Discovering the Tree of Life

Thank you so much for the information on the feedback loops!

Naturally, I went searching right away for more information especially WRT the p21 aging gene. I found this article you might also enjoy: Perspectives on Systems Biology (pdf)

I'm also searching for more information on the self/non-self determination. That is a classic conditional that requires symbolization.

Thank you so very much for the article! From the article:

In the initial trial of their new screen, the Mt. Sinai researchers identified a possible smnRNA molecule produced by an intron of the human corticotrophin-releasing hormone gene. Corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH) plays a key role in the response of humans and other mammals to external threats.

If you run into any articles that discuss the process of determination (conditionals, symbols) at the genetic level - or the algorithmic information which leads to the production of the smnRNA molecule --- I would very greatly appreciate a heads up!

You set junk DNA up to be the breaking point of evolution -- biologists didn't. You're contentions about Pasteur have been shown to be invalid (he simply proved that microbes did not spontaneously generate, not that life from non-life is impossible -- there is a difference, but you're too narrow-minded to actually see it). All your points above fall into "this is what I claim evolution says, and I can therefore prove it's wrong." It's a whole lot easier to take down strawmen than it is to actually tackle the science involved. Of course, this has been shown to you time and again on these threads for the past two years and you still soldier on, immune to reality. You are not the end-all and be all of science -- hell, from your postings it's obvious you've never taken a college-level science course in your life and most of your science comes from Jack Chick pamphlets, otherwise you'd not use terms like "I proved" all the time. Your theology is as narrow as your understanding of science. You insult people who do not agree with you (calling them liars when they obviously haven't uttered a lie). You are a child, and little boy, if you don't start showing that you are actually learning something from these threads (i.e., you don't keep coming back with the same arguments shot down three threads ago) and treating people with some civility (take a page from Alamo-Girl -- I don't agree with thing one she's said, but she's civil about it and we treat her the same way) you are back on my virtual ignore list.

Note please, lurkers, I will not respond to him not because his arguments hold any validity -- they don't and haven't for centuries. I won't respond to him because he is a mentally-limited, thoroughly brutish holy warrior with whom actual conversations are impossible.

You set junk DNA up to be the breaking point of evolution

My point is much stronger. Evolution has been consistently refuted by science. Its predictions have been shown to be false consistently. Junk DNA is in a sense the final straw in evolution's back for several reasons. As I showed, evolution, when faced with the problems created for it by DNA needed to back up its theory with facts. It proposed two ways to do it: mitochondrial DNA as a 'molecular clock' of evolution and this one was proved false. Junk DNA sought to accomplish a similar function of showing the connections between species being shown by a sort of 'fossilized' DNA. Both failed and for very good reason - they assumed that the DNA in question was just there for the purpose of proving evolution. Now such a ridiculous assumption shows quite well the arrogance of evolutionists and their unscientific attitude. I say unscientific because a scientist looks for causes, for purpose not for purposelessness. To make the totally moronic assumption that 95% of DNA copied in the vast majority of the 100 trillion cells in the human body is purposeless is totally moronic and shows the desperation of evolutionists. It also shows that evolution is a hindrance to scientific progress. It would have had scientists looking for similarities amongst DNA rather than how it worked. It would have had them looking backwards instead of looking forward. It would have closed scientific inquiry of DNA instead of encouraging it. Instead, it is ID which encourages scientific inquiry. It seeks to answer the questions which science is supposed to ask: how, why.

What makes the dismissal of Junk DNA the final straw is what has been found in that 'junk'. The junk turns out to be the program of life, what runs the genes, what causes the organism to function. As science has shown, the genes are just factories of proteins and enzymes, they are run and controlled by the DNA which is non-coding. The genes do not do anything by themselves, they must wait for instructions on what, when and how much to produce. This makes evolution impossible because it makes new functions dependent on numerous factors arising and working together to accomplish it. One can postulate a single change arising at random, one cannot postulate an entire integrated system arising at random.

If you run into any articles that discuss the process of determination (conditionals, symbols) at the genetic level - or the algorithmic information which leads to the production of the smnRNA molecule --- I would very greatly appreciate a heads up!

This PDF looks like what you're talking about...

Thank you oh so very much! That was a very informative article!!!

Now I'm off to find more research on maxicircles (stored genetic information) and minicircles (contextual editors!)

I must thank you yet again. By following those two key words and your author, I was able to locate exactly what I was looking for. He and other notable researchers have also underlined the importance of symbolization in genetics.

Here are some of the articles I found thanks to you!!!

The Physics and Evolution of Symbols and Codes:Reflections on the Work of Howard Pattee There are many links on the page with wonderful detail, but the heart of the discussion is summarized by Howard H. Pattee

"The two great scientific disciplines of physics and evolution theory have traditionally been taught as disjoint subjects. Yet some billions of years ago, certain collections of physical molecules reached a level of complexity that began open-ended evolution by heritable (symbolic memory-based) variation and natural selection.

Von Neumann was the first to propose explicitly why this "threshold" of complexity requires description-based reproduction (taken for granted by biologists), but his argument was focused on the logical, not the physical requirements. He did not discuss the organizational requirements that would allow normal physical molecules to function as descriptions, nor was he clear about his logical distinction between "active" physical dynamics and "quiescent" symbolic descriptions. He did not mention the origin problem except to say it was "a miracle of the first magnitude."

Even if we still do not have a clear picture of the origin of life, the significance of this fundamental distinction between descriptions and constructions, that is, between semiotic processes (rules, codes, languages, information, control) and physical systems (laws, dynamics, energy, forces, matter) reaches to all levels of evolution. This is an essential distinction from the earliest genetic control of the synthesis of proteins, to the codes and languages of the brain, to the distinction between the mind and the brain (the knower and the known, the epistemic cut), and even to physical theory itself that requires a clear distinction between universal physical laws and the local semiotic process of measurement - an area in which there is still no consensus. This distinction between laws and semiosis, as well as how they are related, needs to be made more clearly at all levels if we are to fully understand evolution, physical laws, and the languages of the brain.

In biology, the basic physics and chemistry of elementary life processes as they exist on earth is well-developed. However, our knowledge of the semiotic controls and interactions within and between organisms and in some cases even in single cells is far from complete. In evolution theory it is still not clear that blind variation in a virtually infinite semiotic search space is adequate to explain so many successful species.

And from Rocha's introduction on the webpage (emphasis mine):

Pattee notes that the questions physicists and biologists ask about life are quite distinct, and have lead many to think of living systems as paradoxical. Pattee chose to work on the boundary between these two branches of science, and pursue a theoretical biophysics. From this interface position, it became clear to him that to study life and its origin one needs to study the origin of the genotype-phenotype distinction, which he observes, is an instance of the origin of symbol systems from material components. This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code, and instantiates an epistemic cut, a concept he thoroughly develops here. I'm pinging nebullis, gore3000 and junior because they might also be interested in these finds!

This symbol-matter or subject-object distinction occurs at all higher levels where symbols are related to a referent by an arbitrary code

It is interesting that it takes quite a long time to teach children to use letter symbols to read and write - and these symbols are to a large extent phonetic and not completely arbitrary. One has to wonder how RNA was taught to make methionine when it sees ATG in the DNA code!

For a long time now I’ve been suggesting that the evolutionists should be malleable on the randomness tenet. I said that because it seemed like a good way to forge peace between that side and intelligent design with regard to teaching children in public schools.

However, after this research on information theory, algorithms and mathematics in genetics – in particular, the symbolization – I’m even more convinced that evolutionists insist on randomness to their own peril.

I realize the evolutionist position is that randomness does not mean the same thing as ‘roll of the dice’ – because random mutations are culled by natural selection. Nevertheless, the initiating event is a random mutation.

The presence of algorithmic information even within junk DNA (Complexity International – Brief Comments on Junk DNA [pdf]) is counter-indicative of randomness per se. The Chaitin papers [ps] explain why:

We now turn to Kolmogorov's and Chaitin's proposed definition of randomness or patternlessness. Let us consider once more the scientist confronted by experimental data, a long binary sequence. This time he in not interested in predicting future observations, but only in determining if there is a pattern in his observations, if there is a simple theory that explains them. If he found a way of compressing his observations into a short computer program which makes the computer calculate them, he would say that the sequence follows a law, that it has pattern. But if there is no short program, then the sequence has no pattern--it is random. That is to say, the complexity C(S) of a finite binary sequence S is the size of the smallest program which makes the computer calculate it. Those binary sequences S of a given length n for which C(S) is greatest are the most complex binary sequences of length n, the random or patternless ones. This is a general formulation of the definition…

In other words - to sustain the pillar, one would have to presume that random information content can be algorithmic (which is, by definition, not random.)

Even more to the point, the physics of symbols (H.H. Pattee) and the current state of the art (Rocha and Language-like features in junk DNA) strongly suggest that new research will show that mutations were opportunistic.

This would cause no violence to the theory of evolution or metaphysical naturalism were it not for the insistence on randomness in mutations. For one thing, they might have suggested that the mutations were either random or were opportunistic self-mutations - where the genetic language-like processes read an opportunity in the environment and mutated to gain advantage.

The intelligent design response to that could have been two-fold. First, that the capability itself is evidence of a designer. Second, that opportunistic mutations were additionally guided by external design, showing by information theory that symbolism and language could not have evolved sufficiently to account for the evidence, e.g. Cambrian Explosion. In response, the evolutionists and metaphysical naturalists would write both off to the anthropic principle.

In any case, I predict that intelligent design at first cause will be underscored since there is no origin for the minimal necessary information content whether or not opportunistic (Yockey seventh message).