticism [regarding a Creator]. That is no longer the case." He adds: "Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. It is the simplest and most obvious solution . . ." (God: The Evidence, 1997, pp. 54-55, 53).
Quality of genetic information the same
Evolution tells us that through chance mutations and natural selection, living things evolve. Yet to evolve means to gradually change certain aspects of some living thing until it becomes another type of creature, and this can only be done by changing the genetic information.
So what do we find about the genetic code? The same basic quality of information exists in a humble bacteria or a plant as in a person. A bacterium has a shorter genetic code, but qualitatively it gives instructions as precisely and exquisitely as that of a human being. We find the same prerequisites of a language—alphabet, grammar and semantics—in simple bacteria and algae as in man.
Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, consists of "artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . [and a] capacity not equalled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours" (Denton, p. 329).
So how could the genetic information of bacteria gradually evolve into information for another type of being, when only one or a few minor mistakes in the millions of letters in that bacterium's DNA can kill it?
Again, evolutionists are uncharacteristically silent on the subject. They don't even have a working hypothesis about it. Lee Strobel writes: "The six feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's one hundred trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made . . . No hypothesis has come close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means" (Strobel, p. 282).
Werner Gitt, professor of information systems, puts it succinctly: "The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself [through matter] . . . The information theorems predict that this will never be possible. A purely material origin of life is thus [ruled out]" (Gitt, p. 124).
The clincher
Besides all the evidence we have covered for the intelligent design of DNA information, there is still one amazing fact remaining—the ideal number of genetic letters in the DNA code for storage and translation.
Moreover, the copying mechanism of DNA, to meet maximum effectiveness, requires the number of letters in each word to be an even number. Of all possible mathematical combinations, the ideal number for storage and transcription has been calculated to be four letters.
This is exactly what has been found in the genes of every living thing on earth—a four-letter digital code. As Werner Gitt states: "The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. This fact strengthens the argument that it was a case of purposeful design rather that a [lucky] chance" (Gitt, p. 95).
More witnesses
Back in Darwin's day, when his book On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, life appeared much simpler. Viewed through the primitive microscopes of the day, the cell appeared to be but a simple blob of jelly or uncomplicated protoplasm. Now, almost 150 years later, that view has changed dramatically as science has discovered a virtual universe inside the cell.
"It was once expected," writes Professor Behe, "that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated than television cameras and automobiles. Science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins" (Behe, p. x).
Dr. Meyer considers the recent discoveries about DNA as the Achilles" heel of evolutionary theory. He observes: "Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin's nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it's not working ... I think the information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories" (quoted by Strobel, p. 243).
Dr. Meyer's conclusion? "I believe that the testimony of science supports theism. While there will always be points of tension or unresolved conflict, the major developments in science in the past five decades have been running in a strongly theistic direction" (ibid., p. 77).
Dean Kenyon, a biology professor who repudiated his earlier book on Darwinian evolution—mostly due to the discoveries of the information found in DNA—states: "This new realm of molecular genetics (is) where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth" (ibid., p. 221).
Just recently, one of the world's most famous atheists, Professor Antony Flew, admitted he couldn't explain how DNA was created and developed through evolution. He now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code.
"What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements together," he said (quoted by Richard Ostling, "Leading Atheist Now Believes in God," Associated Press report, Dec. 9, 2004).
"Fearfully and wonderfully made"
Although written thousands of years ago, King David's words about our marvelous human bodies still ring true. He wrote: "For You formed my inward parts, You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . . My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought. . ." (Psalm 139:13-15, emphasis added).
Where does all this leave evolution? Michael Denton, an agnostic scientist, concludes: "Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century" (Denton, p. 358).
All of this has enormous implications for our society and culture. Professor Johnson makes this clear when he states: "Every history of the twentieth century lists three thinkers as preeminent in influence: Darwin, Marx and Freud. All three were regarded as 'scientific' (and hence far more reliable than anything 'religious') in their heyday.
"Yet Marx and Freud have fallen, and even their dwindling bands of followers no longer claim that their insights were based on any methodology remotely comparable to that of experimental science. I am convinced that Darwin is next on the block. His fall will be by far the mightiest of the three" (Johnson, p. 113).
Evolution has had its run for almost 150 years in the schools and universities and in the press. But now, with the discovery of what the DNA code is all about, the complexity of the cell, and the fact that information is something vastly different from matter and energy, evolution can no longer dodge the ultimate outcome. The evidence certainly points to a resounding checkmate for evolution! GN
I guess that would be the famous mathematician, Alfred E. Newman
Eh? How do you build a spontaneous hydrogen generator? Where can I buy one?
That is a total whopper--as 1/2 hour cruising through your local libraries technical biological journals can easily verify.
The complexity and apparent design of life has defied a purely naturalistic explanation.
See above.
and the problem of how life started remains unanswered by the scientific community.
The scientific endeavor is, was, and probably always will be awash in questions that remain unanswered.
The physical evidence presented by DNA code and the fossil record has not supported the theory. The available evidence seems to be pointing to the separateness of different species.
Again, not true even the greatest stretch of the imagination you are capable of. The available evidence "seems to be pointing" to the notion that when intermediate morphological species are found, they will have appropriately intermediate DNA. A prediction that has been verified by field studies innumerable times. So often, in fact, that it is now more of an exercise for undergrads, rather than the commonplace grist of current papers.
As the case for all life evolving from simple cell structures is looking less and less convincing, alternative explanations are needed.
No, it isn't, and no, they are not. You cannot make this true by repeating it over and over in a confident tone of voice.
Many in the scientific world are beginning to seriously consider the case for intelligent design.
True, if, by many, you mean a double-handful of semi-famous cranks with obvious axes to grind, and/or dubious credentials as working biological scientists.
Science rests heavily on the principle of cause and effect.
Most natural sciences rest heavily on statistical correlation of phenomena that exhibit collateral non-uniform distributions. Blanket statements about causality are, at best, an extraneous, confusing notion highly influenced by the subjective concerns of the observer.
There is no clearly distinct natural law of cause and effect. The notion, like the notion of distinct species with distinct scientific names, is just a handy peg for humans to hang their epistemological hats on.
Saying that evolution is hard to believe does NOT mean you have to believe in God or in creationism. But it does say another more plausible theory is sorely needed, even if science doesn't have one now.
-- Joe
Yes, quite a lot. Most interestingly for me, the notion that 4 base pairs is, in some manner, the "most efficient" way to represent data. I have been an avid collector of such arguments ever since I was in college, and I can attest that the matter is hardly settled. The most entertaining paper on this subject that I know of, dates back to the 70's, coming out of the memory-i/o chip size reduction races, and postulates that the perfect representational base to compromise the cost of storage with the cost of transmission, is e (2.71828....).
Which makes balanced trinary, not quat, the most efficient realizable representational base. This is a pretty open question today, but I have never seen quat even put on the table as a possible answer.
Ah now, your are trying to understand the infinite with a finite mind.
The Shannon-Weaver General Model of Communication (1947) proposed that all communication must include six elements:
According to in Warren Weaver's introduction to Shannon's paper:
The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular information must not be confused with meaning.You tap on a membrane suspended above a steadily flowing jet of water. The air under the membrane causes slight deflections in the jet of water. A laser is aimed at a receiver. The jet of water flows through the laser beam, deflecting it from its target. Every time the water jet is deflected by the movement of the air, the laser beam hits its target. The laser receiver is connected to a computer which takes each 'hit' and turns it into a 1 and each miss and turns it into a 0. The computer sends these etc. etc......In fact, two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent, from the present viewpoint, as regards information.
You get the idea: the air waves, the jet of water and so on are all channels. The words channel and medium are often used interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately. The choice (a pretty stupid one above) of the appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication. It's obvious that you don't use the visual channel to communicate with the blind or the auditory channel with the deaf, but there are more subtle considerations to be taken into account as well. A colleague of mine was clearly much more responsive to visual communication than I. To elucidate his arguments he would inevitably grab a pencil and a piece of paper and sketch out complex diagrams of his arguments. Though they may have help him to clarify his ideas, they merely served to confuse me, who would have preferred a verbal exposition. But that argument deteriorates into one of semantics and differentiating meaning from signal concerning the definition of information. According to the Shannon-Weaver model of communication, meaning is divorced from that of the existance of a signal for a message to exist.
Genes are sections of DNA that code for a defined biochemical function, usually the production of a protein. The structure of a protein determines its function. The sequence of bases in a given gene determines the structure of a protein. Thus the genetic code determines what proteins an organism can make and what those proteins can do.
mRNA (Messenger RNA) is used to relay information from a gene to the protein synthesis machinery in cells. mRNA is made by copying the sequence of a gene, with one subtle difference: thymine (T) in DNA is substituted by uracil (U) in mRNA. This allows cells to differentiate mRNA from DNA so that mRNA can be selectively degraded without destroying DNA.
Genetic code is a language that is used by living cells to convert information found in DNA into information needed to make proteins. A protein's structure, and therefore function, is determined by the sequence of amino acid subunits. The amino acid sequence of a protein is determined by the sequence of the gene encoding that protein. The "words" of the genetic code are called codons. Each codon consists of three adjacent bases in an mRNA molecule. Using combinations of A, U, C and G, there can be sixty four different three-base codons. There are only twenty amino acids that need to be coded for by these sixty four codons. This excess of codons is known as the redundancy of the genetic code. By allowing more than one codon to specify each amino acid, mutations can occur in the sequence of a gene without affecting the resulting protein.
To refer to a particular piece of DNA, a person in Detroit might write: AATTGCCTTTTAAAAA. This is a perfectly acceptable way of describing a piece of DNA. That code can then be sent via the internet to somebody in Tokyo, where someone with a machine called a DNA synthesizer could actually synthesize DNA from the information specified by AATTGCCTTTTAAAAA alone. Subsequently that specific DNA can be spliced into a gene of some bacteria and a particular protein can be manufactured. Your premise is demonstrably false.
Furthermore, your statement There is no more information in DNA than there is in a snowflake is woefully ignorant. You confuse information with entropy. Clearly the degree of randomness within that of a snowflake is less than that of liquid water. Suggesting that the entropy of DNA is equivalent to that of a snowflake is ridiculous. DNA in inert form can be crystalized and may have similar entropy to that of a snowflake, and if I vaporize that DNA crystal and then re-crystalize it, its entropy essentially remains unchanged (it will be no more or less ordered than its previous crystalized from). But you will never be able to synthesize a protein from that form of crystalized DNA material (as from its orginal deconstructed form), while the deconstructed fundamental components of the snowflake can recreate another, albeit disimiliar snowflake it still will be a snowflake. The former has to do with a fundamental degree of randomness, the latter has to do with the fundemental physical properties of its components. What differentiates functional DNA from its inert form is that of its organization. What evolution has not done is provide a suitable answer to whether or not random chance, time and natural processes are sufficient for the origin of the organization inherent in biological DNA.
Finally, using your syllogism, and one of the examples you cite in support of your positin, I can stipulate that there's no more information on that CD-ROM you say contains War & Peace, than that of a grain of salt. That's perfectly sound logic (Modus Tollens) but invalid.
I think that's a little harsh. However, I do think that there is a group that more adequately describes them -- Alchemists.
When chemistry took root, it was natural to think that not only could you have limitted chemical reactions, there really are no limits to these reactions, and thus you can, with the right recipe, turn lead into gold. Likewise, the limitted amount of change that evolution has been responsible is likewise abstracted unnecessarily into being able to turn molecules to man.
FYI (in case you missed this) ~ good stuff! :)
ping for later reading
That is a wonderfully fantastic post! Do you mind if I quote it in its entirety on my own site? http://crevobits.blogspot.com/
"Evolution does not even attempt to explain where something once came from nothing. It explains the progress- this turned to this which turned to that- but not where Life began. And Evolution does not rule out God."
If evolution does not explain where life came from, then it has no reason to assume that the gaps between organisms in the fossil record are not real. The only way that you can fill in the gaps is by saying that there _must_ have been an organism in the gap, and the only reason for believing that is Universal Common Ancestry. Without an explanation for a unique origin of life, there is no need to claim Universal Common Ancestry, and therefore no need to postulate that the gaps are not real.
If you are correct, this would mean that specific creation is not a contrasting theory to evolution.
"Please state the maximum complexity which can occur randomly and give your sources."
I would search the scientific literature and look at error bars in scientific literature. Whatever statistical improbability they give for invalidating their experiments should be the same one used here.
If statistics is not a valid method for determining that X is not likely to have occurred, then you have just invalidated all of science. It is _possible_ that all scientific measurements in the past have just been lucky coincidences. We don't believe this because the statistical probability of this is astronomically against this. However, since you are now asking us to believe astronomical impossibilities, then it puts all scientific measurements into question.
Do non-physical realms have beginnings and endings? 
Premise: If a system is synergistically composed of several interacting parts all of which are required simultaneously for its basic function, then removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
It can be empirically demonstrated that any one missing (or inefficient) component will cause an organism to be non-functional.
Conclusion: the synergisticaly composed organism is irreducibly complex and it cannot be produced directly by continuously improving a simpler design through slight, successive modifications of a precursor system.
The argument is a variant of the teleological argument for God:
Charles Darwin challenges this concept, by postulating an alternative explanation to that of an intelligent designer: namely evolution by natural and sexual selection. The "classical" Darwinian model is based on a mechanism whereby cells individually undergo mutation, with the process of natural selection then culling out those mutations which are less beneficial to the organism. Irredicible complexity is an objection to that challenge by attempting to demonstrate that certain biological features cannot be purely the product of Darwinian evolution.
Irreducible complexity is not an argument that evolution does not occur, but rather an argument that it is incomplete or insufficient. If irreducible complexity is found and it cannot be wholly explained by current models of evolution, then, it is argued, alternative solutions must be considered.
Alternative solutions are that of Intelligent Design, Creationism, Francis Crick's suggestion that life on Earth may have been seeded by aliens (begging the question where alien life arose), Stuart Kauffman's complexity theory, which promotes self-organisation as an additional factor in producing the complexity of biological systems and organisms, and the hypothesis of quantum evolution.
The latter hypothesis is dependent on experimental data showing that the classical model of random mutation is lacking, and that certain mutations are "preferred" (occur more frequently) because they confer a greater benefit to the organism. This is in and of itself a controversial subject; to date there is no such generally accepted evidence.
Nothing occurs randomly. Source: God, the Bible.
Good point and thanks for the link.It's a good comparasion.
Wow...good post.
"If high level information can only come from an intelligent source, and God must be composed of high level information, what intelligent source created God?"
Wrong question anyway...if God had a cause....we would need to ignore "God" and worship the "source" of his "Causation"!
For the sake of the discussion, assume such a structure exists.
Conclusion: the synergisticaly composed organism is irreducibly complex and it cannot be produced directly by continuously improving a simpler design through slight, successive modifications of a precursor system.
Utterly wrong (or pure speculation) as your conclusion does not follow from your premise and cannot be established from the facts assumed. Don't you idiots ever read science books? Ever?
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