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To: tortoise
"The supreme question for this thread is really whether DNA can self-form naturally, in an unaided, unintelligent, primal, "random" environment." - Southack

"Of course it can."

Then you'll have no trouble showing a proven example of such self-forming DNA - in your very next post??

" There is nothing special about DNA. Nothing special at all."

That's a very uneducated claim, easily disproven. DNA contains data. That's very special. You can look at DNA that has carried the same data through millions of generations of replications. What, besides DNA and human computer codes, can replicate itself with its own internal data?

You say that DNA is nothing special, well, try showing an example of something that contains structured, organized, useful data outside of it...

48 posted on 02/28/2002 10:17:47 PM PST by Southack
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To: Southack
DNA contains data. That's very special.

Again, using non-rigorous pedestrian definitions of information ("data") are not useful. You are suggesting things that are false by definition if you use the terms in a rigorous or scientific context.

52 posted on 02/28/2002 10:22:34 PM PST by tortoise
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To: Southack
Then you'll have no trouble showing a proven example of such self-forming DNA - in your very next post??

It is perfectly possible, and that is all I need to know; all it requires is the right set of biases in the system. It is trivial to demonstrate a set of biases that will work, and given the thermodynamic chaos of the universe it is rather obvious that those biases must be occurring regularly.

The real fallacy is attaching some special significance to DNA. It could have been any number of other compounds that share every useful property of that chemical (and there are others). Just because you picked the winning numbers for the lottery does not mean there was something special about the numbers that you picked. In the case of the universe, the number of drawings that have occurred is so large that all probable chemical pathways have already been drawn as it were. DNA is a "probable" pathway in this sense. If you look at all conceivable combinations it is improbable, but if you only look at the favored chemical pathways (which is the only valid way of looking at it chemically) the odds become very good.

57 posted on 02/28/2002 10:37:19 PM PST by tortoise
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